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“Freya,” Jude said, “with things in such an uproar, it’s likely that there are spies among the highers and the lessers. So we have to be careful who we talk to and where.”
“But we have to tell someone. How can they defend themselves if they don’t know what the plan is?” Panic was rising within me, alone with a feeling of betrayal. “If I hadn’t mated with Jude last night, would I have been on the list to be thrown out, too?”
“Oh, course not.” Nico reached for me but I stepped back. “We had already planned to mate you.”
“And the other lessers? Those who have not been matched up with three royals? They are just at the mercy of the High Council and their minions?” Tears blurred my vision and tracked down my cheeks. “I-I feel so hot.”
My cheeks were burning, my temperature spiking the longer we stood here. Then I got dizzy and reached out for something to hang onto. Jude grabbed me and scooped me up. He carried me over to the sofa and set me gently down. “Calm, mate.” He laid the back of his hand on my forehead. “You’re burning up. Someone get a cool cloth for her forehead.”
My three mates were bustling around, outdoing one another to make me feel better, but I only wanted one thing. “I have to tell Hilda. I was supposed to meet her today and if I don’t show up, she’ll be worried.”
“I’ll go see her, Freya,” Soren offered.
“No, we’ll both go,” I asserted. “And tell her everything so she can make sure the people are ready. I think they should go as soon as possible to avoid the danger, but where will they go? They’ve served the highers for centuries, and it’s not like they have a whole other community just standing there and waiting for them to move in.” I was doing nothing to feel less frightened and angry. “They don’t have any real way to fight back. If they get thrown out, they’ll die.”
Soren opened the door. “Let’s go find Hilda. You can reassure yourself that she’s okay.”
And so we headed out, Soren and I, to the place Hilda had told me she would meet me. It was past her hut and in a fold of hill that couldn’t be seen from the caves. We hiked there together, his arm around my shoulders whenever the path was wide enough for us to hike side by side.
Being out in the air cheered me up, at least until we got to the place where I expected Hilda to be waiting. We were late, but not so late she’d have given up and left.
I turned to Soren. “Where is she?”
“I don’t know.” He’d schooled his features, but it was clear he was worried, too. “Maybe she’s even later than we are, or she’s been held up with her chores.”
“That’s true.” The highers expected any of the lessers to do what they wanted at a moment’s notice, with no care for any plans they might have. When I’d been among them, I’d been used to that, but after months with the royals, I’d come to appreciate my time being my own. Hilda, however, was still under the thumb of any higher who wanted her services. She had a little more freedom than many, but that still wasn’t much.
We stood there for a half hour or so before he insisted I go home. And with my fever back and raging, I didn’t have the strength to fight too hard. Once he promised to go back out and look for her, I allowed him to escort me home.
Chapter Nine
Even though Soren instructed me to go to my room, the apartment felt cold that night. Maybe it was the raw heat blooming from my skin in ripples of fire.
But I knew the truth. As soon as I mated Jude, I knew I would soon be floating in it, the want, the need, for all of them, not just one.
Jude was asleep, and I assumed the same about Nico. I stood at the other side of the front door entirely too long, wallowing in Soren’s scent and on fire now more than ever.
I needed more of him.
All of him.
In all of me.
My feet took the lead and, before I could miss him another second, I was engrossed in him in a different way. I stepped into the library, his library, and closed my eyes. Allowing his deep, velvety scent to infiltrate my senses, I stumbled to the nearest burgundy couch and lay on it. I turned slightly and buried my nose in the pillow. He had sat here, on this couch.
Maybe he had been thinking of me while he flipped his pages lazily. I scissored my legs while reaching for the nearest book.
I gasped as I read from the middle. I had assumed that all of Soren’s books were for research or history or about as interesting as a documentary about worms, but this was quite the racy read.
“What are you doing in here? I thought I told you to get to bed.”
Grumpy was back.
“I wanted to read. Soren, you surprise me.”
He took the book from my hands. “It’s a classic.”
I laughed and snatched it back. “A classic, huh? ‘His calloused palms ran up her creamy, silken thighs.’ Sounds like a classic for the ages.”
