Page 95 of Fated Exile

Rolling my eyes, I elbow him. "Don't make jokes."

"There's that smile." He grins down at me as I twist around to face him, a wicked gleam in his eyes. "In all seriousness, Lilah, it's not a race. We're mated now, and we have all the time in the world. We'll each say those words in our own moment. I know you'll say them back, and I'm not in a rush."

Anxiety spools out of me, and I put my hand on his cheek, enjoying the sting of his stubble against my palm. "Thank you."

As I fall asleep in his arms, I worry briefly that if I don't say it now, I'll never get the chance. I dofeelsomething, after all, and I think it's love. I've already told Kieran how I feel—but then again, there was no denying the words we said so many years ago, or the ways we know each other that no one else can. I want to get there with the others, too, before I jump into saying things I'm not sure I mean.

I'll get there in time.

We have all the time in the world.

* * *

A cool breeze washes my skin, and it takes me a long moment to realize that it's not a breeze coming through the window, because Finn didn't open one, and I'm not in his bedroom anymore.

I'm not even in his ground floor apartment, either.

Somehow I'm standing outside, wearing only the underwear and borrowed T-shirt I slipped on just before bed, staring out in the night sky near my house.

My house, which is miles away from the apartment Finn rents, all the way on the other side of town.

The bruises and scrapes I can feel along the bottoms of my feet and my palms emphasize how much running I must have done to get here. For some reason they're not healing as quickly as they normally would.

And my gaze is drawn down, sharply down, to an odd weight I feel in my hands, and a glowing warmth that pulses out towards me.

Two gemstones are glowing in my palms.

The same gemstones I pulled from Bastian's mind, which somehow followed me out into the real world.

I told myself that if I put them away in a drawer somewhere, and forgot about them, they would cease to matter.

They've decided to prove me wrong.

Thirty-Five

Delilah

The gemstones are still glowing long after the sun has risen, their eerie light even stranger with the sunlight laid over them. They sit on the kitchen table, mocking me as I drink my coffee, my newly-healed hands snug and tight around a mug.

"You know, for a second, I thought you'd snuck out of the bed in the middle of the night to go sleep with one of your other mates," Finn muses aloud, "and now I'm wishing that's what had actually happened."

Roarke, who responded to my distressed phone call this morning, snorts indelicately. "As if that would've bothered you. I'm betting you would've jumped her bones if you'd felt her having sex through the mate bond."

"Speaking of..." Finn leans forward over the kitchen table, the glowing gemstones painting the edges of his warm brown face in tones of gold. "Did you feel it last night, Bell, when I made your mate come? Did it excite you?"

"I felt it," he says calmly, "and it just made me glad that Dee was able to relax and enjoy herself."

I squirm in my chair, unable to come up with a response to that. Thankfully, I don't have to, because Finn has a quip ready to go. "What I'm getting from that is that you touched yourself and thought about me being with her. Which is basically the same as you being with me, which is only inevitable, given that I'm sexy as sin and you're repressed as hell. Pretty soon you'll be begging to join me when you feel us get down."

"If I were going to do that with anyone, it certainly wouldn't be you," Roarke says, his tone mild. We both know that Finn means his sexual comments about as much as he means any joke he makes, which is maybe fifty percent on a good day. As if remembering this, Roarke switches his tone as he adds, "I'm willing to bet that if I jumped into the middle of you and Delilah, you wouldn't have a cluewhatgoeswhere.If anything, you'd probably suffer some shrinkage and have to run away home with your tail tucked between your legs. And I don't mean yourtail."

I choke and spit out a little of my coffee at this response, eyeing Finn with my lips parted. He just grins, winks at Roarke, then looks over his shoulder and smiles wider. "Oh, it's Kieran! He's just slipped through the front door." In a conspiratorial voice he adds, "If you were going to do that with anyone, I bet I know who it would be."

Jumping to my feet, I step in to try to smooth over any awkwardness before Finn's teasing hits a sore spot. Knowing him, he's likely a few seconds away from making a joke about Kieran and Roarke getting together that will hit differently.

Ever since the Mating Ceremony, Kieran's been processing some pretty heavy, topsy-turvy feelings for Roarke, and he's not ready to decide what to do with them, much less let Finn know they exist. I'm certain the close encounter we shared in the abandoned factory didn't help anything. It's time to change the subject.

"We should talk about the gemstones," I tell the guys, including Kerry, who's pulling a waffle off the waffle iron, in this conversation. "Almost everyone is here." Spotting Bastian coming down the stairs, I add, "Everyone except Lance is here. He's out on patrol, so we might as well get started. Because Ihaveto know why I woke up with these gemstones in my hands."

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