Page 38 of The Alliance

My mate touched Seren’s head, ruffling his hair.

“So what do you Hoskinses do for fun, then?”

Seren rounded on him with his eyes shining. “We get to do whatever we want.”

The frown that appeared between Glimmer’s eyebrows made me want to chuckle. He had no idea what that was like. To be fair, I didn’t either. We both knew our duty and that was all.

Glimmer was the Guardian. He guarded.

It didn’t really occur to him to do much else.

“So what do you do all day?”

The way he said it made me think that he was shuddering inside at the mere idea of having all day stretching before him without his duty to fill it.

My mate had no chill.

He’d only agreed to come here – even though it was obvious that he missed Seren and wanted to set eyes on Morgan again – because Alfie was coming and he needed to protect his family rather than just the territory. The territory was ameansof protecting his clan, not something to protect in and of itself. Some people forgot that.

“We take turns to cook and we play with the children—”

Glimmer cringed guiltily but Seren didn’tnotice.

“—and we put protections down around the territory.”

Finally, I could see the spark of recognition in Glimmer’s blue eyes. They lit up at the prospect of being able to protect his family, especially when they’d be away from him.

And while they’d been talking, I had seen what he was doing.

His fingers ruffled Seren’s hair and he wrapped his arm around Seren’s neck in a hug, and he touched the buttons on Seren’s shirt, and all of it might look to an outsider that he was just being very touchy, but he wasn’t.

My mate was layering protections over his treasure as he spoke.

We’d spent a long time training together now. We knew the way each of us worked. We had learned to combine our magic so that it was stronger than either of us could achieve alone. When we worked together, two and two added up to five.

I sent out my magic to twine among Glimmer’s as he added a few spells to make sure Seren was safe, that he was protected, that Glimmer would know if he were injured.

Even when he was supposedly relaxing, meant to be on holiday, Glimmer was working. I nearly laughed outright at my mate. He really did have zero chill.

And what was even funnier was that I could see Seren doing the exact same thing. His protections were all the same. I guessed he couldn’t work magic in the same way that Glimmer could, but he had a particular talent for one kind of protection which even I had to admit was incredibly strong. I was grateful to Seren for putting that protection on my mate.

The two cousins jostled and bumped each other, tussled and hugged, and all the time they were building their protections.

Glimmer turned his eyes on me. “Let’s go and see the Hoskins territory.”

I shook my head. “You go. I’ll stay here.”

Glimmer frowned but there was a flicker of relief in Seren’s expression. If I were being kind, I’d say it was because he wanted to spend time with his cousin without someone else hanging round them. If I were being less kind, I’d say that Seren wasn’t as afraid of me as the rest of them were but he still preferred to speak to me when he was aroundothers, especially his mate or his elder. Either of his elders. That was only common sense.

Since I wasn’t great at acting, and since Glimmer would smell it if I tried to lie anyway, I went for the truth. “You don’t have long together. I really don’t mind you spending time alone with Seren.”

He was torn. Seren must have realised it, too, because he joined me in persuading Glimmer to go and have fun for an afternoon.

“The children have toys to play with! They’ve got a ball. Do you want to try and play again?”

I might not have had much of a childhood myself, but it still broke my heart a bit every time I realised that Glimmer had had even less of one. I answered for him.

“Yes, he does. I’ll see you at dinner.”

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