Page 80 of Their Blood Rite

I peek through my hands and see him standing proudly before me.

I promptly re-cover my eyes.

‘You’re naked as well,’ he reminds me.

‘Please put your knob away.’

‘Okay, fine. I’m submerged, Pixie.’ He taps my shoulder.

He’s crouching down when I look, so only the top half of his chest is on show.

‘I forget that mud witches are seriously prudish.’

‘I’m sorry. I wasn’t expecting a naked shifter to land in front of me with his massive dick swinging in my face.’

He grins. ‘Why, thank you for noticing its massiveness,’ he says, beaming from ear to ear.

‘Whyare you naked?’ I repeat in a snap.

‘I was out running in my wolf form. Caught your scent in the trees. Why areyounaked?’

‘Bathing, I guess.’

We face one another, the waterfall cascading just behind us and our bodies half submerged in the sparkling water.

‘Am I in trouble?’ I ask, glancing around us, half expecting to see Shaw and Dorian standing there with a scowl. But there’s no one else here. ‘I just wanted to get some air. I wasn’t trying to run away or anything.’

He shakes his head. ‘Nope. Not in trouble.’ He glances up at the cascading water behind us. ‘You found the falls.’

I keep my eyes on him as he looks up, a cute look of wonderment on his face. Unlike the other two, he has a childlike feel about him. A playful immaturity.

I take a moment to admire the beads of water sliding down his chest and over those perfectly lean and sculpted muscles.

‘My eyes are up here, Pixie.’

With an exaggerated blink, I meet his gaze again.

‘You often run naked?’ I ask.

‘I do when I’m in wolf form. You’ve seen the size of me. My clothes get torn to shit when I shift in them.’

‘You were just running?’

‘Well. I was also hunting. Looking for a deer or something. Do you like deer?’

‘You were hunting for me?’

He shrugs as if, yeah, that’s obvious.

‘You’ll get the nice bits. Some creatures in the castle will polish off the rest. Hetty likes bones, and the banshee likes eyes and tongues. Kieran will take the fur.’

‘Who are Hetty and Kieran?’

‘Hetty is a siren. Kieran is a Fae.’

‘You have a siren and a Fae back at the castle?’ I ask, utterly stunned and transfixed at the complete ridiculousness of his statement. ‘Sirens and Fae are extinct.’

‘Well. She had her scales skinned off her when she was a child, so she can’t go into the water, and her voice box was stolen, so she can’t lure anyone to their deaths. And Kieran’s wings were hacked off decades ago so he can’t fly. And without wings, Fae have no worthwhile magic. They may well be the last ones left. I certainly haven’t seen any others since the war.’

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