Pissed at me for my decisions. Pissed at me for letting Typhos hurt Cami. Pissed at me for upsetting Ajax.
My inner beast wanted control, to fly, to seek his woundedmatesand beg for their forgiveness.
They’re not ours,I reminded him.They’re not Phoenixes.
The damn bird snorted in reply.
I ignored him, determined to listen to my mind and not to my animalistic instincts.Ajax just needs space. This will be fine. We’ll… we’ll fix it.
“Hunt them,” Typhos demanded, using the command reserved for my Phoenix when he wanted us to track down errant souls. “Findthem.”
“I will,” I promised. “But not right now.”
Typhos’s brow inched upward as he glanced at me, his surprise palpable through the bond. He’d expected me to turn to ash and start tracking immediately. I usually did when issued a command, but I couldn’t follow this one.
Not yet.
My Hell Fae King mate studied me for a long moment, his oceanic blue eyes swirling with questions he sought answers for within my mind.
I didn’t push him out, didn’t put up any walls, didn’t try to hide. Because he needed to understand this conflict, needed to see how my loyalty to him might have jeopardized my relationship with Ajax.
My relationship with Cami.
My relationship with my Phoenix.
My jaw ticked, my bird pushing at my mental restraints in a blatant demand to be freed from his cage. But he didn’t want tohunt. He wanted totrack. And there was a fine difference between the two.
Huntingwas reserved for dark souls—nefarious fae who had reneged on their deals with the Hell Fae King. Beings who had earned punishment.
Trackingwas more of a pleasurable activity, one with a reward in mind. Locating Ajax and Cami was the reward in this case. My bird didn’t like being separated from them. He wanted to join them. Be with them. Earn their forgiveness.
Bite them. Mate them.
My hands curled into fists.Fucking. Phoenix.
“I see,” Typhos finally said after a beat, the two words an echo of what he’d said in his bedchamber when I’d told him what was happening to Cami. It’d taken me longer to reach him than I would have liked, mostly because he’d been too engaged with his prince to hear me. And I hadn’t wanted to interrupt them.
Unfortunately, we’d been interrupted mid-conversation by Loch, the Kelpie King from the Underwater Kingdom. Typhos had issued a command to all the Nightmare Fae Kings to report any and all disturbances going forward, no matter how small.
Fortunately, Loch’s reported disturbance didn’t appear to be related to the ongoing portal issues. But it’d taken Typhos a few minutes to determine that. Once he had, he’d returned his focus to me.
Which had led us all here because Typhos had wanted to examine Cami himself.
“All I did was put her in a dreamlike state,” he’d told me. “I don’t want her anywhere near my magic.”
I’d believed him. Istillbelieved him. But that didn’t mean Cami hadn’t been glowing with power mere moments ago.
An unknown power.
And now she was gone.
On the run with Ajax.
He’ll protect her,I told myself. Only, I wasn’t sure if that thought was related to me pursuing them, Typhos wanting Cami dead, or the odd power that had been humming all over her skin while she’d slept.
I palmed the back of my neck, my chest suddenly tight.
This… I didn’t know how to dothis.
