AllFreeNovel
Share Us
ARIADNE
“Kiaran!” I can’t see him anymore, the bright moth lights on his hair vanishing with him in the fall of night. “Where are you?”
“He left us,” Taj grunts, “that asshole. We shouldn’t have trusted him.”
I understand why he’s angry. Finnen is dragging between us, not a dead weight but close, and Taj’s fear is palpable.
“Kiaran!” I yell. “Where the hell are you?”
“He wouldn’t leave,” Finnen slurs. “Mate.”
“Yeah, but does he know that? In fact…” I glance at Taj. “Do you know that?”
“That he’s our mate? My nose works just fine, thank you. He tried to kill me but I suppose it’s time to kiss and make up, huh?”
I open my mouth to protest again that Kiaran hadn’t been the one to attack first, but I realize I can hear the grin in his voice.
“We need to talk to him,” I whisper. “See what he wants to do. He’s our mate but that doesn’t necessarily mean he wants to join us on this mad journey across the land looking for evasive safety. Besides, he’s a man used to living alone.”
“If we find him,” Taj mutters.
And here I thought Finnen was the only grumpy one.
“If he left,” I say and have to swallow past the sudden lump in my throat, “then he made his choice.”
We’re quiet after that, trudging along. I shift Finnen’s arm over my shoulders, resettling it. He’s heavy. His silence is unusual and worrisome. Just like Taj not volunteering to lift Finnen on his back and carry him. They are both exhausted.
Just when I’m about to suggest sitting down right here and now to rest, someone comes striding toward us, pale hair swinging over broad shoulders, pale body tall and muscular.
“Where the fuck did you go?” Taj grunts.
“I find shelter.” Without missing a beat, Kiaran comes and does exactly what I’d expected Taj to do. He grabs Finnen from us, slings him over one shoulder, and turns back around. “Come. Before other jaguar find us.”
“I didn’t know we had so many jaguars,” Taj says as we follow Kiaran up another hill and behind a cluster of trees. “I thought we had hunted them almost to extinction.”
“Like the Fae,” I mutter. “And yet here we are.”
“Here we are,” Taj agrees and grabs my hand when my foot slips on the trail. “Although we aren’t really Fae. And that was definitely a jaguar.”
“How much Fae blood do you have to have in your veins to count as Fae? It’s not like we can measure it.”
“What can we measure, then?”
“I would say the Council demanding our deaths is a pretty good sign that we count as Fae.”
“Good point,” he concedes.
But I don’t feel any sense of victory at his concession. Not sure being Fae is conducive to a good life. Not something to celebrate. Not for most people.
Speaking of which…
“You don’t like the Fae, Taj,” I mutter as we walk behind the trees to find Kiaran settling Finnen on the ground, propping his back against a trunk. “You didn’t even want to be with us when we met you. Didn’t want to be one of us. Your words, not mine.”
“I…” He looks away, shoves a hand through his wild dark hair. “Fuck, I know, okay? This is all fucking insane.”
“You’re telling me.”
He grunts and I glance sideways at him. His expression is pained. “It may not seem like it, kora, but I want this. I want you, and I want Finnen, and I may still be unsure about this Wildman of yours, but so far, I happen to think that your taste in men is spectacular.”
