Page 164 of Season Warriors & Wolves

He cupped my face with a hand and rested his forehead on mine, breathing hard and so angry, his fingers digging on my jaw. “If something happens to her because of this, I’m going to bury you so far down this earth you’ll burn both here and in hell.”

“If you’re not going to kiss,” Eren said, leaning on my bedroom door. “Can I borrow you for a second?”

Mal pushed off from me, still warning me with his eyes as he retreated away towards the exit. “Never noticed your eyes,” he said to Eren, patting his shoulder. “A nice moss, aren’t they?”

Eren dug his teeth on his lip to keep from grinning and it pissed me off even more because those stupid dimples took my attention away from his mouth.

“Don’t ask,” I said, drying my hair with a towel and searching my drawers for a hair tie.

He slipped behind me, his hand digging in my hair and pulling my head back so he could bury his face on my neck. “You smell good.”

Burning skies. “Is this what you wanted that second for?”

“No.” He pressed his hard body closer to mine and I leaned onto him. “Can I not change my mind?”

“If you’d come earlier like I asked you.”

“Couldn’t leave Mahara’s channel sooner. Father’s ships are persistent to the point of stupidity.”

I turned, grabbed his face and kissed him, backing him to the wall. “I told you to let the Volants deal with it,” I said, nipping at the corner of his mouth where a scar ran over. It drove me insane.

“Takes four dozen men to do what I can do alone, Cai. It is not fair.”

Scratch that. He drove me insane. “It is not fair that you sleep only two hours a day. Are you trying to prove something, huh?”

“You’ve counted?”

He groaned in my mouth when I pushed my hips against his. “You guard for twenty, I fuck you for two and you sleep for two. Shittiest bargain with death I’ve seen.”

No, it was me who had bargained with death. What had death and I tussled about so it could now haunt me with one of his smiles?

His hands lowered to undo my belt and a knock banged on my door, forcing me to pull back. “Shit. Who is it?”

“Mother spring,” Alaric answered. “Get your arse to the camp, kid. Something else is waiting for you.”

Something else.

“What I wanted to talk about,” Eren said, straightening himself and doing my belt up. “We hunted down the slave traders who were selling Olympians assassins.”

They didn’t blink. They didn’t even look like they were breathing. The whole two dozen Olympians didn’t even look remotely human anymore.

“Conditioned,” Snow said. “They inhale and exhale so little to burn less energy, less magic. They haven’t said a word or even sat down. Nor ate or drank. For days.” Her head slowly turned to the slave tradesmen chained by a stump, her eyes gleaming. She started laughing, her shoulders shaking with more than amusement. “I’m going to have so much fun.”

They flinched. Not because of the thunder howling like mad above us. Whatever they saw on Snow’s face had the men start scrambling next to one another like hens in a coop.

I glanced at Kilian standing in the far distance, watching her and her alone. He relaxed onto a tree, arms crossed and attentive on her still, making no move to stop her while she walked to the men. If he wasn’t beside her, his shadows were. If there were no shadows around, night was. If there was no night, he’d found way to make death his slave only with the purpose to look over her.

Until him, I’d not realised my mistake with her. I tried to raise walls around her. He had raised those same walls around the world.

“If you won’t speak, I’ll just make you sing,” she said sweetly. “Then we can all dance. Perhaps the men whose tongues you’ve cut will dance with us. Isn’t it so? You speak. They obey?”

They all scrambled back when her fingers lit with electricity. She put a hand to one of the man’s leg, melting it to the knee. It wasn’t just his scream that started off my migraine. All the men screamed like they were all part of a symphony of sorts.

“Shut it!” I shouted, their lungs seizing at my command. “Better.”

Still, none of the Olympian soldiers budged, blinked or breathed any heavier. Nothing.

“How lucky you are to have two same limbs,” she said, melting off his other leg up until the knee. “Oooh, look how many limbs you all have together. Who’s next? Eeeny, meeny—”