Page 23 of Crimson Mate

“Is it true that your mark faded?” Annika asks gently.

I shift up the fabric of the long sleeve cotton shirt I wear, exposing my bare wrist where my mating mark once set. “Centuries ago,” I say, doing my best to keep the pain of that reality out of my voice. I pull down my sleeve again. “I think it's because I'm no longer the female I once was. Maybe we just don't fit anymore.”

“I bet parts of him would fit,” Jocelyn says, nothing but mischief on her face.

A raw, unfiltered laugh rips from my lips, my head rocking back with the force of it. God, it feels good to laugh again, feels good to have friends again. It's been so long...toolong.

“That, I wouldn't know,” I say once I reel in my laughter. I’m met with wide eyes and gasps from the girls.

“Wait, you're saying you had his mark and you bothabstained?” Jocelyn asks, looking just as unbelieving as the rest of them.

“Things weren't as progressive back then as they are now,” I explain. “We were going to be married first. There was an almost ritualistic feel around completing the mating bond following the wedding. Especially for aristocratic families like mine.”

“Damn,” Jocelyn says, shaking her head.

“I'm sorry,” Lyric offers.

I swallow hard. “It's in the past,” I say, trying to convince myself.

It genuinely is in the past, but ever since I found him in that cave, alive and well, my past and my present have been clashing together in a storm I'm not sure I'll survive.

“If you want us to make him pay,” Jocelyn says, a smirk on her lips. “We can arrange that.”

“Iamthe queen,” Lyric adds. “I'm sure I have an empty dungeon around here to throw him in.”

“And I could conjure an illusion for him to get stuck in on a loop for a few hours,” Jocelyn says, looking thoughtful. “Perhaps falling from a cliff with no end in sight, over and over again?”

“I could listen in on his thoughts and let you know what he's actually thinking,” Grace offers.

My heart expands with each kind and ridiculously fun suggestion.

“And I could do…absolutely nothing,” Annika says sarcastically. “Except maybe accidentally make a pipe burst above his head.”

I chuckle softly, giving her a sympathetic look. Lyric told me her friend Olivia was doing her best to get Dagon to work with her niece Annika, who she suspected was an elemental. I’d seen Oliva asking him the night we went to the museum. But being the hunter that he was, Dagon put his mission above helping figure out if a friend of a friend had powers or not.

“I appreciate the offer,” I finally say, smiling at all of them. “Truly I do. Come back to me the next time he pisses me off, yeah?”

“We'll be here,” Lyric says, nothing but sincerity in her voice.

I can't stop my heart from expanding, from warming to all of them, from the whispers in the back of my mind saying this could be the start of somethinggood.

The start of a family I’ve always wanted and longed for…for much longer than I can even remember.

After an unsuccessful quick hunt tonight, I find myself in the assassin's training room once again.

It seems to be the only place I can let out my frustrations at utterly failing over and over again, but throwing daggers at one of the wooden targets—which had been freshly replaced since I destroyed the last one—offers little comfort.

“Working out some aggravation?” Zachariah asks, and this time I don't jump because I smelled him the second he walked into the training room. Another fun side effect of being in close proximity to him nearly every single night, with only a wall separating us during the day, I'm becoming more attuned to his scent again. Like I was so many years ago.

“Obviously,” I say, but even I can hear that the once icy tone I held with him before has subsided. A girl can only keep up thesnark so long before she starts to sound like a cold-hearted bitch. “I thought I caught wind of Conrad’s trail again, after seeing a contact in witch territory that Jocelyn set me up with, but the lead ended up turning cold.”

I throw the last dagger, hitting my mark, and then turn toward him.

“You went out on your own again?” Zachariah says. “Why didn't you tell me?”

I furrow my brow, stepping a little closer to him, the soft training mat beneath me giving just slightly. “I don't know if you've realized, but I don't run my agenda by anyone. You should understand that, being a hunter.”

He steps closer to me, a deep groove of concern lining his forehead. “I go out with my brothers,” he says. “I always go out with backup?—”

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