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"Okay," I said, hearing the relief in my voice.
"You only have to tell me that you want him gone, and I'll do it myself. But something tells me, when you remember what he's done, you'll want the chance."
I nodded, not knowing what to say, and uneasy, because I wasn't sure I wanted to remember something so horrific that I'd want to kill my fated mate for it.
He studied me for a moment. “Let me show you something,” he said quietly, popping open the trunk. “Look at him.”
I bit my lip as I peeked inside, and then my mouth dropped open in shock. He was missing an eye!
“How–” I stuttered.
“He was using a fae glamour to mask his face since you wouldn’t have remembered him losing it and he was trying to get you to fall for him.”
“How did he lose it?” I murmured, fascinated and horrified at the notion someone could hide their looks like that. It was also making Ares’s story more and more plausible.
“I believe, my love, that you cut it out when you escaped from him.”
My eyes must have looked cartoonishly large at that moment. I couldn’t imagine doing something like that. He just chuckled at my response and slammed the trunk lid down.
"Armand will take care of him. Let's get you inside. You've had a long day."
My body actually felt somewhat refreshed from the short nap I’d taken on his chest. But my mind…that was another story. I followed him inside the house.
"I'm pretty sure I’m broken," I muttered to myself as I admired the white oak plank floors, and the smooth white walls that gave a comforting, homey feeling to the place.
"What makes you say that?" he asked, leaning against a large island in the dreamy kitchen we’d walked into.
"Because you're still a perfect stranger to me, and I'm just wondering…is this where you turn into the Big Bad Wolf, and I realize you've been impersonating Grandma the whole time?" I mused.
He chuckled at that, and I couldn't help but grin in response.
"Sorry, just trying to picture myself in one of ‘Grandma's’ nightgowns and that ridiculous bonnet thing they always have the wolf wearing in those stories." He chuckled again. "But I can assure you–I have no problem assuring you every day for the rest of our lives–I am not the Big Bad Wolf. I am the devoted lover who would walk on fire and give up his life to make the woman he loves happy."
My jaw dropped. I hadn't been expecting a confession of devotion like that. A thrill swept through me, and I tried to temper it down. I'd woken up, and Alistair had been there, pretending to be my knight in shining armor. And it sounded like that had all been a trap, and I'd actually been sleeping in the bed of a monster. Would Ares turn out to be that way as well? I guess I had time to figure that out, since I had no idea where I'd come from besides Alistair's pack.
I was going to say something more prolific. But all that came out was, "We’ll see," a statement that Ares didn't seem perturbed about at all.
I opened my mouth to ask another question, but then something outside the back windows caught my attention. I gasped, seeing a garden spread out as far as the eye could see. And not just a regular garden, like Alistair’s, with his neatly trimmed rose bushes and the grass that had been kept at precision length the entire time I’d been there…this was a wild garden, one from a dream, brightly blooming blossoms popping up everywhere, no rhyme or reason to their growth except that it looked beautiful. It all seemed to go together though, like the person who'd designed it had been one of the most talented artists around, and he'd taken his paintbrush and mapped it all out. Organization in the chaos. It was hard to imagine that such perfection could have just been done by nature, but I suppose it could've been possible with how beautiful everything here was.
"One of my favorite places. And why I decided to build my house right here. I stood in the open field that used to be here…and I could just see it," he murmured, coming up to stand beside me. "Come on, you'll have plenty of time to explore the gardens later. Let me show you the rest of the house."
I nodded, reluctantly following him as he turned back towards the kitchen.
The kitchen really was a dream, the island stretching almost the entire length of it, and I could just imagine him hosting parties here with various townspeople, but I would bet that the invite list wasn't based on how much money was in their bank accounts.
Speaking of bank accounts. "How did you fund this place?" I asked, thinking not just about the beauty of the house, but also the beauty of the whole town and the logistics involved of keeping that many people fed.
His grin turned cocky at my question.
"The first six months seemed impossible. We were in this beautiful place, but we had just a couple of hammers, a couple of saws, nothing necessary to build a town with. And then I went on one of my walks…and I happened to find another cave just over there," he pointed at the mountain behind his house which was opposite from where we’d come in. “And in that cave was an abandoned mine full of emeralds."
“Wow.”
"Everyone in the town takes turns working there in other positions. We have a bakery, a bookstore, a small grocery store…and many other places. But the primary livelihood for the town is the emerald mine."
I tried to picture it–all of them walking through the waterfall and seeing this picturesque little valley, and the work that would have had to be done to create this place. It was amazing.
"And how do you protect it?"
