Page 22 of Tangled Threads Of Fate

I’d never heard of Oracles being able to lie during a prophecy, but was I willing to stake Wren’s life on it?

“What should I do, Nate?”

She should stay here, where I could protect her. But three supernaturals had already breached the outer wards, and even if I extended them to the front door, she would be trapped like a caged animal. That couldn’t happen. She had appointments and had to give birth and shit.

That preemptive bloodbath was back on the table.

My grumble of frustration was almost soundless. I didn’t know what to do, and I could tell she was relying on me to help her decide. I couldn’t take out a whole Mythic faction by myself, and to say I hadn’t made many friends with my own people over the last millennia was an understatement. She couldn’t stay trapped here either.

“What does your gut say?”

She looked up at me, her big eyes shiny. “It says that going to Crete is the right idea, but that’s crazy, right?”

Hell yeah, it’s crazy.“Then I guess we’re going to Greece.”

“We?”

Yeah, fucking we. Because there was no way I was letting a vulnerable Wren walk into an unknown country, into an unknown situation, by herself.

“We.”

She stared at me, the fear and trust in her eyes making something in my chest clench. When she stretched and brushed her lips across mine, I was too stunned to move away. Her lips were so soft, and she tasted sweet. But before I could deepen the kiss, taste her more thoroughly, she dropped her cheek back to my shoulder.

“Thank you,” she whispered, and I wanted to shout at her that she shouldn’t thank me. I hadn’t kept her safe, just fixed problems as they arose.

Instead, I kissed the top of her head gently and held her tighter. We’d make this work, and I would try and keep the hard-on I had for my sweet neighbor to myself, even if it was getting more difficult every time I touched her.

I needed help. That much was clear. And I fuckinghatedasking for help. There was only one other from our Pantheon that I even associated with, and I knew she was going to give me so much shit about this.

The following day,I brought Wren along, partly because I needed Cliona to meet her and partly because I was worried about leaving her behind. The other supernaturals seemed a little more hesitant to attack Wren when she was in my presence, and I was banking on that fact.

Driving further out of the city and into Revere, I kept casting Wren small looks. She was pale, her eyes smudged by dark circles. I’d watched her toss and turn last night, leaning against the doorjamb like a voyeur.

“So, who are we meeting again?”

I turned off the freeway. “An old friend. Cliona, but she prefers Clio now.”

“And she’s… like you?”

“Irish?”

Wren frowned at me. “You know what I mean.”

I held back a smile. “She’s immortal, yes. She is abean-sidhe.”

“A banshee! You’re taking me to see a banshee?”

Technically, Clio was the queen of thebean-sidhe, but I didn’t think that would make Wren feel better. “Yes. I want to know what the hell is going on, and Clio keeps better tabs on the politics of the supernatural world than I do.”

Wren nodded. “And by the supernatural world, does that include, you know, things like werewolves and vampires and stuff?” She was putting on a brave face, but I could hear thesubtle shake of uncertainty in her voice. It was probably a lot to take in for a human; I mean, they lived their lives as if they were the apex predators. It’d come as a shock that most supernaturals, especially the Mythics, considered them only marginally more interesting than sheep.

Definitely less interesting than cats.

“Those are human labels, and I wouldn’t say that there areexactmatches in the world, but humans didn’t come up with these things themselves. At some point, they probably ran across some supernatural being that looked like a wolf—maybe one of the indigenous deities?—and then called it a werewolf.”

Dumb name, but whatever.

Wren shook her head, chewing her lip until it was puffy. I wanted to reach over and kiss her until she stopped. Instead, I consoled myself by patting her knee. “There’s so much history and mythology, even theology, that some humans dedicate their whole lives to a small portion of it, and they still don’t know everything there is to know. You can’t expect to understand it all in a month.”

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