Page 70 of Traitor Witch

Telling Val about it won’t help matters, so I change the subject with as much subtlety as I possess.

“If I spend too long around her, I’m likely to mark her again.”

“You’re not the only one suffering,” Val mutters. “I told you we’d all be better off without her on the ship.”

I give him a healthy dose of side eye. “There must be something you don’t hate about her…”

His snort makes me certain he won’t reply, but he proves me wrong. “I’m not stupid, she’s fucking gorgeous.” I’m surprised the compliment doesn’t burn him as it leaves his lips. True to form, Val doesn’t leave it at that. “So is a snake the second before it bites you.”

I can’t honestly say that I’ve ever found snakes gorgeous, but I shrug it off. Val finds playing with explosives fun, so if he’s attracted to scaly creatures with fangs I’ll reserve judgement.

He sighs, pressing his hands into the wood of the rail as he stares moodily into the distance and continues his rant.

“You’re not blind, Ry. Her hands are calloused like ours, like a warrior’s. She moves like a fighter, she has a blade on her at all times, and she is anything but demure. Whatever the twins brought aboard is not a Solar witch. If she’s lying about that, who’s to say she hasn’t messed with our mate bonds as well?”

“You think she’s not a witch?” Goddess, his paranoia is giving me a headache.

Our mate is a witch. Only an idiot—or a man fighting mating urges with every fibre of his being—could think otherwise.

“Mages can be pretty convincing liars.”

“Mages have transmutation circles,” I remind him. “The lack of huge, magical glowing glyphs is a pretty big giveaway that Nilsa isn’t one of them.”

His paranoia about mages isn’t unfounded. That Val’s bad history with his own kind is coming between him and Nilsa is pretty much what I expected to happen.

There’s nothing I can do about it. It’s for him to work through with her when they get to that stage.

I say ‘when’ only because Nos seems so certain that it will happen. The seer has proven himself so often in the past that now I don’t question his predictions.

“Whatever she’s hiding—if she’s hiding anything—I’m sure it’s not that,” I insist. “If she were a mage, she wouldn’t spend so much time praying and mixing herbs together.”

The scent of herbs and smoke covers her constantly now, adding a new layer to her already exotic natural perfume.

It’d be easier if those smells masked her own somehow, but no. They just make her nuanced scent more interesting.

And I smell her everywhere. Her apron drying in the sun on the deck, a lock of her hair caught on a door frame three levels down.

It’s driving me crazy with hunger and need, the lethal duo mixing with the memory of her blood and her body pressed against mine…

Shit.

So much for not thinking about it.

“No magic can mess with a mate bond. Just accept who she—”

“I never said she’s my mate!”

I can’t put up with this.

One of my hands collars Val’s throat without my conscious permission. The ship sways dangerously beneath us as I calmly pick up the mage and carry him to the mast where I pin him in place with just that one hand. My arm is long enough that he can’t reach me and I keep him just far enough off the floor that he’s forced to balance on his toes.

I let him stew for a second, ignoring the curses that fall from his lips.

“She is your mate, Valorean. You will not disparage her in my presence. If you have issues, you will calmly discuss them with her rather than talking behind her back like a coward. Understood?”

I don’t make threats.

I don’t have to.