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“I don’t know,” Ren admitted. “But you’re incredible.”
I wanted to fear what I saw. I wanted to panic, but I couldn’t. The light was soothing, and Ren wasn’t scared. I felt it as if I was him and he was me—as if we had a bond, a direct line. He was in awe of me, staring at me in wonder and amazement.
Slowly, as the sexual pleasure faded, so did the glowing sensation.
Until I was nothing more than Ellie, a human, lying in a puddle of sweat in the middle of the Fae King’s bed.
26
Ilay in bed next to Ren. The lights were off, and the moonlight sufficed to see each other by. He played with my hands, just like I’d dreamed before everything had gone wrong.
But he didn’t turn into a monster, and he didn’t keep his distance. He lay tightly against me, his body curled around mine like a question mark.
“I don’t know what it means,” I said. “Have you ever seen that before?”
Ren shook his head. “No. I’ve been alive a long time, and I’ve seen a lot of power and a lot of Fae, but nothing like that. Nothing that glowed with an ethereal surge of…I don’t know what it was.”
I nodded. I wasn’t sure if I should fear what had happened. A part of me still wanted to panic, but I felt strangely calm, and it overtook everything else I felt.
Except for this incredible bond I felt with Ren.
But that made little sense, didn’t it? Fae and humans couldn’t bond. We weren’t of the same species.
Besides, I’d read all about the bonding and mating and rituals that went with it, and I wasn’t sure it was real. People fell back on a lot of legends—it was like that with any culture. Stories were told from one generation to the next, and they got bigger in the retelling. They became wilder.
I couldn’t be connected to Ren the way I thought I was.
Could I?
“Do you think we should be worried?” I asked.
Ren shook his head. “It didn’t hurt, right?”
I shook my head. “I didn’t even realize it.”
“I don’t think we should be worried. But I want to know what it means. We’ll ask Nylah about it and see what she has to say. Maybe there’s something in the history books…”
Ren’s voice tapered off, and I knew he was thinking what I was thinking. We both knew the Fae history. He’d grown up with it, and I’d studied it extensively the last while to understand the world I was living in now.
And not once had anything like this popped up.
Ren kissed my naked shoulder. “I’m just glad you’re safe. And that you’re here,” he said.
Through the connection we shared, I felt a wash of affection, and it warmed me. He meant exactly what he said.
Did he feel it, too?
I was too scared to ask. What if it was all just infatuation? What if it was one-sided? What if I believed in some fairy tale that didn’t exist, and he didn’t feel a thing?
I wanted to wait until he mentioned it before I would talk about it. I didn’t know if it was real, or if it was even possible.
Ren would know if he felt it. He would mention it. I was sure he would. A mate bond—if it existed—wasn’t to be taken lightly. At least, not according to what I’d read.
But it wasn’t something that the Fae chased after the way they used to anymore, either. So…how important—and how real—could it be?
“Your mind is going to drive you crazy,” Ren said.
I blinked at him. “What do you mean?”
