Page 137 of Flirting with Darkness

I bowed my head. “Yes.”

The leader’s grin grew much too wide as though I was confirming Faolán’s help.

At my ear, Faolán exhaled a breath so soft, I doubted the pack caught it. But I did and it sounded something like relief. He cleared his throat. “This is my betrothed.”

Now I’d said yes, I supposed that was accurate. Fae couldn’t lie, so the stories said, but that didn’t mean they always told the full truth. Interesting.

The leader’s dark eyebrows shot up, and behind him, the others cocked their heads.

Faolán set me down on my feet but kept his hand on my hip, something possessive in the gesture.

Still, I was no longer held in place. I could run. The passage he’d scooped me into continued away from the werewolves. But they’d only chase me, and I’d be back at square one—sprinting through an unknown land with deadly beasts on my tail.

No option at all.

“Your betrothed?” The leader lifted his head. His nostrils flared as he sniffed the air, looking past me to Faolán. A challenge sparked in his eyes. “She didn’t smell of you before.”

Another of his pack stepped forward, mousy hair dull in the shade of the rocks as he bowed his head. “Or we’d never have dared—”

“Shut up.” The leader snapped his teeth together at his fawning packmate before turning back to me and Faolán. His grin had turned into a sneer, baring his canines. That spark of challenge flared. “Isaid, she didn’t smell of you.”

The hand on my hip twitched, then dropped away.

“AndIsaid, she’s my betrothed.” Faolán’s voice was quiet, not even echoing along the passage, but it contained a promise of something as utterly hard and unyielding as the stones around us.

He brushed past me, one stride, two, and stopped before the pack leader. Standing in profile, he towered over the werewolf. “We are going to the skyshrine to get married.”

The mousy-haired one whined and withdrew into the pack.

Because Faolán wasn’t just bigger than them—he was a fucking giant. Seven foot tall, maybe more, and thick with muscle. No fur covered his bare forearms or neck or tufted his ears, but theywerepointed ears. He wasn’t a werewolf. He was somethingelse.

All he carried was a pack on his back and two blades at his hips. In my hands, they’d probably have been shortswords, but against him, they were more like large daggers. He didn’t make any move to draw them.

Dark, steel-grey hair fell loose from a knot at the back of his head and brushed in his eyes as he glared down at the leader. He’d stopped a generous pace away, but at that size, he didn’t need to stand close to make a space feel crowded.

The leader took half a step away.

I didn’t blame him.

Not sure I’d have said yes if I’d seen him first. It wasn’t only that he was huge: with that scruffy hair and the strong brow shadowing his eyes, the mud-spattered clothes, the bump in his nose that suggested it had been broken at least once, and the…

Oh, gods.

His hands.

They weren’t nails I’d felt digging into my cheek as he’d held me silent, butclaws. His fingers weren’t bent like the werewolves’; in fact, his hands looked relatively normal, albeit massive. But…

Short and the same colour as the tip of a fingernail, a claw peeked over the tip of each finger, rather like a dog’s.

Sure, they weren’t long, dark talons like the pack leader’s, but they were still claws.

My heart hammered as hard as it had when I’d been sprinting.

He was almost as beastly as the werewolves.

“Will you stand in our way?” Through the overgrown beard, there were no lines by his mouth—this wasn’t a beast who smiled often, if ever. In fact, despite his dark grey hair, there were no lines on his face at all. Helookedaround thirty, though fae didn’t age as we did. So the stories said.

Fuck knew how much of that was true.

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