Page 59 of The Barbaric Fae's Soul

“You okay?” I whispered, feeling more secure now that he’d reacted by turning toward me instead of away.

“Mmhm.” His chin rested on my head as he tucked me closer, tightening his arms around me.

“Do you want to talk about it?”

“Not really.” He squeezed me. “But I think you deserve to know, if you’d like to.”

My throat swelled.

He’d told me a bunch of stories about how things were when he was the king, but I’d changed the subject away from Naomi. I hadn’t wanted to know. And… I still didn’t.

“If you ever want to talk about it, I’ll always be happy to listen. But I feel like I know enough about how things were for you that I don’t need the details unless you want to give them to me.”

He squeezed me even tighter. “Thank you.”

“Of course.” I pressed a kiss to his throat, and his chest rumbled happily. It almost sounded like a purr, and my lips curved upward with that thought.

“Do you want to go for a run with me again? We can let the others know that we’re awake first, so they know we’re watching for klynnas too,” he asked.

“Sure.” I smiled against his neck, fairly confident that we were going to end up in a tree again, trading stories about our lives.

He stood, pulling me onto his back as he shifted forms, and a moment later, we were moving through the trees.

A klynna was headedtoward us before we’d even finished talking to the fae gathered, still ready for a fight that may or may not come. Rosalie and Blue had been manning the skies, but Blue looked exhausted, and Rosalie’s excitement seemed to have faded.

Rosalie and I sent Blue away to sleep, and I spoke with Rosalie for a moment before we headed into the skies.

“How bad is it?” I asked her.

The klynna was approaching, but we had time.

She grimaced. “We can connect with them enough to send them away, but it doesn’t seem to do anything when we order them to stop returning. At this rate, we’re going to need a lot more life-bringers. Sunny decided she’ll help if they start coming in pairs, but I talked to the last few from our group, and they’re not interested in helping out.”

I let out a puff of air. “Damn.”

“Yeah. I asked Fovea how they’re doing when it comes to classifying the new humans, and she said that they’ve got everything they need collected, but they can’t do it for another week because of the moon. Whatever that means.”

I bit my lip. “We can probably hold out for another week.”

“As long as they don’t start coming in twos or threes,” she agreed. “It’s been happening at least twice an hour, though.”

Shit.

The klynna roared above our heads, and we parted ways. I slipped onto Presley’s back while Rosalie climbed onto Devv’s, and we took to the sky.

The restof the day passed in a stressful blur. The klynna attacks increased to three to four times an hour, with the same four beasts returning after the impact of our commands faded from their minds. One of them was the red one I’d first seen outside North and Priel’s cave. Another was the sunset-colored one. The third was a masterpiece of blues. And the last one was a gorgeous, glistening black, like obsidian with a hell of a lot more sparkle.

Despite their beauty, it had started to feel like it was only a matter of time before one of them ate one of us.

When Blue was well-enough rested, she swapped places with Rosalie. And when Rosalie had gotten enough sleep, she came back and swapped with me.

Aev stayed in the trees when I crashed in the house for a few hours, murmuring to me that he needed to keep an eye on the klynnas to make sure no one was burned. Because he was sitting in the trees, only using his ice magic to keep me and the other life-bringers from getting roasted by klynna fire, I figured he could handle the repetitive strain of the magic a little longer.

When I woke up, I traded places with Blue.

The klynnas had started coming in pairs, so everything was getting more difficult. Sunny joined our rotation, but we were all struggling to keep up with the monsters. The close calls became closer, and Aev’s ice magic became more necessary.

On the third day, they started coming in trios.

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