Page 123 of Heart of Dawn
I scratched my left palm with my right fingers. “Come in. Let’s catch up properly.”
“Thank you. Thank you so very much.”
She ended up living beneath the leisure center, where we’d restored the swimming pool for Malorie and Arlo.
For the firsttime in nine months, I missed my family. Basil missed his, too, heading back to Faery the morning after Daria’s return. He was done with Earth, ready for the next chapter.
Our goodbye was one of two men being at peace with our past, and me forever in his debt—even if he tried brushing me off whenever I said it.
He’d saved Miko’s life.
He’d saved mine.
He was our hero.
I wasn’t done with Earth, but my pining for home had only been muted temporarily. It was time to go back, to be a creature of both realms. Because that’s who I’d become now.
A week after Basil’s departure, Miko and I set off for Faery to meet my parents.
Oh, stars.
CHAPTER FORTY-TWO
MIKO
Faery’s recovery ran smoothly. Dorian wrote to us weekly once a cross-realm postal service was established. One day we’d have an audience with the prince when things weren’t so complicated with his brother. Apparently, the prick was throwing his toys out of the pram over everything, and Orion and I were banned from the palace. No matter the unpopularity of that decision, he still had the authority to make it happen.
Fuck him.
Anyway, it was best to stay away from the palace. I’d only hunt him through the lavish corridors and end up ripping his guts out for hurting my mate. King or not.
There were much bigger things to worry about.
My stomach was tangled in some serious knots as I sat at the dining table on the beach under a canopy of twinkly fairy lights outside Orion’s beach hut.
Face to face with his mum and dad.
Shit.
Ori served Vodka Flowers to each of us, nervous as hell but looking hot as fuck in white. The tightest trousers ever showed off his perfect arse, and a tight top threaded with silver sequins caught the light like a disco ball. His hair was styled to perfection, and he smelled ready to pluck from the cherry tree.
If his parents weren’t here, I’d be throwing him onto the table and spreading his legs. Wide.
Ahem.
We hadn’t had sex in nine months. Crazy, I know, but we’d not got around to it. We’d been too caught up in the rebuild, too tired, and dealing with a lot of emotional baggage.
Surviving an apocalypse would do that.
We cuddled and kissed, but never seemed to muster the energy to fuck. God, we wanted to, often talking about it. But the right time never seemed to find us.
That might change here in Faery. The vibe shifted the moment we crossed the border, the air lighter, sweeter, carrying an arousing aroma I couldn’t quite pinpoint—Ori’s cherries aside. I don’t know, it just moved me from dim to blazing, showing me the traumas we carried didn’t have to stop us from living.
We were together, no longer under the threat of being torn apart.
I was ready for all of him. Ready to be naked for hours and hours and hours.
Was he on the same page yet?
