Page 215 of Fated or Knot

Kauz bowed over my fingers. The curve of his lips was as knowing as ever. “I’m glad I’m not the only one who’s not so good at this,” he said in an undertone. “I struggled to learn as a kid with these two sails attached to my back.”

“Can’t be much worse than me. I never learned,” I whispered back.

He and I swung into motion as the music began again. He breathed a soft sigh of relief. The tempo was slower and this dance was more of a back and forth motion, as the dance floor became a sea of couples going left or right, depending on where they were standing. He led me just fine and did a wickedly good shimmy or two while I swayed my hips in his hold.

“Hey, later tonight, I want you to remember something,” he said as we moved together.

My smile faltered a bit with nerves as he mentionedlater tonight.

He cupped my cheek, a move a little out of sync with the dance. But he captured me in his starry gaze. My body moved automatically, but my focus was all on him as he spoke. “Fate has bound us, forever in the depths of time. That is the promise of Always. I don’t intend to be more than two steps behind you, no matter what. And you’ve seen merely a fraction of the magic I’m going to unleash on those that would harm you.”

“And what if they harmed you instead?” I didn’t think I could bear it.

Kauz ran his fingers through my hair, petting a few times to soothe me. “They will have two much larger problems to worry about, named Tormund and Marius. One has a nearly impervious rage form, and the other is extensively combat trained. We’re all going to be fine. I can just about promise it.”

I took the reassurance and nestled into the strength of his body for a hug as there was a longer pause between songs. He didn’t envelop me in his wings like I wanted him to, not when Fal was waiting to claim my last dance of the night. We parted and I almost reached for Kauz as he stepped off the dance floor, wistful for more comfort woven into that calm voice of his.

Fal took my hand and read my expression. “You know, it would be time to go right now, regardless of our other plans,” he murmured. “We’ve tuckered you out.”

“A bit,” I agreed. In the absence of music and dancing, I hugged him next, feeling quite needy to be touched and gentled more. He held me close.

“The minute of silence is a sign that they’re going to play a slow song. Lovers and mates are grabbing one another for it aswe speak,” he narrated as I buried my face in the front of his shirt.

I inhaled and mewled quietly. He didn’t smell right.

“It’s time, isn’t it?” There was a sad hush to his question.

I blinked, a little lost where I stood. What was it time for? A gentle, slow tune started to play from the orchestra and Fal tapped his foot along to the melody. He held my hips and encouraged me to loop my arms around his shoulders, leaning in so I didn’t have to reach up to the tips of my toes to do so.

We swayed, pressed together, nearly forehead to forehead. The only thing I wished for in that moment was for us to be wearing less clothes. But my thoughts were winking out one by one, leaving only Fal and the warmth stoking in my core like a raging fire just barely contained behind the molten-orange glass of a lantern.

I was a little afraid. It’d never felt like this before.

“Stay with me, Lark,” he said, threading his subtle bark into the words.

I blinked and some clarity returned.My heat. No. No no no. Not here.

His voice was without extra influence for a moment as he said urgently, “As the lord gives his queen a portion of his will to make her spine unbreakable, I need to reiterate a few things before your heat overwhelms you. Tell me that’s all right.”

“It’s all right.” I agreed readily.

He’d done this before, and I’d suspected it was something he’d been taught. To make an omega into a queen as tough as Nemensia, her mates probably had to remind her regularly to suppress the sweet and submissive behavior that came with the designation. But that wasn’t where he started.

“Listen, Lark.”

I smiled back, already an attentive audience. I submitted to his dominance with full trust.

He whispered, lower than the music and the general hush of conversation around us. “You have no reason to fear the enemies you may see within the next hour. You are stronger than Cymora, Ellisar, Dalstin, and Floris. They’ve always been bullies, controlling you by keeping you small and alone.”

“But I’m not alone anymore,” I said without any prompting. After hearing it dozens of times from Kauz, and experiencing it, I knew it instinctively.

Hi nodded. “That’s right. You will not be sweet nor submissive to any alpha except to the males of your pack. You will be queen someday. There is no force in this world that you bow to. No shadows you fear. Nothing alpha, beta, or omega in nature. Do you understand?”

“I understand.”

“And finally, if they get close enough to touch you.” He patted my arm, reminding me of the slight weight of the faebane-treated knife secreted under my sleeve. “You use this. As you have promised.”

This was the only thing that I resisted, and only a little bit. Ihadpromised, but violence never came easily. And to ask me, so near to my instincts and heat, to do such a thing…

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