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Dax knew who it was immediately. His dragon had sensed that it was a fae, but that was it. But now he recognized him.
He relaxed immediately and breathed a little easier. “Marius, you okay, my friend? What happened?”
Marius was sort of the definition ofvanilla. Certainly not a troublemaker. But this was a fae he was dealing with. Working with the Tribunal he had often been surprised by their idiosyncrasies.
Shifters he understood implicitly. Even humans he felt he had a good sense of. But fae were still capable of surprising him. He just didn’t understand the fae at all, and so he had given up trying. All he knew was that they seemed to think they were better than his kind.Not all of them are that way, he reminded himself.But a lot of them.Which was fine. Let them think whatever they wanted.
Ugg, he hated to be a hater, but he just felt more comfortable dealing with shifters.Why did I think taking over as alpha of the Fae Crossing was a good idea again?It was just a rhetorical question he often asked himself, but still the answer came nonetheless.Because you still believed you could all get along. That you could protect all. Like your father raised you to believe.
Right before he fucked off.
That was all well and good, but the fae still kind of freaked Dax out.
Regardless of his thoughts on it now, when his dad had started talking of abandoning their sworn pledge as a pack, he had stepped up. He had given his word, and he would not go back on that.
And the truth was that despite the challenges it brought up for him, both external and internal, he believed in their mission. They could all live together. They all had something to learn from one another. Something to offer.
And the shifter contribution was that they provided the law in this town, with occasional support from the fae and the witches.
Witches. Another class of freaky altogether, he thought. But at least they were humans.
He refocused on the task at hand.
“You with me, buddy? Marius? Can you tell me what happened?
“Hey Dax. I was just mindin’ my bidness.”
“Uh huh. Do you have any idea where you are now?” Dax asked, trying to assess his mental state.
“Of course I doe where I am,” he said, his speech slurred by a strange drunk-giddy cadence. He looked around, and getting his bearings finally said, “Willow Way…” He looked around a bit more. “Way out. By the quarry! Yeah!”
With that, he twirled his hand and a wind picked up and spun beneath him and he began to rise…
“Marius, quit it with the magic…”
He took a step back as he spoke. Magic spooked him at the best of times. But everything about this situation was already wrong to begin with. It only added to his growing unease.
“What the hell are you doing?” This definitely wasn’t normal fae behavior. Unless he was mistaken, Marius had no idea what he was doing either.
Dax knew fae had a magic that was kind of the polar opposite of shifter magic. Fae were more…ethereal. But from what he knew and had seen, they were also very private, and ostentatious would be the last word to describe them.
Not to mention he had never seen a fae make wind.Not this kind of wind at least.He laughed to himself at his own dumb joke.
“Marius, where did you say you were?” He was back on guard. His dragon was at the ready.
The little eddy that had begun to lift Marius ceased and he fell back to the ground in a heap again, albeit in a slightly more comfortable looking position.
Unless he was mistaken, Marius seemed as unsettled by the wind as he did. He was just sitting there looking confused, drunk, and maybe a bit manic all at once. Dax’s dragon clawed at the proverbial ground.
Danger.
Dax repeated himself. “Can you tell me how you happened to pop up here of all places?” He was speaking slowly and over enunciating to make sure he was understood.
Marius, who had still been sitting by the side of the road up to this point, slowly got up from the pavement. “Oh, yer gonna hear all about it,” he said, as he dusted himself off. “I work with the council, you know? She had no right, or that damn bar had no right! I was apparated without my pemish… permission! I was just having a good time! Can’t a guy have a good time? I’m full fae too, ya know? From a proud line. Ain’t right what they did.”
I’m full fae, you know? He hated that line, but he was surprised to hear Marius utter it. It was definitely a thing with a lot of fae, though. He couldn’t remember the last time he had heard someone say ‘I’m full shifter, ya know?’ though he knew there were shifters with that attitude too.
So what, though. It also didn’t mean squat as far as the law was concerned. But now at least he had a clearer picture of what had happened.
