Page 5 of The White Stag
What were theydoingin there? I couldn’t go in because I needed to watch for anyone coming in and take care of them. I felt like I hadn’t seen Reagan in forever. She was only ever allowed outside for an hour a day, and every time I saw her with that sniveling human, I wanted to crash through the gate, gore him with my antlers, and get her the fuck out of there.
I finally saw the front door open. Cyrus and Finnan came out first, but I wasn’t interested in them. I saw those bastards every day. Hobgoblins could be highly irritating, and Boogeymen were intense. Sometimes, I wasn’t in the mood.
I saw Reagan, and it was like we had never been parted. She lit up when she saw me.
“Oisin!” she cried, running to me.
She was much taller than she used to be. Reagan had grown up, and she had grown into a beautiful woman. She’d be even more gorgeous after we got her off the iron that was suppressing her true side. Reagan flung her arms around my neck and buried her face in my fur. I longed to shift back into a Fae so I could hug her back, but we desperately needed to get out of here.
I couldn’t use words when I was a stag, but I could communicate telepathically.
“What took so long?”
“Reagan wanted payback against that shitty little human we saw in the garden. She deserved it,”Cyrus said.
“Did you kill him?”
I hoped they had. Generally, we didn’t bother with humans, but our job was to protect her; if this man had hurt her in any way, we would destroy him.
“Nah,”Finnan said.“Now that she remembers who she is, she’s still Reagan. She made him drink the Sin Eater’s tea, and then I fucked with his head a bit. It’ll drive Alastair mad, give us a head start, and he’ll beat the shit out of the turd who enjoyed keeping Reagan a prisoner here for us.”
Ilovedthat. She might look like a human and think she was a human, but she was one of us through and through. But now, it was time to get out of here. Reagan had been doing this long enough to know how it worked. She placed her hand on my side, and so did Cyrus and Finnan.
My kind didn’t go into the mortal realm a lot. Banishment from our court never ended well for us. Humans were of two minds about the White Stag. Some of them thought you should never kill a white stag because it was bad luck. Others knew we had magical properties and tried to trap us.
One of the things I could do was travel anywhere with just a thought. Most of the places we brought Reagan to before were random, but I knew exactly where we were headed this time. We had a safe house that was still in the mortal realm but right at the border of our court. Alastair would be stupid to come for her there.
Honestly, we should have taken her there from the start, but we wanted her to have a normal childhood. If we had done that, Alastairneverwould have gotten his hands on her.
I thought about our safe house, and we appeared there instantly. I really wanted to shift back, but it wasn’t appropriate for Reagan to see me naked. I was reasonably certain she had never seen a naked man before. We made damned sure that never happened at her foster homes, and if that happened while she was living with Alastair, I’d rip him from cock to neck with my antlers.
This safe house was nothing compared to where sheshouldhave grown up. It wasn’t even as big as that prison Alastair was holding her in. He wouldn’t have held her in a dump. He was way too spoiled to live anywhere that wasn’t fit for a prince.
Reagan’s face lit up when she saw the two-story cabin. I trotted over to the shed and changed back into a man. I always kept clothes in here just in case. I slipped on a pair of sweatpants and joined them. Reagan grinned at all of us, then flung herself at me and hugged me.
“First, he convinced me you were all imaginary friends, and then he made me forget you. Unless this really is all in my head, and I’m just as crazy as Ballard thought I was.”
“You aren’t crazy, hen,” Finnan said. “Come inside, and we’ll explain everything.”
“Can I take a shower first? I feel violated knowing he messed with my mind. I just want to wash some of that feeling away.”
Messing with her mind was terrible enough, but if we found out he had violated her in other ways, damn the peace. We wouldendhim. But we’d deal with that later. We put a lot of time and care into her bedroom. This was our base while we’d tried to figure out where Alastair had hidden her.
The longer she had been missing, the more helpless we’d felt. We’d all dealt with it in different ways. Cyrus had brooded and spent every waking hour trying to find her. Finnan was now practically a five-star chef. I put all my efforts into updating her bedroom as the years passed so it would be perfect when we found her again.
We unlocked the door and showed her inside.
“Your bedroom is the door at the end of the hall. This place isn’t much compared to what Alastair had, but it’s comfortable,” I said.
“Are you kidding? It’s perfect. I would have killed for a house like this when I was in foster care. Alastair’s house was nice, but it was more like a museum. I was always too worried about breaking something or trekking dirt in when I was finally let outside to really relax. The furniture was pretty, but it wasn’t exactly comfortable. I could be comfortable here.”
“That’s the idea, love,” Finnan said. “That couch is the ultimate comfort, and no one will be mad if you put your feet on it. You can put those lovely feet on anything in here, and no one will be mad. Are you hungry? It looks like Alastair was barely feeding you.”
It really did. Reagan was painfully thin, even more so than when we had to live on the streets to hide from Alastair. Some of her foster homes didn’t feed her all that well, but they provided her better than what it looked like Alastair did.
“Alastair always gave me small portions, and I wasn’t allowed food outside of meals if I was hungry. So I was always hungry there. He always said it would be terrible if I got fat.”
“Horse shite!” Finnan yelled. “Big girls are beautiful. Skinny girls are beautiful. All women are beautiful, and if you’re going to shame one for what they look like, your manky arse doesn’t deserve one.”
