Page 191 of Never Kiss a Fae
His fist connected with my skull, sending me into a pit of darkness that was all too familiar.
Claire…
No response.
She’d cut me off.
And I had no idea why.
Chapter33
Sol
“Why did we come all this way to save this Spirit Fae bastard again?” I asked on a growl.
Vox rubbed his knuckles where he’d punched the royal in the face, knocking him out cold. The force needed to knock Exos out had required the use of Vox’s wind.
Too bad I hadn’t been able to get in my own hit.
The Spirit Fae would look awesome with an earth-infused blemish.
Yet one glance at Claire’s pained expression as she rested against my chest, unconscious, stilled my violent desire. Whether I liked it or not, this was one of her mates.
Which meant I could never kill him.
“Because you believe in this mate circle-of-elements thing, right?” Vox muttered flatly, replying to my comment about retrieving Exos. “I doubt he did that on purpose. Whatever that was, it felt… wrong.”
I nodded, having sensed it, too. An inky, dark void that had reached out just for Claire, clawing over my connection to her to embolden its strides. I hadn’t liked how it felt at all, especially with my complete inability to stop it.
“We need to get them both back to the Spirit Quad,” Vox surmised, glancing at me with that silver-rimmed gaze that burned with determination. He’d finally opened up to Claire, even if just enough to feel what he could be for her, what she was to all of us. True mates compatible on the most intimate of levels.
He glanced down again at Claire in my arms. My grip on her instinctually tightened, wanting to protect her by using my own body as a shield against anything that would try to come at her again. “You’re going to have to let her go,” Vox murmured, giving me a sidelong smirk. “Before you crush her, that is.”
I loosened my grip. “I can carry her. She hardly weighs anything.”
Vox chuckled and pointed at the lopsided royal on the ground. “Well, he doesn’t, and I’m not carrying him all the way back to the Spirit Quad.” He glowered at me until I cursed.
“Then drag him,” I suggested through my teeth.
Vox narrowed his eyes. “When Claire wakes up, she’s going to expect Exos in one piece, and if I drag him through a day’s worth of forest, she’s not going to be very happy with us. Especially if she knows you refused to carry him.”
Shit. He had a point.
“Fine,” I grumbled and shifted Claire into his arms.
Vox used his air currents to settle her weight against him, making me envious of how, even in sleep, she wrapped her arms around his neck and nestled under his chin. Vox’s breath caught at the movement.
“Don’t get too comfortable,” I warned him. “Whatever that thing was, it was waiting here for us. And whoever put it in Exos’s head might be back to finish the job.”
Vox glanced into the darkness around us and shivered. “Right. Let’s go.”
I stormed on ahead with Exos slung over my shoulder, making no attempt to still my power or make the royal comfortable.
He would already have a headache when he woke up. No one would question a few bruises.
Chapter34
Cyrus
