I blew out a breath. “Yeah,” I said, exasperated. I hated feeling…needy. Like I was starved for attention from one individual, and only that would set my world right again. “Like so common that they can be brushed aside?”
Pity flashed in her eyes, and my frustration mounted.
“It’s been days.”
I didn’t whine. I didn’t.
Avianna shut the book. Her silk gloves were a beautiful dark purple today. The jewels she wore in her ears matched the color, and once again I was struck with how incredibly beautiful everyone was here. Even Olivia, who stood before the library door, was breathtaking. Long waves of chocolate brown hair billowed around her shoulders, hiding the delicate fabric of her white blouse. Truly, she looked more like a maiden than a warrior, but my instincts trembled whenever she was near. She was a trained warrior, all right, and a damn good one if they’d positioned her with the princess. Still, her gorgeous exterior was likely one more weapon.
A sinking weight hit my chest—of course, Alek wouldn’t come back. Why would he? I was human, plain, dull—
“Alek is…” she interrupted my thoughts, “infuriating at the best of times. I’ve told you before he’s like a vault.” She pursed her lips, and I nodded. “But no,” she continued. “Mates are not so common that they can be ignored.” There was a hint of anger in her tone, and my heart expanded in my chest for the female who had befriended me with no questions. No hesitation because I was a human. A human with some malfunctions apparently, since I couldn’t be glamoured and I could see things others could not. The same cold fear swirled in the depths of my soul, the one that I’d tried to bury since Alek had told me I was something...different. Something the demons felt they had claim to. But surely, they were mistaken. Right? I was normal. Ordinary, except for some enhanced perceptiveness.
“What does it mean?” I asked, shutting the tome before me too. Research was clearly done for the day, and if Alek didn’t let me out of this dark palace soon, all my work wouldn’t matter anyway. I’d missed so many appointments with my thesis advisor. I'm shocked she hadn’t sent out a search party. Valor too. But apparently my emails claiming to be sick had been enough to hold their worries, but I knew it wouldn’t last much longer. “To be someone’s mate,” I clarified.
“I’m sure you’ve noticed Alek’s possessiveness over you, your safety—”
“The fact that he won’t let me leave to finish my work?” I cut her off, a bit grumbly.
She laughed, and nodded. “It’s rare among our warriors,” she continued.
“The Assassins you told me about? Hawke and Lachlan and the others?”
“Yes,” she said, smoothing her gloved hands together. “They are bred to not admit or show any sort of weakness. Mating?” She hissed. “Mates take priority over everything—the mission. Family. They become the tether holding them to this world and the next.” A terrified yet dreamy sort of look washed over her delicate features. “They’d do anything for their mate. Warriors are supposed to behold only to their clans, their brethren. The mission.” She shrugged, the corners of her red lips turning up. “And I hear the sex is off the charts.” She arched a brow at me, curious, waiting.
“I wouldn’t know,” I said, slightly breathless. The memory of his hands sliding under my dress, teasing me over the lace until I shattered beneath his fingers flashed red hot in my mind.
“Well, when you do, do tell,” she said, then shook her head. “Just don’t say my brother’s name because ew.”
Olivia barely stifled a laugh from where she held vigil, and I chuckled too, the action loosening some of that tension curling my chest. That same tension begging, screaming at me to storm across the estate, grab Alek by his damned perfect hair and make him talk to me. I rubbed my palms over my face, groaning. “Shouldn’t he be explaining all of this to me?” I sighed. “If mates are so rare, so…precious, why hasn’t he come back to me? Is it because I’m human?”
Avianna slid out of her chair and rounded the table to take my hands. “It’s unheard of, mating with a human. But mating is older than time, higher than even Covenant law. I don’t know why my brother has his head up his ass, but he will come around.” She hooked my arm in hers and led me from the library, Olivia following on cat-silent feet. “Even if you weren’t his mate, you’re beyond awesome and already feel like family, Lyric.”
I squeezed her arm in mine, wishing her brother was as easy to talk to as she was.
“Now,” she continued as we walked the long corridors back to her room. “Let’s torture him a bit, shall we?” A wicked gleam twinkled in her eye as we made it into her room, and she threw open her closet doors, revealing rows and rows of exquisite gowns and outfits. “Dinner is in twenty.”
I couldn’t help but mirror her smirk as she plucked a red gown and held it toward me.
Thirty minutes later, we arrived perfectly, fashionably late. The nobles were already in the ballroom, bedecked in their finest, sipping from red-tinted goblets and chatting and dancing. This time, I didn’t feel self-conscious as I walked in at Avianna’s side, not when she’d outfitted me.
The red silk gown hugged my every curve, the deep plunging neckline even more daring than the blue gown I’d worn before. Then, I’d been an offering. Tonight? I played the role of hunter disguised as bait.
My blood flared, my heart racing in my chest with each step we took inside the ballroom. Hawke had growled when he’d laid eyes on us, no doubt grumbling at the fuss Alek would make when he saw me.
If he saw me. If he cared to.
Doubt threatened to steal the fire in my blood, but I shoved it down, using the confidence Avianna had given me. A good friend, someone I’d come to depend on these days in the estate. Valor would love her, and once I got over my “sickness” and was allowed to see Val again I couldn’t wait to tell her about Avi. She’d become a confidant I hadn’t expected to find. With her help? How could I fail—
“What?” The word ripped from my lips on a whisper, and Avianna stilled at my side. I’d naturally been walking us toward where I felt Alek, almost unconsciously so.
“Cassandra,” she whispered as I gaped at the elegant female across the room.
The one with her fingers on Alek’s chest, smoothing them over his crisp midnight suit.
My feet carried me before I could think or blink or breathe.
“Please,” Cassandra’s voice sounded the nearer I got. “It would be my honor to feed you, King. I can scent your hunger,” she cooed, and I swear my vision turned as red as my gown.
Cassandra tilted her neck, just a subtle move of her perfect face, and bared herself before Alek, reaching up on her tiptoes to draw her neck closer. And there, on her delicate forearm she so boldly placed on his chest, rested a tattoo as familiar as my own face now.
Alek’s tattoo.
On her skin.
“Excuse you,” I snapped, darting my hand between the two. The shock of my touch must have confused her, because she stumbled back one step, her dark eyes wide, her lips parted as she gaped at me. “Don’t touch things that aren’t yours.” The words were like ice from my lips, and I bared my teeth at her, an instinct roiling up inside me like a pot about to boil over.