Page 38 of Mate Me

As I came around the corner slowly, I heard voices, instantly recognizing my cousin’s. Ducking down, I hovered behind large fronds. No one seemed to have noticed my arrival, though I didn’t see Caius. Instead, I saw Clara standing in a grand room, with two men flanked beside her.

“Stop hiding in the bushes,”Eres chastised.

“No one asked you. I’m scoping this out before I just waltz in, okay?”

She huffed.“He knows you’re coming, and you’re out of your element here. Learn about your environment first. Sneak later.”

I shut her out, trying to listen in on the conversation, but the moment one of them touched Clara and she slapped his hand, rage coursed through me and drowned out any form of reason.

“That mother—” I muttered, then grabbed a pomegranate, stepped out from my hiding spot, and hurled it with everything I had as I stormed toward them. It crashed against the man’s head, cracking open and spilling arils on the ground as I shouted, “Get your hands off her!”

“Ow!” His voice echoed off the ceilings and he cursed loudly, rubbing the side of his head while the other man made a poor attempt at covering his laugh.

My cousin whirled around, conflicting emotions lining her features. Happiness, relief, surprise, frustration. What had she already been through? Had I taken too long? Should I have come in after her immediately?

Now that I’d come fully into view, I realized that Caius had been there the entire time, and my grand entrance came to an abrupt halt. Standing idle with hands in his pockets, his relaxed posture was not at all what you would expect from someone who had just kidnapped a woman. Another surge of fury fueled me, while a whisper in my mind told me maybe I needed to think before acting.

Between the two options, anger won.

"You!"

"Me?" he replied, much to my irritation.

“Give me back my cousin right now.”

He lifted his eyebrows. An inkling of the fire I’d seen in his eyes before made itself known. It wasn’t metaphorical. It seemed as though literal fire gleamed within. “I never intended to keep her,” he said, keeping his tone light. “She is free to go once you agree to stay.”

“No.” I figured when negotiating with Caius in this matter, it was wise to go in with my absolute baseline of wants, and that was simple. I did not want to be here at all. “I’m taking her back to Earth, safely. You can send me a letter or something. We can be pen pals. How about that?”

“What’s a pen pal?” one of the men asked quietly, and his counterpart shrugged while still rubbing his head.

“Request denied,” he said, taking his hands from his pockets and crossing his arms.

“Look, I think you know I have no intention of staying with you?—"

“Then why did you bring luggage?” he asked, gesturing to the suitcase I’d left behind.

“That’s . . . a valid question,” I began, thinking of an alternative explanation. As soon as one formed, Eres groaned internally, urging me to stop. “I thought I could bring you a gift. A, uh, gesture of goodwill. Give me my cousin, you get my special homemade, one-of-a-kind moonshine.”

Clara smacked her palm on her forehead and shook her head. Even I cringed as the words spilled out of my mouth.

“You want to . . . trade your cousin for liquor?”

“Yeah, okay, it sounded better in my head,” I admitted, twisting the end of my braid with my fingers to give my hands something to do. “Look, you took her from our realm.Our home. You can't just take people against their will, just like you can't demand that they stay here.”

“Perhaps it’s frowned upon, but I wouldn’t say ‘you can’t’ do those things.” He gave an annoyingly handsome smile, tilting his head as he spoke. “You are my mate, Reagan. I gave you what you asked for?—”

I barked a laugh. “No, you didn’t. What have you given me other than a headache?”

“You asked me to leave. You wanted the magic leaking out of the portal to stop. You said, if I recall, you wanted to keep your world safe. So I did what you asked, and I left. You were the one that wasn’t willing to return the favor in kind. I only wanted the opportunity to talk to you.”

All I could do was stand stoically, stunned at his counterargument. He was in the wrong, and yet he sounded so reasonable and made me sound as though I wasn’t. A cruel smirk lined his full lips, making heat gather low in my belly.

Eres snorted internally, pretending to disguise her laugh as a cough.

“Bad horse. We don’t like him, remember? Soulless. One.”

“I’m not the one having the physical reaction. You are.”

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