Page 43 of Fated or Knot

“Oh.” She considered for a few moments. “What’s a memoir?”

He ignored her. This, apparently, opened the door for more conversation. “Hey, Marius,” she would begin. The kelpie’s snorts of annoyance were only getting louder with each question.

Tormund, who had me in a warm cuddle, snuggled me tighter to his chest and blew a curl of smoke from his mouth. “Better him than me,” he muttered.

Marius eventually left the room, and Laurel made up an excuse to follow him about five minutes later. I watched and shook my head, hoping my first thought was just a wild guess. Laurel wasn’t developing a crush on a fellow water fae, was she?

She came back with a pout a little later. “He’s reading in the hall and wants to be alone. Can you believe it?”

Oh, stars. She does have a crush.

Nothing about this was going to end well.

15

LARK

Ihad a crush, too. Four of them, to be exact.

I think they liked me back, even though the shadow of their mother loomed overhead. They didn’t allow one male alone with me unless Cymora and Laurel ended up rotating to my room together, and when that happened, the male by my side was a grouchy Marius.

It made every interaction a touch awkward when they’d check each other’s behavior at the first sign of slipping. Not that we didn’t all slip at one point or another. My body wove in and out of the first stages of pre-heat with Kauz restoring my suppressant tattoo as often as he could. With my heat as tightly bound as it was, I couldn’t blame the hollow longing in my gut on anything but my own feelings.

I noticed every time Tormund hesitated, his fingertips drifting lower on my belly before returning to the safe band around my middle that was not an inch too far to the north or south. When Kauz tilted my head up in the hall one evening, a tremble of restraint and frustration creased his expression right before he pressed his lips to my forehead. He said the Serianphrase tattooed on my wrist, in the ribbon the purple lark carried. None of the princes would tell me what it meant, and I was itching to find out.

Fal would always note who was in a room with us before keeping any touch chaste. He implied he wanted time alone with me, but it never happened. And Marius…well, I was convinced he simply didn’t like me, as no amount of thawing on his part included more than an accidental brush of touch in a confined space.

I missed their scents. Sleep didn’t come so easy now that the tokens I had from the alphas had mostly lost their scent. Kauz hadn’t returned to my dreams, either, where we could kiss without consequences. Three interested males and zero kisses… It was disappointing.

Even though I knew why it was all happening, it didn’t feel great. The foxes were guarding the henhouse most efficiently despite their worries about us spending eight days cooped up in this train together.

Cracks showed in our routine by day five. Marius looked at the open pages of his book like he was going to harm someone if he heard “Hey, Marius” one more time from Laurel. Fal hadn’t settled this afternoon, pacing the limited space in the room and eventually the hall with all the energy of a caged jungle cat.

Laurel had asked me to brush out her hair, which I was doing when Fal returned. He took one look at Marius and said something in Serian that had the kelpie snarling immediately. Fal bared his teeth back with a growl.

I’d come along enough in my studies to string basic Serian phrases together, but I didn’t know what they were about to fight over except there was a lot of “fuck” being thrown around. In Serian, it was “foc,”a snappy replacement I’d picked up on after they switched languages enough to mask the curse.

I stopped mid-brushing with a whimper, terrified of alpha anger, especially when it was between the princes. Marius stood, spiking the aggression in the room when they were nose to nose. For a moment, I thought they’d really come to blows, before Marius left the room with a kelpie’s dismissive snort. Fal settled across from us, his muscles still tensed.

“What was that about?” Laurel asked. She was just as wide-eyed as I was.

“He was in my seat.” Fal’s usual measured voice was much deeper with a growl underlying it.

It seemed like a lot more than that, but he didn’t seem to be in the mood to explain further. He took us in as I started working the brush through a knot in Laurel’s hair. “I didn’t realize you required special assistance,” he commented toward her.

“This is her job,” Laurel said.

Fal raised a brow. “Which job is that now?” he asked, still pissed off about something and narrowing in on a new target to take it out on.

Some of her self-preservation instincts seemed to kick in, and she stammered, “Uh, in our family…she picked up what the help used to do after we fell on hard times and had to dismiss them all. She still does. She likes it. Right, Lark?”

I didn’t answer, too nervous in the presence of an angry alpha. He stood and snatched the hairbrush from my hand, shoving it into Laurel’s chest. “Let’s cut this off at the quick. My lady is not your servant. Your hands work just fine, so brush your own starsdamned hair.”

She staggered back into me. “You can’t talk to me like that,” she said in a low, teary voice.

Oh no. She was going to run to Cymora, and then I’d have a serious problem. “It was no bother,” I put in. “We were bonding.”

He wore an unimpressed expression, which didn’t change a flicker to acknowledge me. “Laurel, I need you to leave. Right now.” Fal took a deep breath and mustered a tight smile. “I want a few minutes with my omega. Could you find somewhere else to be?”

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