Page 26

Jack

S oft humming filled my ears, and my heart banged frantically against my ribcage.

The last time I heard that sound…I grabbed my neck, running a hand over my bare chest and down to my pants, where my fingers slipped under my waistband and felt for the appendage that had been so severely abused by the dryad.

“You’re alright, Jack,” a soft voice crooned.

My eyes slid open, staring up at a high stone ceiling. I glanced left and searing pain shot up my neck. I hissed, turning back to face the ceiling.

A warm, wet cloth came down on my forehead. “There, there, sweet child. Don’t fret. Mother Mahonia is here.” Her gentle humming resumed, but no rough bark or strangling hold wrapped around my body, and I relaxed, muddled thoughts trying to piece together where I was and what was happening.

“You will not tell him, or I’ll call in my favor,” Sally hissed from the hall. It was low and menacing in a way I’d never heard. The hairs on the back of my neck rose. I had known her sweet innocence was an act, but since entering Faerie, something savage had begun to show itself in her.

Dane’s words echoed in my head. “They have no soul and no remorse. They will bribe, steal, and kill to get what they want. They are animals.”

I shook the thought away.

“You’re alive.”

Sally’s dry voice seemed to suggest I had survived despite my best efforts not to. And maybe she was right. Though I hadn’t pieced it all together, I remembered the soft singing I’d thought was Sally’s and my eagerness to follow and see where it led.

In my haste to meet a very naked, very alluring, Sally beneath the tree, I hadn’t asked myself, even for a second, if it made sense that she was nude and dancing seductively under this tree, when she’d marched away a scowl twisting her lips at my teasing.

Lured by the promise of all that soft flesh and the wanton desire in her eyes, I’d tripped over myself to get to her. That was idiotic.

With some effort, I turned my head again, wincing as I took in her angry gaze. Was she upset with me for nearly dying or for surviving?

“Must be. Death wouldn’t hurt this much.” I grunted the words as each one sent shocks of pain through my chest.

She rolled her eyes, coming to stand over me. “You look like shit.”

I snorted, then groaned at the fire in my lungs.

“So, this is your human?” Another woman stepped into the room.

She looked less like my kind than Sally, not the least of which because of the fluffy tail curled around her wrist, but her shocking green eyes, luminescent and feline, were a more vivid version of the ones I stared at in the mirror every day.

Our similarities ended there. Where my hair was black as night, hers was white as ice, falling in a sheet down her back.

Her skin was several shades darker than mine, a rich brown that reminded me painfully of my mother.

I had inherited little from her, including her beautiful dark skin, but we shared the same green eyes with this stranger.

The severe contrasts between hair, eyes and skin made her striking to look at.

My gaze trailed down her finely made gown.

I wanted to laugh at the intricate designs woven through the fabric in the shape of polar bears.

I might have asked her if she was on her way to the Renaissance festival, but when I looked at Sally, her gaze had narrowed to slits, and I sobered.

“He’s not my anything.”

The other woman came to stand beside her, and they both scrutinized me like a lab specimen on a table. “If you don’t want him, I’ll take him.”

Sally’s head whipped to the left, and she bared her teeth. It was the most inhuman gesture I’d ever seen her make. If there had been any lingering doubts about her nature, they were erased by that movement. “He’s not yours to claim.”

“Ladies,” I wheezed. “Don’t fight…I’m enough man…for you both.”

Both their gazes darted to me, eyes narrowing in similar expressions of feral rage. My cock shrank in my pants.

A low chuckle broke the chilling silence and Mother Mahonia pushed out of her chair, shuffling closer. “Go on, girls, leave the patient to recover. He’s still delirious.”

I exhaled a shaky breath, wondering if Mother Mahonia had just saved my life.

They turned, letting her shuffle them out of the room, but Sally glanced back, giving me another seething look before the door closed and I was blessedly alone.

As my muscles eased, breath coming easier, my mind settled on Sally’s words again. “You will not tell him, or I’ll call in my favor.”