Page 14 of Fated or Knot

And most importantly, why had she stolen from nearly every alpha who’d passed by her?

I didn’t disapprove. If anything, the fact that she was a tricksy little thing who’d pulled off a surprise on me too was better than foreplay. I was so rarely shocked, but it turned out Lark was hiding her identity the exact same way I was. How incredibly invigorating.

Now I wanted to stealher.We’d be on first magirail to Neslune tomorrow morning if she hadn’t run from me.

The trail of bitter chocolate scent she’d left behind tempered my excitement some. Especially when I found a concentrated circle of it mixed in with the smell of bruised grass and freshly unearthed soil. She must’ve crashed at this spot. I circled out from there, picking up the ghost of her fear and pain with an agitated snarl.

This was my fault. I hated that the harsh smell had come from her, startled free by our joint identity revelations. If she’d only stayed a few moments longer to listen to me. Many Seelie still believed my kind to be “cursed” when there was no such thing.

The fae people had split long ago to populate the island nations of Thelis and Serian. Thelis enjoyed more temperate weather and nurtured milder Seelie, with their primary population consisting of sweet woodland fae—forest elves, pixies, gnomes, and dryads included. Meanwhile, Serian, situated further to the north, invited any race hearty enough to survive its harsh winters to live under the label of Unseelie. This included most of the bestial fae races. It was no surprise that most of my people carried at least one animal trait under those conditions.

As for Lark’s true identity, I didn’t care that she was a servant—and why was she dressed like one anyway? Omegas were the most precious and rare fae. The rest of us were plucked from the stars to servethem.

I stopped below an essence lamp, drawing in a deep breath. Unsweetened chocolate wove in with my brother’s familiar scent. It grew more honeyed as the wind picked up a chill gust.

Oh, good. To my relief, she’d run into Tormund. My lips relaxed, and I slid my fingers into my suit pockets as I followed the trail they’d left behind with less urgency. Lark meeting my brother was the best possible outcome. If anyone could gentle a frightened and potentially wounded omega and see to her needs, it’d be that lovable oaf.

I tracked their scents straight to the inn my pack was staying at.

Somehow, I beat Tormund to my inn room, where Marius and Kauz waited for us with one of their never-ending card games. “Finally!” Marius exclaimed in our mother tongue, throwing down his hand and jostling the piles of coins heaped between them.

Kauz raised a brow after looking me up and down. “Where’s your mask?” he asked.

I flashed a feline smile. “Our tricksy omega stole it.” I was glad to switch back to Serian after suppressing my natural accent for so long.

Kauz narrowed his eyes of violet-threaded starlight. He’d worked quite hard on making the illusion airtight so we wouldn’t have a litany of uncomfortable consequences coming when the Seelie royals contacted our mother and accused us of some kind of wrongdoing.

My brothers and I had been on our best behavior for the trip here and our stay in Ilysnor. Some of it was for our own sanity, as traveling for so long on a magirail while carrying on with a sibling feud would be absolute misery, but for the most part, it was for the Seelie around us. Inevitably, the Seelie always found some fault in our actions, no matter how polite we were or how benign our common trickery had become of late.

Well, when it happened, I would handle it.

“Ouromega,” Marius echoed. He crossed his arms, his denial already leaking into the pack bond.

“I know you didn’t want to consider that fate would give us?—”

Tormund burst into the room behind me with an exclamation of “Brothers!”

His presence blotted out Marius’s doubt with a heaping cup of joy drenching our pack bond. He crushed me in a big hug, lifting me to the tips of my toes.

Marius sighed. “What happened to your cloak?”

“I met the most perfect omega,” Tormund said, ignoring him and denying me another breath all at the same time. “She’s just a wee little bird, but she smells like a dream. And she’s only two rooms down from this one.”

“She couldn’t possibly be our omega,” Marius said disdainfully.

“Tor,” I managed, pulling on his wrist. He released me with an apologetic glance, smoothing out some of the new wrinkles in my suit with a few brushes of his broad palm. He was the youngest out of the four of us, and sometimes I questioned when he’d gotten to be the biggest and strongest as well.

“Yes, our omega!” he exclaimed.

“I’m going to need more of a description than ‘wee little bird,’” Kauz remarked. “And ‘tricksy’ while you’re at it.”

Tormund and I took a seat at the table and took turns explaining Lark. I went first, and my brothers noticed she’dvexed me a bit by the shift of amusement in our bond. I hated unfinished puzzles, and Lark was one I hadn’t figured out yet.

While Tormund described how he’d calmed her down, shooting me a scowl for causing her distress, I met Marius’s gaze. We stared one another down in a contest of wills and dominance. He had a bad attitude about this whole venture, but he wouldn’t air it and ruin this now that we’d found Lark.

“Then I bought her something to eat,” our redcap brother concluded. “So, we’re going to steal her away to Neslune tomorrow, right?”

For the Unseelie, nothing was quite so romantic as a well-meaning relocation. Mother still swooned over how our fathers had stolen her from her childhood home in the dark of night for their first date.

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