“Oh my goddess, you’re home!” Glynda rushed past Zane and flung her arms around me, not caring that my still-wet hair soaked her fluffy bunny sweater. Then she caught sight of Kai, who’d collapsed onto the sofa, still exhausted from his non-vacation in the mer kingdom.
“Are you, um, alright?” she asked him. I wondered if it was the first time the two of them had exchanged words. It seemed likely. Neither of them were exactly social butterflies.
“I’m okay,” he replied before coughing and then scurrying upstairs to avoid any more awkward questions.
“He doesn’t look okay.” Glynda grimaced.
“Would you be okay if the sea witch had tortured you and your mother let her?” Zane said pointedly.
My friend blanched. “Is that what happened to him?”
I nodded with a grimace. “Yeah. But let’s not talk about that. We’re all back now, safe and sound. Nobody died.” I paused, recalling the awesome moment when the sea witch turned into a messy pile of ash. I still wasn’t one hundred percent clear on how that happened, but thank the goddess I had mad magic skills.
“You’re lucky you didn’t kill your mates,” Kenji commented. He’d been quiet since we got back from the mer kingdom. There’d been no mysterious trips away, which made me suspect our power sharing had depleted him more than he was willing to admit.
“I can’t kill my mates,” I scoffed. “It’s impossible.” Even if murdering Alaric seemed like the best idea ever sometimes.
“Difficult, but not impossible.”
Huh.Interesting.
“What about the, um, fae? Did he leave?” Glynda blinked innocently when my eyes narrowed with suspicion at her question. Why did she care where Farris the Fucking Fae had gone?
“Food, pet,” Zane hollered, placing a plate piled high with sausages and scrambled eggs on Maverick’s small table. “Eat up. You need your energy.”
“She does,” my vampire mate agreed. A flash of fangs reminded me he’d not fed from me since the night of the banquet. Was he hungry?
“Farris the Fucking Fae has gone back to the fae realm,” I told Glynda, shoving thoughts of vampire feeding aside as I sat down to stuff my face.
“Oh.” Why did she look sad about it? Then it dawned on me.
“Oh my goddess, do you want to bang the fae?” We’d not talked much about males, but I assumed she was no virgin. Most witches losttheir virginity much earlier than I had. But then, most witches were not raised by an overprotective guardian like Adam.
“No, of course not!” Glynda chuckled nervously while turning beet red. “Never mind the fae, I was just, um, curious. I don’t know much about the fae, and I was hoping to broaden my knowledge, that’s all.”
“They’re deceptive, manipulative assholes. That’s all you need to know,” Zane said. “Coffee, pet?”
I beamed at him. “You read my mind.”
“I did, pet, which is why I know you want to kill Alaric. Good plan, by the way.” He summoned a sharp blade and tossed it at Maverick’s wall, where it remained embedded in the thick timber. “We can discuss methods later. I vote you disembowel the fucker before burning him to ash, but I’m not averse to flaying and decapitation. Both are effective.”
The eggs in my mouth lost all flavor. Glynda’s eyes widened in horror, and she swallowed hard.
“Um, speaking of Alaric, he was looking for you while you were gone.”
My fork slid through my fingers and hit the table. “He was?”
“Yeah, he asked where you’d gone.”
“Did you tell him?” Not that it mattered because I doubted he cared. Maybe he wanted payment for the shit he’d stolen from his father so Adam could heal me.
“No, I told him to fuck off.”
I snickered. “I bet he didn’t like that.”
Glynda sighed. “No, he got mad at me and fried my iPad.”
“That fucker!”
