Page 204 of Fated or Knot

He smacked his lips. “Me? Gallivant?” he asked with a toss of his glossy hair.

I leaned in closer, putting on my best puppydog look. “Wait, you would go gallivanting with me, right?”

Fal’s expression shifted to Unseelie mischief. “I would most certainly go gallivanting with you,mo stór.” After waiting a moment, he added, “To the nearest bed.”

I bit my lip on a moan. That sounded really tempting right about now. By the way he was eyeing me like the first course to a feast, I imagined he was thinking something similar.

He shook his head sharply. “Forget I said anything. Put your wine aside for a second, okay?” While I placed my wineglass and his crystal rose on the seat next to me, he did the same thing, easing his arm out from around me.

He caught my hands in his instead. Because I didn’t want to get mesmerized in his glowing eyes, I focused on his lips and the flash of his extra sharp fangs as he spoke. He’d talked about his brothers first because he was working up to this moment. I didn’t want to miss anything he had to say.

“As well as I can read others, I profess that I am not the best with introspection. Some might be uncharitable and call it a willful blindness. But I know I’m not without fault. None of us truly are.”

I nodded in agreement. I definitely had a stack of flaws to contend with too.

“I’ve been insulted in many ways for being the male that I am. One very simple word has stuck with me the longest. Don’t laugh, okay?” He squeezed my hands and I promised not to. “A female once likened me to a tomcat. She said I must have grimalkin blood, to never be satisfied with one female for longer than a few days. Of all the things, a jilted lover’s accusation was what I dwelled on.Tomcat, ugh.”

That actually wasn’t all that funny. An irrational fear rose in me that he was about to say that I hadn’t satisfied him either, despite how the rest of our conversation had gone. I held in my reaction, though, letting him talk.

“I feared she was right. At that point, I’d never invested myself long term in any female. My duty in finding the next Queen of Serian was too heavy a burden. I’ve always known, from the moment I was old enough to understand my place as crown prince, that my mate had to be a very special female indeed. Not a casual fling. So, I’d become a”—he shuddered dramatically—“tomcat in the meantime. No attachments, no long-term consequences, and no omegas. You really are the first and only omega I will sleep with.”

I nodded. He’d said it more than once, in clear enough language that I knew he wasn’t trying to hide any extra details around the fae compulsion to tell the truth.

“Until we met, I was afraid I wouldn’t know what to do when I actually did have my mate in front of me. What would it even be like to be drawn irrevocably to one female for the rest of my life? And her, to me?” He blew out a heavy breath. “And the rest of my pack, to her too? There has never been a female that’s captured all four of our attentions at once. Yet, you did that.Effortlessly. You had me the moment you stole my mask. Tormund the second you smiled at him. Kauz within the span of one dream. And Marius before you even knew you’d met him. It’s the hand of fate just…” Moving our hands, he cupped them together. My fingers were trembling.

“As for what it feels like to be drawn to one female…” He drew my quivering hand to his mouth to kiss the back of it. “I have not been so much as tempted by another since we met. I helped release you, a shy, sweet songbird from her cage, hoping you would let me catch and keep you anyway. I wanted you to see my home as your home, my bed as yours to share, and my pack as your refuge.”

He cupped my cheek, and on reflex I met his gaze and the tenderness that reflected in those sapphire pools. “And finally, my heart as yours to keep,” he murmured. “With my pack inconsensus about who we want for our mate, I can finally say it: I love you. I want you by my side now, tomorrow, and every tomorrow afterward until my star and yours sparkle next to one another in the sky. My brothers love you too. We want you to be ours forever. Join your soul to Pack Sorles and be our pack princess, Lark.”

I felt like my chest was too small to contain my reaction. It would just burst out of me and I would crow to the whole palace,Fal loves me!I wasn’t blind to the fact that he’d held himself a little distant and watched his brothers with me, but I hadn’t realized how much weight he was placing on a consensus.

“I love you too,” I said, covering my mouth as a joyful sound between a laugh and a huff of disbelief escaped. Even though I’d known Fal and his brothers for months now, this still felt surreal. It was really happening, and I was truly about to be a princess. “And I would be honored to join Pack Sorles as your pack princess.”

He stroked my cheek, his smile warm and genuine, without his usual hint of being up to no good. “And I would be glad of one more thing. Can I tell you a dark elf fact?”

I perked up, but probably not for the reason he expected. Maybe I would be finding out what was going on with the crystal from Telimarr after all. “Of course!”

“We have a tradition dating back to our time deep underground. A male would go deeper into the tunnels and search for a specific kind of mineral—it gleams in a certain way to dark elf eyes. He’d present it to his intended female to ask for a mating bond. If she accepted, she turned it into jewelry unique to them. In modern day, it’s called a stone match and it’s practiced to show permanence in a relationship,” he explained.

I licked my lips, and his gleaming feline gaze followed the swipe of my tongue. Itwashappening, and I was prepared. “Do you want to have a stone match with me?” I asked in a hush.

“I’m supposed to ask you that,” he teased. He stood and reached under a different couch, pulling out a box that looked remarkably like the one where I was storing the crystal from Telimarr. When he returned to where I was seated, he descended gracefully to his knees. “My lady, I have traveled to a cave and spelunked for an arduous period of time to bring you this.”

He opened the box, taking out a squat and fat prism-shaped crystal. I gasped as he pulled it free and it caught the light. It was a clear blue-purple color throughout, with no hint of imperfections, truly a gorgeous shade that merged our coloring. He assumed a pose of supplication, offering it up to me.

“By that I mean, an incredible lengthy and difficult journey of, um, three hours through a well-lit tunnel. And though the trip was long and the choices sparse, I have returned to the surface with a cool fucking rock. Should you accept it and we make stone match jewelry from it, you will make me a reformed and happily claimed tomcat.” He flashed a grin up at me. “What do you say?”

I repeated the words I’d been silently practicing, lest I mess up this ritual by accident. “I say that no stone match is complete without the efforts of us both.”

Fal’s slitted pupils rounded out as his lips parted in shock. “What?” he asked in a hush.

“Be right back.”

I got up and rushed out to retrieve the box I’d hidden, returning to find the dark elf prince still on his knees and not yet recovered from his surprise. “Um, I don’t know what to do next,” I admitted.

“Lark, you’re killing me. How do you also have a rock for this?” he asked.

“Do you want to see it?”

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