Page 54 of How to Keep a Fae

I shouldn’t have said anything. But he’s been looking at me like a scolded puppy ever since we met this morning for the patrol. I wanted the old Jayga back, the one who talks incessantly and fills the gaps so I don’t have to think.

Thinking is bad. Thinking about this, about primal needs, of dark lust, of how we force an omega into heat, can get a warrior killed if he’s on patrol and needs his wits about him.

But my father’s words. Those final ones he offered me before we parted ways.

“How do you force a heat?”I asked.

“Trust that your human alpha will already know. It is instinctive to their kind.”

I’ve fucked up Jayga’s concentration with my badly thought-through comments. I need to give him something back. We ride two by two. Nudging my nose close to his, I wait to get his attention.

“What do you know about forcing omega heats?”

His brows pinch. He glances around like someone might be close enough to hear before answering. “Nothing. Well, not much. I mean, it’s pretty obvious you need to do somethingextreme. Stress can suppress heat. It can also bring it on. Lots of different kinds of stress, though, isn’t there.” His lips twist in a smirk. One I know well. “You ever notice how she gets when you edge her? Probably not your thing. You’re more of a pound it until it gives.” He grins openly now. “But yeah, edging, rough fucking, one or the other, maybe both, feels like just the right kind of stress. The kind that could get an omega into heat.”

Ahead, I notice a lone rider cutting across farmland straight toward us.

A young lad, dressed in simple farmers’ clothes, his horse without a saddle and lathered with sweat.

“Orcs!” he cries, wheeling his horse around. “Orcs at Efen Loe.”

Chapter Seventeen

Adaline

Achair arrives—not a carver chair, but a deep, plush chaise longue, complete with the softest, most decadent throw. The upholstery is a midnight blue embroidered with moons, stars, and planets in every color of the rainbow. The throw is the same midnight blue and trimmed with silver stars. It takes up a good portion of the remaining space but is the loveliest thing I have ever seen, and so blissful to lie on it that it’s in danger of becoming a second nest.

Yet we do not get something for nothing in this life, and I wonder if I’m being paid for something I have already lost, or something I’m yet to lose.

Maybe I’m reading too much into this. Maybe it is simply a chair.

My mother, Denna, is still my house mistress. While on the surface, she’s her usual stern self, something has changed underneath, a subtle softening I glimpse here and there. I don’tknow her. She kept me physically close but at a distance in every other way, so this is hardly a surprise.

Do I want to connect with her?

Is that even possible when my mere presence is a source of love and pain for her?

That charged conversation gave me something though, an insight, and maybe hope that one day a bond might grow, that she might be ready to tell me about my father. She is not the loving mother one might wish for, but she is also not a monster.

Dede knows about us, and I’m glad I have someone I can confide in.

I started foresight training yesterday with an imperial sister and will have a regular schedule going forward. I’m glad of the distraction. A part of me is excited about this, but I’m also worried that it might change me. If I stop being a feeder… no, I cannot linger on that. The chosen said I was still a feeder, as did the king.

What happened in the king’s day room is hazy in my mind. I remember snippets at odd times. Some stoke my curiosity. Others leave a sense of unease.

“Will you sanction this?”Aurelius asked.

“I will not,”the chosen replied.

I have played those words over a thousand times since. I get the strangest impression Aurelius is related to August, and that he sought approval for us to mate—for all of us, given the king had already mentioned me healing two warriors at a time.

A request that was rejected.

I have not lost anything, for I never had them to start with. But that does not make the pain of what might have been any less.

Maybe I’m interpreting it wrong. Maybe he was talking about something other than mating.

After all, I am still a feeder, just one with foresight.

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