Page 67 of Fated or Knot

He jerked his head the moment I made contact with his alpha mark with the barrier of a sheet and his clothes between us. When he looked at me again, his pupils were shrinking back to their proper size.

I smiled in relief. “Marius,” I said. “I can explain. Your beast?—”

His breathing shallowed out as he took in how I was posed over him, then he bared his teeth in a flash of aggression. “Get off of me, female,” he snarled.

I fell away as if burned. “Wait, do you think… I wasn’t?—”

We mirrored one another, though there wasn’t far for either of us to go. He flattened his bulk to the wall, hyperventilating from between his bared teeth. I’d call it animal panic, but it was the fae male clawing in place and looking for an escape, not his beast.

I fell off the cot with a whimper and jolted the side of my head off the table on my way down. A keen escaped my lips. I would’ve hunkered down underneath it if Tormund wasn’t suddenly awake and growling with redcap menace as he sat up in his cot.Stars, he was going to rage.I crawled across the table and launched at him with a flap of my wings.

“Don’t rage. I’m okay. It’s okay,” I said, clinging to his torso.

Marius was out the door and into the hall while Tormund, still bleary from his wakeup, put his arms around me. “I’m not going to rage, li’l bird. What was that about?” he whispered.

“Seems like it was more of Marius’s shit,” Fal grumbled from his bunk above us. “Let’s go back to sleep.”

I had no idea where Marius hid for the last few hours of our trip, but he didn’t return to the room. At first, I waited and watched the door, wanting to apologize and explain what’d happened.

But the longer he was away, the more his beast’s words niggled at me. I chewed on them without satisfaction as I spentthe morning with Fal and Tormund. Kauz had left the room after breakfast and hadn’t come back either.

“Where have you been?I’ve waited for you.”

My head hurt, and not just from the bump I’d gotten. There was something I was missing. The beast implied we’d met earlier, but surely I’d remember a kelpie alpha like Marius visiting Osme Fen.

It wasn’t like I could ask him. The male would rather hide or sulk or whatever he was doing, and I was too afraid of my stepfamily to consider leaving the room to find him. If he wanted to be angry with me,fine. I could be angry too. He owed me some kind of explanation for what I’d woken up to this morning.

I snuggled into my fur-lined cloak, crossing my arms underneath it with a scowl. Ripped or not, it was heavy enough for the winter chill, and one of the males had cleaned off Cymora’s shoeprint. Kauz, I assumed. He seemed like the type to realize the sight of it bothered me.

We’d rolled up the shade over the room’s window and watched Serian whoosh by as the train descended toward our destination. The further north the train traveled, the more snow and ice coated the land and the pointed roofs of houses below.

I forgot what I was trying to be angry about, as my heart was fit to beat out of my chest. I picked at my fingernails, beyond nervous for meeting the queen. That’d happen tonight, after I settled my things and changed clothes. Stars, I wasn’t ready.

In the worst-possible scenario, I could use my bare understanding of Serian and the nine hundred full moon coins hiding somewhere in my things to get a magirail ride to Zemosia after all. I wasn’t completely without options, but Ihadgotten complacent with how easy it’d been to spend time with the princes and start using the m-word despite how unlikely it was that I’d be approved as a princess.

The ghost of mermaid laughter haunted me.“Likeyoucould ever be a princess.”

I had to prove Cymora wrong. Somehow.

I replaced her voice in my mind with the roughened growl of Marius’s beast.“You are mine.”It helped. I was smiling as the train glided into the magirail station in Neslune, secure in one thing: the princes wanted me too. No matter what happened next, I had that.

“Stay here for now,mo stór. Back of the train disembarks last. Plus, we have to secure transport for all our things,” Fal said. He exchanged a meaningful look with Tormund before leaving the room.

I wondered what that was about but was too busy brooding to ask. Tormund had stopped trying to get me to talk and simply held me and purred for the last part of our trip, soothing the ragged emotional edges chafing my inner omega. I didn’t know what I’d do without his soothing presence if his mother rejected me as her heir.

The window looked out over a stretch of the station platform. I watched the semi-familiar faces of other passengers file off with their bags. Among them was Fal, who hurried out of sight, just to return ten minutes later with four alphas, three male and one female, dressed like police.

“Is something else happening?” I asked, stiffening as I watched them board the train. Were they here for me? Some Unseelie trick after all?

“No?” Tormund tried to say innocently, his tone pitching up.

It wasn’t long until we heard shouting. “How dare you! I have done nothing wrong! Arrest the nightmare monster that assaulted me in my sleep instead!” It was Cymora, her voice getting louder. “I want to speak to my stepdaughter. Lark—” She cut off with a sudden choke as I went board-straight and tensed, awaiting an order.

“Maybe something is happening,” Tormund said after it was obvious Cymora had been dragged away before she could give me an order. He winced. “Please don’t ask any more. We’ll tell you everything when we can.”

I sighed and whined at the same time, earning an unhappy look from Tormund. He kissed my crown and said, “It is a happy day, li’l bird. We’re home! I can’t wait to show you your new nest. We will fill it together with all the things you love.”

My inner omega perked up. I wanted a nest again…a space that was my own. I wouldn’t have to share with the moodiest kelpie in Serian, or anyone else unless they were invited. “That sounds like a lot of fun,” I said.

---