Page 107 of Bitten By the Fae
I slowly pushed to my feet, then tucked my hands into the pockets of my sweats. “Is that the path you choose?”
He arched an auburn brow. “Are you asking if I’ll let them kill you?”
“Will you?”
“No.”
“You won’t have a choice.” Once the Council found out about this, they’d have all our heads on a platter.
“There’s always a choice,” Kols countered, his gaze holding mine. “Killing Aflora will literally destroy a piece of my soul—thanks to our illegal mating bond—and leave me in a shell of misery. I’ve seen it done to other fae. It’s the worst kind of punishment imaginable.” He stepped forward to grab my shirt, yanking me to him. “And losing you is a fate I refuse to ever accept. I won’t allow them to take you or Aflora from me.”
Aflora, I knew, was more for his own survival. Losing his mate would destroy him, and she’d bonded him as both an Elemental Fae and a Midnight Fae, marking the consequences of her loss as undefinable. It might very well kill him.
However, he could absolutely live without me.
He just didn’t want to.
I grabbed his shirt with one hand, my opposite palm going to the back of his neck, and kissed him to return the sentiment.
As much as I sometimes despised this male, I also couldn’t live without him.
Even when I wanted to.
He returned the embrace, his tongue laced with Aflora’s blood as he delved deep into my mouth in a dominant sweep of power. I returned the move in kind, taking him with a ferocity I knew he couldn’t deny, and smiled when he groaned.
Now wasn’t the time or place.
I also wanted to add Aflora to the mix. We were all going to hell anyway, so I might as well grant myself the taste I’d craved for weeks.
But first, we needed a plan, and to properly form that, we required time.
“Your father would have felt the disturbance of power,” I said, releasing Kols almost as swiftly as I’d grabbed him.
He nodded. “I know.”
“Either you tell him the truth and damn us all or you give him a cover story. And if you choose the latter, then we need to do something to hide our connection to Aflora.” Because everyone who walked near us would be able to smell her in our blood and vice versa. It would be obvious to them all what we’d done tonight, and word would spread quickly through the ranks. Especially when several Council members’ children attended Midnight Fae Academy.
“I can handle the cover story,” Kols murmured. “But we need to make sure Shade is on the same page, as he’ll be the alibi.”
“You’re going to tell your father the two of you engaged in an illegal duel,” I translated.
Kols nodded. “It’ll explain this.” He gestured around the burnt clearing that Aflora had created with her explosion of power. “My father will reprimand us both, but it’ll be a verbalwarning more than anything else. He’ll claim it’s a rite of passage for us to fight.”
A good and fair point. “That’ll work, but we need something to hide the bonds.”
“That’s going to be harder,” he muttered.
“No, it’s going to cost us,” I corrected. “A lot.”
“What do you mean?”
“I know a guy,” I muttered, massaging my jaw as I considered what I was about to reveal. “He can help hide things, like bonds.”
Kols narrowed his eyes. “Like protection oaths?”
“Yeah. Like protection oaths.”
He fell silent, his astute gaze holding mine as a myriad of emotions ran through his expression.
