Page 9 of Eight Embers

I can’t figure him out. He seems completely subservient, but not in a way that feels honest. He moves to my side and reaches for my arm, pausing and then dropping his hoof/hand hybrids before he actually touches me. He won’t make eye contact with me.

Fairygoddess taps a finger to her chin as she looks us both over, then nods her head as she comes to some sort of internal agreement. “Good. Just in case you need a little bit of, shall we call it, motivation? I should inform you that I have a couple of transplants here who might be very interesting to one of your mates. If he wants to visit them anytime in the future, you know what you need to do. Saladriel, happy frolicking.”

This man I'm apparently mated to nods and shoots me the meanest side eye I've ever seen, and then I'm waking up back in my dorm room.

Chapter three

Zac

“Should have taken the psychedelic confetti when I had the chance,” my mate utters before sitting up slowly. She digs the heels of her hands into her eyes, then frantically looks around the room. “Where is he?”

“Depends on who you're looking for,” Adam tells her as he squats near her. He pulls her into the V of his legs, wrapping an arm around her shoulders until her back is resting against his chest.

“The… you know. Unicorn guy. Salad something or other.” She raises her arm like that explains everything.

“You must have been dreaming, my lady,” Leo tells her as he crawls toward her. It escapes nobody's notice that the demon’s eyes are locked in on Leo’s backside as he does so.

Delaney frowns and looks down at her arm, then holds it up for us all to see. “Then why do I have a new mark? It might havebeen a dream, but it was also real. She said…I think I'm losing my mind.”

Jackson reaches a hand down to help her up, letting Delaney stand slowly as he braces her hips with his hands. “Let's not do that particular trust exercise again, hmm? The one where we throw out crazy numbers about potential mates?”

“I mean, it was worth a shot. Can't blame a girl for being curious about how many men she’ll have to make fall irrevocably in love with her.”

“You going to tell us what happened in this dream of yours?”

Delaney stops mid-step and turns to me, surprised I’m there. “Oh. That's right. We’re a thing now, aren’t we? Good news, I know where your parents are. Bad news, I'm gonna have to deal with a megalomaniac goddess for us to have access to them. You know, kind of par for the course for my family, I think. Really this could have been so much worse. I don't think anybody's going to expect me to eat her at the very least, so things are looking way up versus my mom’s quest.”

“Quest?” I ask, trying not to be too shocked that she's so casually mentioned she knows where my parents are. I pull up my collar, my hands start getting clammy, and I can feel my snake trying to get out. That's probably a terrible idea in this dorm room.

“Hey, hey, hey, let's just take it easy, okay? Take a breath for me there, Zacky. Here, you want to put your face in my tits while you do it? That always helps August when he's upset.”

“It's true, it does,” he calls from across the room. He's sitting on one of the armchairs in the living room, ankle crossed over his knee as he taps on it with a finger. Apparently, he's past the phase where all the crazy things that happen to this woman surprise him.

It's magical though because my face gets shoved into that glorious cleavage and I do calm down. “Umph cjjkoekkk sdu?”

She pulls my face away from her so that I can speak clearly. “Try that again for me?”

“What do you mean you got a quest? And why does it seem like you expected this to happen?”

“Expectis probably not the right word. I guess I'm just not surprised, that's all. Maybe it's because I grew up hearing my mother's tales of defeating monsters, or about the trials my uncle and his cute poly group had to go through before they could settle down, or maybe my family is just really unlucky.” She shrugs. “Either way, apparently the fact that I have this many mates from this realm isn't more than I can handle, because Fairyunicorn Goddess—”

“Okay, back up,” Cory interrupts, putting a hand in the air. “Did you say...unicorn?”

Delaney nods. “Pretty standard quest stuff. The realm is dying, I’m their only hope, yadda, yadda, yadda. Oh, I’m supposed to make him happy... that would probably be easier to do if I knew where he went. Maybe he didn't get sent over here with me? No, she said that she was sending him. Why wouldn't she send him to my living room?”

“My love? I think I found this unicorn of yours.” We all walk toward where Leo is peeking out of the blinds, afraid to actually go outside though, it seems. He takes a few steps back when we're all close so he's not pressed against the glass. Sure enough, from what we can see anyway, there’s a big, magnificent unicorn grazing on the grass right in front of Delaney’s dorm.

He's got a light blue sheen to his coat, horn, and mane, which matches the color on Delaney’s new mate mark perfectly.

I already feel lost in this mate group, and now we're adding more. Perfect.

There's a flock of female students surrounding the unicorn, pouring out of the dorm room as we continue to stare, and if this is the shifter unicorn that she's supposed to be mated to, he seems to have zero qualms about getting female attention.

In fact, he’s throwing his mane back like he’s in a shampoo commercial as he makes eye contact with her window, no doubt knowing Delaney can see, and then he's putting his head into the sea of bodies around him, completely loving everything about the situation.

“How dare he!” Leo exclaims, clutching nonexistent pearls.

“Do you want me to smite him, Delaney? We don't have unicorns in Hell, would be a big hit in the never-ending carnival section. We’ve got this great fun house full of all you can eat stale chips and mostly-melted ice cream he’d be perfect next to.”

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