Page 17 of Their Crowned Mate
I just had to go with my gut and jump in.
As soon as I did, I felt the familiar shift of nausea and disorientation that had overcome me the first time I went through a portal. It felt so visceral that when I landed on the other side, I staggered forward and hit the ground on my hands and knees.
When I looked up and found myself surrounded by familiar woods of every lavender, blue, and pink pastel hue, and a sky filled with an impossible number of stars arranged in completely unfamiliar constellations, I froze. The air on my skin felt real enough. And so did the earth beneath my fingertips. I was wearing the nightgown I'd fallen asleep in, too.
With a growing sense of dread, I looked up and caught sight of a familiar blue light on the other end of the clearing I'd somehow landed in, even though I had gone through the surface of a pond and there was no longer any water in sight.
"Hey!" I cried to my wolf up ahead. She froze and turned around, and her transparent, ethereal visage was the only thing about this place that didn't feel frighteningly, unnervingly real.
She turned and bolted like the mischievous little bitch she was.
I gritted my teeth and got to my feet, my bare feet padding against the dewy grass. I was pretty sure it was early morning since the first tinges of dawn hadn't even touched the sky yet, but there was a faint blue glow to it, lighting my path.
I took off running after my wolf, feeling the crispness of the air fill my lungs as I chased her through the woods. She was quick, but so was I, and soon enough, I could feel her close. Vines and branches scraped at my arms as we wound our way through the dense undergrowth, but I ignored them and kept running until she finally stopped abruptly.
It wasn't until I was too damn close for comfort that I realized why. She was standing over the edge of a cliff, staring down at it like a fall wouldn't mean certain death for us both. Or at least, for me.
"Are you crazy?" I hissed, coming up beside her. She merely stared down at the fog below us with a look of wonder that made me feel stupid for asking.
But then, as the clouds cleared a bit enough for me to see the spires in the distance, I finally understood her fascination.
The fae palace was a sight to behold, with towers and balconies stretching up into the clouds like an enchanted castle from a fairy tale. The walls were made of pure white marble, reflecting the pale light so it seemed as if it were glowing from within. The windows were adorned with intricate stained glass designs, and I could see slender figures moving around inside them, their shadows dancing in the light.
"Whoa," I breathed. It was breathtaking, and almost impossible to comprehend how something so majestic could exist. We were silent for a few moments as we both stared at it; my heart pounding in anticipation as I realized what I was looking at.
The emperor's palace. It had to be.
I turned to my wolf, frowning. "Why would you lead us here?"
She looked at me, blinking her glowing blue eyes slowly. She lunged again and I gasped, tensing up as she leapt right at me. Instead, she wound up passing through me and my skin glowed for a moment as I felt her settle back in.
I took in a lungful of air as I adjusted to the sensation, and realized we were one again. And I had a sinking feeling we were all too real. Which meant that somehow, I had traversed through a portal in my dream into the world of the fae.
Yeah. This was not good.
CHAPTER10
ALEXANDER
"What the hell do you mean, she's gone?" Marcus bellowed, staring down me and Cole as he tore down the foyer of the castle, a small armory's worth of weapons strapped to him visibly. The hunter was a lot of things, but subtle was not among them.
"Just what I said in the text," Cole growled, still transfixed on his phone. He'd been contacting everyone he knew over the last few minutes, putting out an alert in the shifter community—at least the ones he trusted—that Lavinia was missing. I had my own enforcers working on the same, but I had to admit, there were parts of the city and circles the shifters knew better than my associates did. "She was there one moment in my arms, and the next, poof, gone."
"That's impossible," Marcus pressed. "She couldn't have just disappeared! You were supposed to be watching her." He fired an accusatory glance at me. "Bothof you."
Irritation welled up within me even though I understood his anger well. The truth was, I didn't know or understand any better myself, and Cole was right. One moment, I'd been aware of Lavinia's soft scent and warmth pressed to my chest, and the next, she was gone. It shouldn't even have been possible, but it was.
"I don't know what to tell you," Cole muttered. "He saw the same thing I did. She just… vanished."
Marcus looked like he wanted to argue, but one of my guards blew through the front door just then, distracting him.
"There's no sign of her at the portal, sir," the soldier announced, stopping to bow to me. "Further instructions?"
I clenched my jaw, trying to think straight. I could count on one hand the number of times I had felt true fear so far in all my many years of existence, and somehow, every last one of them had revolved around one little omega.
"Is the portal secure?" I asked.
She hesitated. "Yes, sir, but like I said, there's—"
