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“Fuck off,”I snarled back.
He said nothing, though I could feel the fucker’s curiosity seeping through our fucking stupid connection once again as we continued to fly.
I’d cooled off a little by the time we reached the place he said was the border between the two fae lands. It was a valley within the massive range of vibrantly-colored mountains, and he told to me that the curve of the valley stretched along the entirety of their world. I had no idea how big said world was compared to Earth, and when I asked him, Calian didn’t have an answer. He just said that it took about a day to fly the circumference of Vevol.
We landed off to the side of a thick stone building that was shaped like a gigantic triangle, and was surrounded by melted snow. My claws sliced through the snow without feeling any of the chill, but when they shifted back to feet, my toes curled at the iciness engulfing them.
Then my feet burst into flames—I could feel the fire coming from within me and my thrumming magic—and the ice melted into a steaming puddle. My body relaxed, and for a minute, I felt like I was in a fucking sauna.
Calian’s hand captured mine. When I looked at him, I realized he had put on a pair of shorts that reminded me of the hellhound and phoenixes. I’d only seen two pairs of them in his cave, so I didn’t think he was a huge fan of the things, but I had told him to cover up.
The fact that he respected my wishes felt important, so I shoved it away and tried to pull my hand out of his.
“You’re free to be angry with me, but while we’re on neutral territory, you must act like you’ve accepted that you’re mine,”the dragon said into my mind. I stopped trying to tug my hand out of his, but didn’t grip him as securely as he did me.
I didn’t know he could do so while we were in our person forms, and grimaced now that I knew.
“Why?”I asked, my voice snappier than I intended.
“The unseelie have many rules. If they believe I’m trying to force you to be my mate, they will attempt to take you from me, and our people will go to war. They believe in control, in all of its uncomfortable forms. Our wildness is savagery in their eyes, rather than the freedom it feels like to us.”
My throat constricted a little.
As much as I hated to admit it, I understood what he was saying. I too had been around people who tried to enforce stupid, pointless rules that only served to make those who had created them feel more powerful.
And I too had found freedom in the unseelies’ wildness.
So I tightened my grip on his hand.
“This doesn’t mean I’ve decided to be your wife,”I growled at the man whose hand I gripped like a fucking lifeline.
“Of course not,”he said, his low chuckle making me warmer than I wanted to admit.
Despite our disagreements, we walked into the triangle-shaped building like we were united.
My gaze skimmed over the group of men waiting inside, all of them with their arms folded as they glared at each other. Among them, there were two that I knew and four that I didn’t.
The two I knew were the hellhound guy and the phoenix dude—the four that I didn’t know were all unseelies, but I recognized them for what they were because they all had on matching button-up shirts and slacks, none of which looked comfortable to me. The basilisk guy who had come to pick Ana up on that first day wasn’t among them, but he had been wearing the same thing when he showed up to get her.
“Brothers,” Calian said, his voice a lot less warm as he spread an arm toward them—the arm that wasn’t wrapping around my waist and pulling my body closer to his with every step we took.
I didn’t turn to eye him, hiding my surprise at the sudden change in his personality.
Was he putting on some kind of a mask for them?
Hadn’t I done that dozens of times as a kid, when shit would change and I would need to change with it to survive?
The men seemed to call each other “brothers” a lot, but only with the other members of the Wild Hunt had I seen Calian actually seem to mean the word.
“Lian.” One of the men watched me, his eyes piercing.
“You must not be too concerned, since you haven’t brought the full council,” Calian drawled back.
I was officially as nestled against him as was possible, his entire front glued to my whole back. The man seemed partial to holding me that way, and honestly, I liked it.
Not that I’d admit it to him.
“Druze and Ashvyn are dealing with the little femaleproblemyou handed us,” one man countered. Something about the plethora of tattoos on his dark skin and the way he held himself reminded me of the hellhound guy a few feet to my right.
