He gives a low whistle. “And boy, is it going to be a doozy.”
He grins at us, spreading his hands wide.
“Ah, fuck,” Lily says. “I do not like the sound of that.”
“Do not worry, Lily,” I tell her. “I have not trimmed my claws yet, and I won’t until you’re ready to mate with me. I will protect you from whatever this challenge is.”
I spread my wings out wide, making myself as menacing as possible. A breeze blows my hair out of my face, and I shake my head.
“Calm down, Fabio,” Lily says. “I can take care of myself.”
She absolutely cannot, but she looks so fierce that I don’t dare laugh at her.
Externally, at least.
CHAPTER
FOURTEEN
LILY
I am so grumpy.So grumpy, in fact, that I don’t think the word “grumpy” even begins to cover it.
I read a book once where the heroine’s vision was described as turning red whenever she saw her enemy. I thought that was the most ridiculous phrase I’d ever heard in my life—until this very moment.
I don’t know if it’s because, despite my orgasm last night, I’m completely sexually unsatisfied. I’m hungry. And I’m pretty sure if I were still on my regular hormonal cycle I would be PMS-ing, and considering I have PMDD, that’s really fucking saying something.
So am I seeing red after Ken pops up out of nowhere and starts his good morning spiel that I can barely process because I’m so fucking pissed off?
Not literally, no.
But am I imagining blood dripping from his hologram corpse after I’ve decapitated him in a fit of righteous rage?
Yes.
If that’s what seeing red means, then yes, I am seeing red.
I’m practically snarling by the time he finishes giving us whatever directions he’s just popped in to deliver like a little evil artificial intelligence sprite from the hell realm—whatever data-cooling processing hellroom he was spawned from.
Somewhere in the forest, there’s the undeniable cluck of a chicken, and a moment later, the hen from last night is peeking around a huge tree trunk to stare at the two of us. Well, three of us, technically, though Ken is not actually corporeal, nor is he a real person.
“Did you at least fucking feed the chicken?” I ask him.
Ken stops mid-speech and stares at me.
“It’s very rude to interrupt the host while they’re monologuing.”
“You can shut the fuck up. You’re only a host in your own goddamn mind. Did you feed the chicken?” I ask again.
He gives Zan a long, measured look. “I take it that her anger today means that you did not, in fact, seal your mate bond last night?”
“Well, at least we know you weren’t filming us like some goddamn pervert,” I yell at him.
Ken has the audacity to appear shocked at my language and tone.
“Does that mean that you would prefer if I did film your intimate evening scenes? Our early feedback from test audiences suggests that they would like that, especially in your market. Meaning Earth,” he says, as if I’m too freaking stupid to know what my market means.
A comms tablet appears out of nowhere, and Ken begins marking on it, which is just downright confusing, because how the fuck is a hologram marking anything when he doesn’t need to actually physically remember it because he’s not physically real?
