Page 169 of Fated or Knot

At least instead of reflecting on my doubts and fears until they became snapping, clawing nightmares, I dwelt on my p’nixie. Her absence was a fierce ache in my chest. I at last understood why my father called Mother his heart. It seemed I’d given Lark mine at some point in the bonding process and I’d no longer feel complete without her by my side.

I’d last slept in her arms and she lingered with me as the only sweet thing I’d ever crave. Her effortlessly musical voice and laugh haunted my ears, and I wanted the softness of her body against mine. She wasmine, my mate, and the future mother of my children. I longed to return to that inn by the sea, just the two of us. It’d been what, two days? Three? This time without her just seemed to blur. I’d returned to Neslune after stealing one last kiss, and paced in her rooms that night, plotting how to hunt Pack Ellisar as efficiently as possible, so they would have no chance at troubling her.

I’d settled for creating a scent trap, since I’d brought home some of Lark’s underclothes, still stained with the heady smell of her slick. Her enemies knew what she smelled like. They’d probably embedded that scent in their nostrils, dreaming of claiming her against her will when they pawed at her.

The trio of barkfolk had to be fucking stupid. It was the only reasonable explanation for them watching Lark suffering from her pre-heat forfour yearswithout succumbing. Did they gawp at one another as they wondered what was taking so long? They’d certainly enjoyed bullying her when she was at her most vulnerable, limping and magicless.

I would take great joy in breaking all three of them. Even if Lark didn’t want to see their battered corpses laid at her feet, it would still be done and they would trouble her no longer.

My estimation of their intelligence was one of the reasons why I assumed a scent trap would work in the first place. I’d first washed with scent-blocking soap to dampen the heavy waves of musk I was still putting off from my rut. Then I’d tied a satchel to my side that leaked Lark’s scent, leading a deliberate looping trail through the Seelie side of Neslune, the Garden District. It was a beautifully maintained piece of land on the outskirts of the city, where Theli was the dominant language and most Seelie immigrants ended up living.

I’d loosened the satchel to leave a strong impression of chocolate and honey crackers in front of a general store at the end of the district. Just beyond this store, the oversized flowers grown and coaxed into place by Seelie magic met the scraggly Serian forest. If this worked, one of the barkfolk would emerge from hiding in the wilderness and run face-first into my mate’s scent. And since I was seated by a window in a tavern across the street, I would see the moment it happened.

Fal was already at work in the Garden District, doing things his own way. Making friends. He’d gotten Thalas’s help beforeI’d even arrived and had the Magician King transfer our Seelie disguises to rings. Thalas had changed my features more than the basic merman illusion, since my face was known around my home.

He’d advised I avoid speaking, as most mermen had melodic voices rather than my irritable growl, and the Garden District Seelie were on high alert for anything suspicious. As soon as the crown announced a sizable bounty for three barkfolk, a flood of would-be bounty hunters upturned this district and harassed our more plantlike citizens. Some Unseelie had to be thrown out by the police for ruining the business of the single barkfolk who already lived here, a beta female.

Fal had approached her in the guise of a forest elf to apologize for the damage done to her greenhouse and shopfront, then paid her handsomely to demonstrate how barkfolk magic worked. She’d called it treeshaping. A barkfolk could assimilate into the side of a tree and blend into its bark. With their eyes closed, a motionless barkfolk would be perfectly camouflaged.

From there, they could listen in to the network of tree roots to learn information about a forest’s surroundings and jump from tree to tree quickly. The barkfolk strongest in their magic could also command tree roots and branches to move at their command.

We assumed the bark brothers—as we now called Pack Ellisar—had seen the wanted posters going up and gotten the fuck out of the city. If they had more than two thoughts between them, they were still close, and waiting out the public’s attention. All magic had a weakness, though, and the beta female shared that even a perfectly assimilated barkfolk needed to eat.

Fal intended to pay her further, as Crown Prince Falindel, for her troubles with her business, and for giving us enough information to devise a strategy.

Fal thought the bark brothers were disguised via illusions and hiding in plain sight amongst the Seelie, working to get a foothold in the city and waiting for information on Lark. I figured that was giving them too much credit for forward thinking. If they’d managed to acquire a disguise, one of them would use it to tiptoe into town, buy supplies, and go back into hiding. We’d see who was right.

Thalas had given us identical gadgets and explained in detail how they worked, which had been entirely too many words. All I cared about was that mine was discreet, resembling a bronze timepiece, and already attuned to the magic that’d formed our Seelie illusions. Instead of telling time, the needle under its glass dome would point toward the next nearest concentration of essence, presumably an essence spinner or a full-body illusion.

It currently pointed toward a boisterous olive-skinned alpha orc behind me, pounding down beers with a group of laborers. He was probably an essence spinner, a conclusion I came to after listening in on his conversation for a while. I was a loner at a window by myself, by all appearances a lonely merman drinking the day away. I’d spent plenty of full moons after settling here.

I was into my fourth flagon of imported Theli wheat beer. The last time I’d drank this, I’d been watching Lark limp out of a Theli inn while thinking the locals had no taste. It was absolute swill, too sweet and fruity. But now it reminded me of her and it eased my feral side’s anxiety about her absence, just a little.

The staff left me be to daydream about my mate and suffer from the relentless pressure in my loins. I’d been in rut for an unusually long time and being away from Lark hadn’t made it fade like it should’ve. I should probably seek medical assistance soon.

Who was I kidding? I never went to the infirmary. I just needed to be knot-deep in my mate a couple dozen more times.That should fix me right up.

A forest elf came up to my left side and clunked his flagon against mine. I tensed, nearly snarling at him, before I recognized Fal’s disguise. No longer a lithe and elegant dark elf prince, he’d been given muscles and scars to better resemble a working class alpha. We wore the same fake pack mark, a wheel and anchor.

“Hey, brother,” he said gruffly, speaking Theli. I slapped him on the back in greeting, as he would be used to if he spent any time at all with the kind of alphas he was emulating. He winced and drew up the stool next to mine, taking a quick glance at my timepiece-like gadget.

“Any lead?” I asked in a low voice.

“Not yet. How goes this?” He couldn’t help a chuckle from entering the question. Perhaps he was right to be doubtful. There were three or four entrances to the Garden District straight off the forest, and the wind would have dispersed most of the scent trail by now. The sun was setting, and clearly, since Fal was here, the Seelie were turning in like flowers shuttering their blooms as daylight faded.

Fal smelled downright floral. The scent change was the only symptom of rut he was displaying so far, and probably helped him fit in amongst the Seelie he’d spent time befriending. I hadn’t deliberately rubbed my affliction into his side of the pack bond, yet he’d picked it up from me immediately. His side of the pack bond simmered with aimless lust. It’d probably boil over into a rut as persistent as mine the moment Lark returned to the city and he caught a whiff of her mouthwatering scent.

She’d be nudged into estrus and sandwiched between us so fast…

“Are you going to answer the question, or just drift off?” Fal grumbled.

I blinked, coming out of what Lark called ‘the feral stare,’ when my thoughts would dissociate from reality and my eyes would dilate. “Nothing’s happened yet.”

Fal took a long, overly obnoxious sip of his beer. His brows lifted in surprise. “It would be unfortunate to develop a taste for this,” he mused.

“It’s disgusting.”

He eyed the three empty flagons I’d shoved off to the side. “Uh huh.”

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