Page 152 of Fated or Knot

“That too. When you’re in estrus…”He drew off, confused, but only for a moment. His mental voice shifted seamlessly to his princely side.“What the fuck, p’nixie. Don’t challenge Niall to breed you.”

“Why not? He’s good at it,”I teased.Even though he’d returned to his senses, he’d resumed rubbing my clit after realizing where his hand was. We moaned together through another shared mini orgasm.

“You’re going to end up pregnant.”

“That does eventually have to happen.”

He pulled away from our kiss, opening his eyes to search my gaze. He worked his jaw before responding aloud. “Eventually. I want a life forusbefore we go creating new lives.”

“I agree,” I murmured. “We’ve only just started.”

He cradled the side of my face with his free hand and brushed my kiss-swollen lip with his thumb. “That’s right. From tonight until our end as stardust, we are bound. There’s plenty of time to make more p’nixies later. Much later.”

“And colts too. As handsome, strong, and blue as their father,” I added.

His ear flicked. “Stop saying such sweet things while you’re squeezing my knot, mate.”

I batted my lashes back at him. “Maybe you should let me off of you so we can eat something,” I suggested breathlessly. He hadn’t stopped playing with my clit ever so slowly, and my skin tightened with awareness.

“Hmm.” He flashed his fangs in a wicked smile. “Maybe later. For now, sit tight.” As he teased, he pressed my sensitive nub just right, and we came together again.

43

TORMUND

Dad had me pack for a several-day hunting trip this time, and I dreaded the time spent away from my mate. Even though I needed to get myself under control and my father was one of my only sources on how a proper redcap acts and functions.

As a boy, I used to be excited to spend time with him and would count down the days to the next trip. My busy father wanted to spend time with just me! He wanted to teach me how to hunt and survive!

We would walk out of sight of Mother and the rest of the family, and he’d put a weapon in my pudgy hand to hunt with. He did the hunting and butchering for the first few years and handed me meat skewers by night that I didn’t recognize as once belonging to an animal.

My first kill was a squirrel. I walloped the poor thing over the head at age six, my first kill, and cried about it for the rest of the day. I carried its limp body in my hands, inconsolable that it wouldn’t return to its little squirrel family.

Dad had taken in my reaction with understanding at first but started to make sounds of annoyance under his breath as the day grew long. “It’s just a squirrel, son.”

“ButI’mthe reason he died,” I’d answered with a fresh wave of tears.

He made a scoff with his signatureachand rolled his eyes. He’d tried to feed me meat skewers from his kill that night, and it finally dawned on me where the food had come from. I decided I would rather starve than eat small, defenseless critters.

With a heavy sigh, he admitted defeat on the matter. He reached into his bag of supplies and handed me a squished hunk of bread and some cheese. The next morning, we gave the squirrel a burial with full military honors.

Dad’s impossibly gigantic hand had covered my shoulder as I stood over the tiny grave. “You’ll learn before long that you’re a redcap,” he’d told me. “Delivering bloodshed and death is what we do, son.”

“But I don’t want to,” I’d said petulantly.

As the years passed, my answer to what I wassupposedto be remained largely the same. Dad didn’t push me to change as much as he could’ve, because Mother had stars in her eyes. She saw what kind of boy I was and didn’t want to sacrifice me to make another executioner. And I had a bad habit of eavesdropping on their arguments about it.

I was the first royal redcap in the family line to be placed as the next queen’s comfort, a role that had always been traded between the dark elf and the kelpie lines. Before me, the role of queen’s protector always went to the redcap, regardless of birth order. “I know my sons,” Mother argued decisively. “Marius will be the protector, and Tormund the comfort. Tradition will bow to fate.”

“Tormund will change,” Dad argued back. “Once he’s a little older, he will thrive performing everything the protector role entails. Marius is young enough to adapt.”

That’d been before he’d scarred Marius. After that terrible event, Dad didn’t quite change his mind. Instead, he fought to have two future queen’s protectors, as he and my kelpie older brother had bonded significantly over the accident. Mother saidno.

“Watch my gentle boy become the sweetest male, Theo,” she’d insisted. I strove not to disappoint her.

Dad’s final words on the matter were “What my mate does, I echo. However, you’re setting him up for failure. You will see one day.”

So, while Dad didn’t stand in the way of what Mother wanted, he kept moving back the day I would learn what manner of fae I was. Maybe when I was ten and started learning the tedium of managing the palace. But I ended up loving my apprenticeship under Rennyn. I’d especially enjoyed organizing the nesting supply rooms and picking out things to make the palace omegas happy. It was all a matter of patterns and fabrics, and I recognized that every omega had different nesting needs. They, in turn, loved my enthusiasm.

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