Page 61 of What did you do?

I ground my teeth together, and my jaw popped.

One heartbeat was quiet, but the other pounded fast—someone angry and full of adrenaline.

He is fucking dead.

If Aurelius touched her with his breath, I would sever his wings and cave in his skull.

Hurrying, I closed my eyes and shadowed inside of her bedroom.

It was quiet. Still.

The room was dark now that the blinds she had made covered the windows. I smiled at how much she liked the darkness. I was about to give her every morsel of darkness she needed.

Caly was lying on the bed with her hair in a messy knot on top of her head. Her eyes were closed, and the blankets pulled up under her chin. She was asleep.

On the bed to her left, the covers were pushed back and showed a large, man-sized imprint.

My back strained and jerked with force as my wings shot out. The tips of my fingers tingled. I twisted around, knowing he was in here.

Already the smoke and flesh of my body fought. The smoke was the victor, as always. I let the darkness take me and familiar inky-black smoke rose, the hood of my cloak shadowing me even further.

I hoped he pissed himself when he saw me.

I released a displeased growl when I didn’t see him in the room. I knew he was there—I could feel his angry heart pounding.

I snapped my head in the other direction as something slammed into the center of my back, knocking me down. Tangled in my cloak, it took me a second too long to rise. Aurelius, apparently having shifted into his fox form, took the opportunity to sink his teeth into my side.

From under the cloak, I shadowed, leaving both it and my shirt behind, and rematerialized a few feet away. He and I had fought one another many times, but not once had he fought me shifted.

I cracked my neck and urged my smoke out, ready to suffocate the bastard, when I saw the massive gray wolf snarling at me from atop my abandoned cloak.

It was Walter, my cousin and friend from Unseelie.

“What in—” I began.

Walter sprang at me as a snarl ripped from his chest. I fell back into the wall, feeling his teeth around my throat. I grinned. “Go on then, get it free from your system, shifter. I deserve worse for leaving you in this Seelie rat nest so long. No pun intended, of course.”

I shoved the wolf from my chest, noting the way he purposefully drug his nails across my bare chest as he went.

He shifted in a blur, transforming himself into the large fae I had grown up with.

“You dropped me off the roof of our fucking castle! You piece of shit,” he ground out with nearly the same growl as his wolf’s.

His furious brown eyes ripped into me. At well over six feet tall, Walter wasn’t a small fae. We had trained together since we were kids, and I knew that he could still get a blow in if he wanted to. He was one of the few that could.

“Get over it. I knew there was a portal there,” I said, stepping into him. “Why are you in Caly’s room?” I asked, feeling my anger flare again.

“Leave. Now,” he bit out, stepping into me.

What the fuck?

“Listen, I’m certain you’ve been the scary bad boy to all the Seelie ladies, must’ve been nice to be feared for a change.” I pressed my chest into his. I was still a few inches taller. “But if you try and get in between me and my pet, you may as well have died because I’m going to kill you,” I said, giving a small shove to his chest.

My neck cracked, my head whipping back when Walter landed his punch square on my jaw. I could feel the dimples in my cheeks popping with my smile. “Do that again, Walter. I dare you,” I whispered, tilting my head at him.

“I know you could and obviously would kill me, Mendax. But you are going to have to if you want to get to Caly. I’m sorry, but I won’t let you hurt her anymore. I don’t know what happened after I left, and I can’t fathom how she managed to get away from you. I imagine it must’ve been bad, considering you entered Seelie to kill her?—”

“I need her, Walter. I’m inescapably in love with her.”

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