Page 96 of The Arcane God

He looked down at her, expecting to find regret or shame in her eyes, but instead, there was an openness he’d never seen from her before. A vulnerability. Like she couldn’t quite believe that had happened, either, and then he realized it.

“Wait—was that your first time?” Turner asked, shock reeling through him.

“Yes,” Xena admitted without hesitation.

“Are you okay?” he asked, feeling like an absolute idiot for not realizing that before he’d started pounding into her. He knew the stryx did not mate until they had a partner—for the sake of keeping their population to a manageable level.

“Yes,” she said again, as if this should be obvious.

“What—what does that mean?” Turner asked, feeling like he must be missing something. “What we just did?”

“I told you—it means you’re mine. And I am yours,” she said.

Shock reeled through him. Had she just taken him as her mate? He…he didn’t know how he felt about that.

On the one hand, his first reaction was surprise. She had chosen him? Then disbelief. Why had she chosen him? Then pure and utter joy, because…she had chosen him. It almost didn’t feel real.

“You mean…you’re not going to leave after this?” he asked quietly. That was what romantic partners always did—they left. They never stayed. Only his friends ever stayed.

“No,” she just said, staring into his eyes with conviction.

Turner collapsed his head onto her shoulder—suddenly overcome with emotion, and he felt like a fool for it. For how much this meant to him.

She didn’t say a word, though, just ran her fingers through the hair on the base of his head. “Come to my tent?” she asked, and he looked up to see her cheeks reddened and flushed from what they’d just done, and in her eyes was that same vulnerability still. Like she wanted to know if he was okay with all this, okay with being hers.

“Yes,” Turner replied without hesitation, and he felt it in his very being. “I will come with you anywhere, Xena.”

Silently, he retrieved his pants as she redid hers, and then he followed her to her tent like the lost puppy he was.

Chapter Thirty-Four

Greya

Greya sat before a small campfire on the outskirts of Aquilo, waiting for Perse to return. It was fall now, and the weather had finally turned cool after a long, hot summer, but the crisp air did nothing to soothe the riot of butterflies in her stomach.

Perse had been gone over an hour, sent as her envoy into the village to warn Northe, Aquilo’s matriarch, of her arrival and to set up a time for a meeting, as was customary. But it wasn’t his long absence that troubled her—it was the fact that not only was this her first official meeting with another matriarch after becoming one herself, but it was likely to be a difficult conversation. She had no idea what daemonic troubles Aquilo had been dealing with, but if it was anything like the situations Auster had been dodging and reacting to, she had the sense that convincing them to help daemons by overthrowing their king would be a hard sell.

But she had a plan to help with that. That was, if the daemon her plan relied on ever showed up.

She had no way to know if Steig would meet her here. It was one thing to pass her information from afar—it was another entirely to associate with her in person. After all, she had held him captive for a few weeks.

Greya heard a stick snap behind her and Knew it was Perse before she even turned around.

“How’d it go?” she asked, standing up to greet him.

“Good,” he said, leaning down to press a kiss to her forehead. “She was definitely curious about what you wanted to discuss, but I didn’t give any hints, like you said.”

Greya nodded. Perse was the best person to accompany her on these sorts of visits. Not only because he was her husband, and she loved him, but because he was so unimaginably calm, even in the face of her nerves. He could deescalate any situation, just with his kind, patient presence.

“Good,” Greya said, nodding at him. “I don’t want her to have a chance to build her arguments against me until I can convince her in person.”

The two of them got to work preparing their dinner over the fire—she’d brought some biscuits and cheese, as well as dried rabbit meat she turned into a nice stew. They were just sitting down to eat when she heard a rustle of leaves in the darkening woods behind them—only this time, she Knew it wasn’t Perse. It was someone else. Someone whose gait she didn’t recognize.

It was no secret that they were camping here—she’d purposefully made themselves known, hoping a certain daemon could find them easily—but it was entirely possible a mortal or witch was seeking a trade as well.

But as she turned around to look, she saw that her first instinct was right, and she felt both relief and a sudden alertness as Steig’s large, familiar shape approached them.

“Steig,” she greeted, smoothing the front of her dress as she and Perse stood up to face him.