I stab a finger at his chest.
Which might be the worst possible way to get answers out of Pax. He’s wearing a cream linen shirt, and somewhere under there is a sigil that says right now he can’t snap my finger off – minor consolation.
“This pentad nonsense had nothing to do with me. It was just a power play. All this crap about your mother’s prophecy, and you knew all along that you’d already played my card. You walked me into that group of Sabers. You told them my ass was changing their world, and you were stupid for expecting them not to react –” Damn, teeth. The guy has grown long, wolf-like teeth.
I stop poking him in the chest, my hand hovering mid-air. Killian reaches across and lowers it.
“We all chose, and we all fought,” he says.
“Not for me. For them. For your plan and your realm and –”
“Yes. For. You,” Pax says, his tone all predator, all Thane.
“What if I were a guy, hey? What if I walked into your lives with dangly bits between my legs? You wouldn’t have cared about my status as a soot-servant then because it wouldn’t have been strategic enough. I’m just a pawn in your game, Pax.”
Laughter shatters down through the trees.
“I love you, Vexy,” Seth cackles. “And any scenario you come up with where Pax or Killian fall in love with a male servant.”
“That’s not what I meant!” I growl up at him.
“I have never loved another man,” Killian mutters, slowly, as if considering it for the very first time.
His jaw tenses and his eyes struggle not to pop wide, then he turns and slams his fist into the tree again.
“Seth,” he rumbles, clearly not intending to say any of that out loud.
“Can I –” Pax begins, drawing my attention away from Killian freaking out and over to his tense words. His eyes are still slightly aglow, but the teeth have slipped back into a more human shape. “Can I touch you?”
He might look mostly man-Pax, but he definitely sounds like Thane is still at least half in control. And the question has completely disarmed me.
“Um, why?”
“You smell like Rose,” Killian explains. “Checking for damage came first.”
Pax is literally rippling with energy.
“First?” I ask. “Before what?”
Oh – before his lips.
I mean, my lips.
Our lips, as his hands slip around my body and all of me is wrapped up against him. He lifts me off the ground. We’re somehow leaning against the tree branch, and I don’t really care how, only caring about the length of his teeth and where he plans on putting them with Killian and Seth nearby.
My eyes slide shut, and the only sounds my ears care to decipher are our two entangled breaths.
“You can’t taste like her,” Pax growls, a hint of Thane in the syllables as he grips my bottom lip in his teeth – then bites.
My back arches, and I press my hips against his. My body hints that this might be painful… Maybe it is… Or maybe it should be… but I still don’t want it to end.
Warm blood runs underneath my tongue as Pax’s tongue traces over the roof of my mouth.
“That’s better,” he whispers, at the exact same time as Killian punches the damn tree again.
My eyes shoot wide, expecting to feel it fall over. There’s a pulverized hole in the middle of the thing – but it’s still standing.
Pax still looks pissed, Seth is still hiding up a tree, and Killian is still trying to shatter all of his knuckles multiple times over. So my distracted moment has only managed to leave me with a sore lip.
“Why are you mad?” I demand. “I have every right to be mad. What happened down there sucked for me, but it achieved great things for you. I saw them all bowing.”
All it did for me was strip my self-worth away. Made me feel like a Soot once more. Right up until the moment I kissed Rose – though I’m not going to tell them that.
“Because it worked,” Killian growls as he draws back his fist.
The tree shudders before Killian can hit it, then the next one, and then the next one over. Seth’s gone full-monkey and has begun jumping from tree to tree. I resist the urge to look up and gawk at the huge guy flying through the air, instead keeping my gaze on Killian.
He lowers his fist and points at me instead. “Because of you.”
“Me? Why me? Okay, you guys need to break this down for me. Make it sound really simple.”
“Seth forced you all into confrontation,” Pax says, his tone still hard. “If Rose hurt you, we would have torn her apart.”
“And made a mess of your plans to save the realm. You realize that’s part of the problem here, right? That I’m just a piece in your puzzle to save this realm. If I meant more to you than that, we wouldn’t be having this conversation.”
Oh, crap. Now Pax looks like he needs a tree to hit too.
“We discussed this plan on the ride back from Tanakan,” he says.
“He didn’t realize that breaking the all-male or all-female triune rule would give us this advantage, Vexy,” Seth calls out.
The tension in my face relaxes, a lot actually.
“Why didn’t you guys just tell me!”
“You sleep too much,” Killian says.
“You guys have to start trusting me. I handled it – didn’t I?”
Killian just grunt-growls. Long. Low.
Irritating as bralls.
“What was your plan, then?”
“Just keep you alive,” Killian says.
Right, it’s not if or even when I die – it’s how. Killian’s saving me for my first encounter with a grimm. How romantic.
He chuffs at me. “Rose isn’t romantic.”
“That’s not what I was thinking,” I say, looking at him a little too accusingly.
He flexes and fists his hand, the torn skin pulling tight over his
