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“It is. You can report to Ervo about your progress, since he has a vested interest in your debt as well,” I said, smoothly handing him the responsibility for a group of men that I had never wanted in the first place.
He didn’t physically respond behind me, and I knew him well enough to know that if his body didn’t show his emotions, his face wouldn’t either.
“Very well.” The hound bowed to me.
One by one, the rest of them did too.
Then they silently made their way into the forest, leaving me and Ervo alone.
I could hear people talking in the distance, but no one was close enough to hear us, or see us.
And Ervo’s hand was still on my hip, his hard chest against my back.
I knew he wasn’t going to keep quiet about the flight earlier, and waited.
Sure enough, his breath brushed my ear a moment later as he said calmly, “So you’ll forget that you’re mine when the opportunity arises to fly with another male, yet put me in charge of a situation I would’ve avoided by ending the lives of the men involved?”
“You want to be my brother,” I told him, staring out at the forest just in case he was tall enough to see what I was looking at from where he stood. “Brothers deal with that kind of thing, not the dates their sisters go on.”
His fingers dug into my skin, just soft enough not to hurt me. “And was that adate?”
There hadn’t been any conversation, or physical contact or anything, so I wouldn’t really say that it was a date.
But… it wasn’tnota date.
And technically, wehadbeen alone together.
“It was.”
“When did you decide to startdating?” He hissed the words at me, and I took a damn lot of pride in the fact that I was affecting his perfect, calm façade.
“I’ve been thinking about it for months.” My voice was the neutral tone his usually took, and honestly, I was giving him the truth. “I want a mate. Someone who looks at me the way Lian looks at January. Humans find their person by dating, so that’s what I’m doing now.”
His grip on my hip grew painful, in a way that I loved, because it meant that I’d gotten under Ervo’s skin.
I forced my breathing to remain steady as he lowered his lips to my ear and said in a deadly voice, “I followed you, Mariah. As I will on every one of thesedates. Had Iver touched you, even the tiniest brush of his wing against your scales, I would have ripped his heart from his body and dropped both from the sky so fast that Vevol herself couldn’t stop me.”
I couldn’t stop the shiver that rolled down my spine.
No one on Earth had ever called me Mare. I had always been Mariah, until Ana learned my full name when I arrived in Vevol and gave me the nickname. The fact that Ervo had discovered that somehow, was messing with me.
I hadn’t given it to him myself, I realized, so he couldn’t use it against me. Even if he wanted to.
His voice was slightly louder, and a hell of a lot harder when he added, “Should any part of another male touch your skin again in any way, he will meet his demise. You belong tome.”
I kind of hated myself for being turned on by the words. And the way he gripped my hip. And the way his chest pressed against my back.
And… well, justhim.
The whole damn man was a turn-on, and I didn’t know what to do about it.
“That doesn’t sound like brotherly love,” I breathed to him. “You wouldn’t kill North for touching Priel.”
“Perhaps not.” His lips brushed the shell of my ear, and I shuddered.
The movement dragged my ass over his front, and my eyes widened as his erection pressed against me.
“But I will destroy anyone who so much asconsiderstouching you.”
