Page 25 of Faerie Fate
Mike had taken us back in time to the middle of the school day. Several students walked past us and the side-eye from the younger ones prickled against my skin uncomfortably. We were out of place in our cloaks, and I angled away from them to hide the bloodstains on my shirt.
“We have to warn them,” I told Mike in an undertone. “They have no idea what’s going to happen.”
Or how many of them would die.
He grabbed me before I had a chance to stride off after several students who were deep in conversation. “No, we can’t. Changing time has devastating consequences. My training included all the information about ways it can go wrong, and not only kill me but everyone I know. You understand?”
The urgency of his tone brought my attention back and I shook my head. “They can’t defend themselves, though.”
“Trust me, I get it. It’s awful, and it sucks to feel like no matter what you do, with all this power you still can’t change what happens. But trust me. We have to keep a low profile.”
He slowly drew me back to him and I wrapped my arms around him, burrowing my face at the crook of his neck and drawing his scent into me.
“Thank you for coming for me,” I murmured, snuggling closer.
He rested his chin on top of my head. “I’ll always come for you. I lost you for a little bit, but I told you I’ll always find you and I meant it.”
The familiar tang of his magic grounded me and when I closed my eyes, it was only the two of us, like the mate bond didn’t really exist, and my throat hadn’t been slit.
Eventually the noise of the students rushing toward their next class faded away and there was only the sound of Mike’s heart. The strong lines of his body lent much-needed support.
Two weeks prior to the attack, I reckoned. At least I had this sweet reunion with the prince I halfway thought I’d never see again.
“We’ll have to go back for my mom.” I drew in another deep breath, crushing Mike’s cloak with my grip. “We just left her there withhimand no backup.”
“We will,” he said, solemn and assured. “But you sounded so panicked. I had to get you out of there. You’re still shaking. What happened?”
I had a feeling I’d be shaking for a long time. My nightmares were real. And they were out there walking and talking and slicing. “You wouldn’t believe me.”
“Did you…did you find him?”
Find him? The laughter threatened to erupt again so I swallowed it all down and forced myself to take a step away from Mike to look at him. Unfortunately, that meant he saw me right back, this time in the blinding spotlight of the sun.
His gaze dropped automatically to the blood spattering my skin. And beneath it the scar, puckered and angry.
“What the fuck is that? Tavi, what happened?”
I held up a hand. “Don’t flip out.”
His lips tugged into a straight line, his chest heaving, and the hand reaching out behind him for the steadiness of stone went white-knuckled. “Flip out? I left you for a few hours and it looks like someone tried to decapitate you.”
Close enough.
My mouth dried. “He almost succeeded. Kendrick found me, and h-he slit my throat. For the bloodletting. The mate bond,” I explained dully.
Mike no longer sounded assured. When he pried his lips apart, with great effort, his voice had gone dark. “What did he do to you?”
“He cut himself too, and the second our blood mixed, he forced the mate bond. I feel him. Inside me. He’s always there in my head, something I can’t escape.” I tapped my temple. “He’s notaspresent right now. Probably because we went back in time. Or not. I’m not sure.”
Mike loomed over me and his normally easy demeanor twisted into something awful, scary, and powerful. For a second, an image of his father, King Tywin, superimposed itself over Mike’s familiar features until he no longer resembled his mother but the monster. The one who killed my uncle with his rules.
“What does that mean?” he asked, seething. “What happens now? How do you break the mate bond?”
“I don’t,” I whispered.
There was no going back. Kendrick had tethered our souls together.
There was no way I knew of to destroy a bond once it grew between two souls. I always thought—not that I’d told him—that Mike and I were the ones fated for a bond. That it would have happened naturally between us even though it was extremely rare. Unheard of for it to happen between a pure-blood Seelie fae and a halfling shifter.
