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I earned a shrug. “They’re cool. What can I say?”
I giggled. “You’re the first one I’ve met that thinks so! They don’t really bother me, but everyone else around here thinks they’re unsettling.”
“Eh. I’ve seen way scarier. Francesca’s face, for example.”
He smirked as I laughed at the jab. Without any explanation, my angel and wolf stopped being vigilant at the same time. When my laughter died down, I tried to prod them for an answer, but I more or less got a pair of mental shrugs.
“How they look doesn’t bother me, but now that you’ve said that…” he continued, snapping me out of my thoughts. “I did want to ask them to do a run with us, but Elias told me I couldn’t. Said that if they freaked him out, they’d freak the other wolves out worse. I feel like he should know better by now, but whatever….”
While he grumbled that last part, I wondered why he and I didn’t seem to be affected by whatever feeling Sariel claimed the twins gave. Maybe because Ashe liked dark things, he was already accustomed to the sight.
“Anyways, this talk has been lovely, but I’m afraid I have to get going.” He grinned at me. “It was nice to meet Sariel’s muse, though. I’ll see you around.”
I tried not to blush over the words as he passed me by, heading in the direction I'd come from. Part of me desperately wanted to be nosy and follow after him, but then I’d have to explain myself if he caught me, and that sounded so much worse than dealing with a bit of niggling curiosity. What if he told Auren, too?
Imagining the incredulous look I would get for stalking and interrogating the man's mate, I giggled to myself, deciding to mind my own business.
11
THE INFLUENCER
SARIEL
“Aria is popular,” Auren said casually, fingers tapping away at his keyboard. “Her posts are blowing up online.”
“What posts?”
I swore I heard him mumble an “oops” before he pulled up the article he was talking about, showing me it on his largest screen with a grin.
“She’s been writing about your adventures in the Free Kingdom lately, but she’s basically been telling the world her side of the story. Everyone is talking about it.”
I leaned forward, eyed the address, then quickly typed it into my own search bar, though I really didn’t need to. Aria’s name appeared in almost every search suggestion; as promised, when I clicked on one of them, I was bombarded with different news outlets writing about her.
Deciding I would circle back to that, I followed the first link to her actual articles, scrolled back to the beginning, and got to reading.
The longer I read, though, the more flustered I started to feel. My mate was good with words, and the way she was portraying me made me seem like some kind of knight in shining armor as opposed to the asshole who’d nearly gotten her killed multiple times. In fact, it almost sounded like I was her favorite character in a book or something. Her descriptions of me were… sweet.
My grin felt permanently etched onto my face as I flipped through every page, realizing that she was totally in love with me. That had been on my mind ever since Atlan had spoken with us about our bond and Ashe had questioned me about my true feelings, but this just confirmed it for me. Whether she was prepared to admit it or not, Aria loved me.
The real question was whether I felt the same way.
Lovewas such a heavy word. I knew I cared about her and that she’d dug her claws into me even before we’d worked out our mate bond, so it wouldn’t be a stretch to say that we were very much set soulmates when taking everything into consideration. I didn’t have any complaints about being saddled with her for the rest of my life.
She was funny, in a dry sort of way, and beautiful. My heart gave a little flutter just thinking of her, actually, so that was probably all I needed to know about that.
Rubbing my chest, I decided to leave that train of thought alone for the moment, opting to keep flipping through her work.
Aria was a talented storyteller, painting pictures of people and places in a way I could never hope to without some paint in front of me. It made me wonder why she’d never taken up writing something other than her travel articles and news stories—her skill was almost wasted in nonfiction.
Once I’d seen all there was on her blog, I subscribed to it with a smirk, then closed the laptop, trying to figure out why my chest was so tight. It wasn’t necessarily that I was bothered that she was telling our story, but I did wish she’d told me about it.
Hurt,I realized. I was hurt that she hadn’t wanted to share it with me.
I scowled at the thought, rolling my shoulders in the hopes the feeling would disperse.
Are you alright?I heard her ask.
Great. Now she was worried.
