Page 70 of Land of Monsters

“Don’t yell at me. I didn’t order you. Master tree fairy, with golden hair and a dick the size of a tree trunk, did.”

Chirp! Chirp!

My eyes jolted open when I felt the same sensation again, expecting to see Ash teasing my skin. Instead, I saw a tiny bald creature with big bat ears, its long tongue flicking over my naked hip.

“What the fuck?” I bolted up, two tiny figures tumbling as I yanked the torn sheet up to my chest.

“How many times do we have to ask you to warn us before you do that!” What I knew to be a house brownie huffed, climbing onto his feet, straightening out his bizarre outfit of leather lederhosen with a biker emblem on the front. An even tinier creature was next to him, in a leather diaper and a choker.

Chirp!The thing put its three-pronged fingers in the air, and I swear it was flipping me off, its expression narrowed with anger.

“What the hell is that?” I blinked down at it.

“Have you never seen an imp before?” The brownie motioned to it.

“I guess not.” Imps were exceedingly rare. The queen before my mother had let them be hunted almost into extinction for their healing body fluids.

“This is Bitzy.” He motioned to the imp, who made a chirping sound, flipping me off again. “And I’m Opie.”

“You live and clean here?” Uncle Lars had a brownie in his house, Sinnie, but she barely showed her face to people, always cleaning and dressed in a traditional brown dress.

“Clean?” Opie screeched, his hand going to his chest. “Does it look like I clean in this outfit?” He motioned down to himself. “This is a work of art. Not rags to clean in! Stereotype much? Just because I’m a brownie doesn’t mean I clean. I mean… I did when I was living in the prison. But I hated it! Though… I also hate mess… but I’m not going to clean it or anything. Especially this place.”

My eyes flickered to the neatly piled clothes at the end of the bed he was straightening.

“Well, I folded those because Master Mushroom just flung them on the bed all willy-nilly. And the pillow was flat and wrinkled, screaming to be fluffed.”

My stomach twisted, noticing the empty spot next to me. He was gone, his side of the bed cold. Did he regret it? Would it be awkward now? Did we just ruin everything?

Chirp!

“Not that kind of fluffed!”

Chirp! Chirp! Chirp!

“That is a lie!” The brownie huffed.

“Master Mushroom?” I interrupted, sitting up.

“Master Ash,” Opie responded to me. “He ran out of here about thirty minutes ago, probably having to deal with the mess you guys made.”

“He ran out?”

Clearly, he regretted it, not wanting to be here when I woke up. While I ached with disappointment and hurt, I craved him even more.

I still buzzed with the connection, the magic that made me feel I could reach out and find him wherever he was. My mind couldn’t rectify the unbelievable pleasure he pulled from my body the moment he sank into me, destroying me for everyone else.

We knotted…

No. Impossible, especially with a tree fairy. Only dark dwellers had that type of connection with other dark dwellers. And it was a rarity. Something like one in a thousand ever experienced it.

The idea was ridiculous.

Nonetheless, I couldn’t let the thought go. All the feelings I thought I had for Wyatt when we had sex paled in comparison. And it not only scared me but had me choking on guilt.

I hadmurderedsomeone over my heartache, been so devastated by the loss of Wyatt, I had to be sent away. I hadn’t returned home in a year because I couldn’t face him and Piper together. Yet in one night, Ash leveled me, flipped me so completely sideways, I doubted everything I ever felt for the boy I grew up loving.

I always thought Wyatt was my mate, my future, but nothing made sense anymore.

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