Page 42 of Faerie Hunted

“What, ah…what did happen to you? If you don’t mind me asking.” I glanced over at him. “I’m still not sure.”

“You mean with the killing?”

He said it with such openness I didn’t even have a chance to flinch. “You were attacking pure-blooded fae. Who looked like me.”

The terror of that moment returned in full force.

I remembered stepping in when Onyx attacked Professor Juno, my mentor. I remembered our last battle against each other, the one where he’d ended up with his current wounds. The ones no amount of healing could fix.

They’d plague him for the rest of his life. I swallowed over the golf ball-sized lump in my throat.

“I don’t remember any of it,” he admitted. Something in his tone broke my heart and I found myself reaching over to press my hand against his. “I’m sorry if you’re disappointed. I came to in the hospital bed in tremendous pain. Sometimes—” He broke off, refused to look at me. “Sometimes I catch flashes of things. Mostly blood. It’s hard to get the scent out of my mind especially when it's something I’ve always enjoyed. You know, running with the pack and shifting, hunting. There’s always blood when you hunt.”

“I know what you mean.”

Still, I shuddered thinking about how it would feel to kill another person, especially under the control of some outside influence.

“I know I hurt you, and I know you had no choice but to hurt me.” His mouth thinned into a steely line. “I’m the one who should be apologizing, repeatedly.”

“Are you trying to call us even in a warped kind of way?” I asked.

“Not at all. I’m trying, in my own twisted way, to tell you I understand and that I’d still like to be friends.”

I felt the heat of his eyes on me and when I turned, he was watching me. Onyx hadn’t moved his hand away from mine yet. “I wouldn’t have saved your ass if we weren't friends, dude.”

He blew out a breath. “I know. I felt like I needed to clear the air a little bit. I know it’s still a little hard for you to reconcile me with my father.”

I jolted at the mention even though logically I knew exactly what he meant. It hit at the oddest times, the realization that the bloodthirsty leader of a rival pack back in the mortal world, the one chosen by the packs to be my fated mate, maintained his youth through magic. And that Onyx was his son who’d had to come to Faerie to escape. The same way I had.

“I’ve never held your father’s identity against you.”

Onyx leaned back in his seat with his eyes closed again, like the conversation took a lot out of him. “You might now. After what I did to you.”

“We’re not going to talk about him.” I bit the inside of my lips. “We’re pack. We stick together.”

At this point, besides Bronwen Onyx was one of the only other halfling shifters I trusted.

“The one thing I’ve really missed being in Faerie,” he admitted.

“What? Being part of a group?” I shook my head. “I used to really hate it sometimes. Everyone was always in your business trying to tell you what to do and how to act.”

“The stability, though. The way you always knew there were people who had your back. It was a question of loyalty.”

“Yeah, the stability,” I agreed. “The camaraderie. Knowing there were always people around, there at a moment’s notice whenever you called.”

Noren leaned over the seat and rested his muzzle on my shoulder. He huffed against my ear and the tickling sensation had me shivering. I reached back and ran a hand along his face to scratch behind his ears.

“Do you know where we are yet?” I asked Onyx in the silence.

“I don’t remember the name of that town we passed through but I know Khoysas is somewhere in this direction.”

I’d heard that name before, a neighboring town with its own fae academy.

“We avoid the big towns for as far as this car takes us,” I said decisively. “Hopefully it will get us closer to where we need to go.”

Onyx waited a moment before he finally drew his hand away and broke the connection. “You know we can’t keep driving this. Someone will report it missing whether your spell holds for an hour or days. Eventually we have to ditch it and find another mode of transportation.”

He didn’t ask how I managed to get the car to start and I didn’t offer the information. “Until then, we’ll drive.”

---