Page 86 of The Barbaric Fae's Soul

Halfway through the massive fruit I was eating—the one I’d always calledpurple shell-fruitin my head, my frustration reached a peak.

I was sweaty.

I was tired.

I was lonely.

And I wanted to go home, even though I still didn’t have a damn home after two decades in Vevol.

So I turned my anger to the guy who had been following me.

“I know you’re out there!” I yelled at the trees, cupping my hands to make my voice louder. I didn’t think it would help all that much, since Vevol’s trees were stupidly tall and wide, but I did it anyway. “Come talk to me for five minutes! I need directions!”

For two tense minutes, I waited for something.

Anything.

A sign that I’d been heard.

A sign that I’d been ignored would’ve worked, even.

But I got nothing.

Anger swelled in my chest.

“You are the fucking worst!” I shouted. Looking around the dirt at my bare feet, I grabbed the nearest rock—it was bigger than my fist—and hurled it at a tree. It collided with the trunk, making a noise that did not resemble an Earthly rock-on-woodthunk.

Sometimes, I missed Earth.

And sometimes I wanted to flip it the bird and curse its name.

Then again, I was like that with most places. And people.

And… everything else, too.

I needed an attitude adjustment, but I wasn’t sure how to go about doing that. At least I’d swallowed my pride long enough to apologize to Aev; that had made me feel slightly better about some things.

“Trying to kill a tree now?” A deep, growly male voice drawled behind me.

I spun around, clenching my fists and wishing I’d kept that rock.

The man in front of me was…

“Teris?” I blinked at the seelie.

The Wild Hunt’s sabertooth.

He was even bigger than I remembered him, and so muscular he might as well have been chiseled out of stone. While his chest and arms had been free of ink the last time I saw him, one of his arms was covered in black markings that began on his hand and snaked up over his shoulder and around his neck. They were intricately-detailed, but I couldn’t tell what they depicted from where I was.

But damn, I liked the look of them.

Why the hell had he followed me, though?

And… why was I so glad it was him?

I didn’t really need an answer to that last one. The answer could be found in our history. I just liked to pretend it hadn’t happened, because of everything that had come afterward.

He made a show of glancing over his shoulders one at a time, and the expression on his face was so sarcastic that I had to fight a snort. “Don’t see anyone else.”

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