Page 4 of Fake Dating a Human 101

Dranian nodded. He stood. Then he walked over to the TV and punched the life out of it.

Lily’s jaw dropped. “Are you for real?!” she screeched.

When she whipped her head back to Shayne, she found him biting down on his lips and casting daggers into Dranian’s back with his eyes as the whole TV came crashing to the floor, creating a ringingsmashthat must have echoed all the way down the street.

At the counter, Mor sighed and shook his head.

“What did you just do to our TV, Dranian?!” Lily shrieked. She tried tugging from Shayne again, and this time, he let her go. But he didn’t take his thin-lipped smile or his wide, pointed gaze off Dranian.

“I’m curious about that also,” Mor mumbled through his teeth.

Dranian looked from Mor to Shayne. To Lily. Then he said, “Oops.”

“Oops?” Lily folded her arms. “Seriously?”

“It was an accident,” Dranian said dully. But his face contorted a little. He bit his tongue like it hurt or was numb. Or like he waslying.

“Oh well,” Shayne piped up. “I guess there’s no more TV for a while.” He strutted on past, whistling to himself like Dranian hadn’t just bashed a hole through the café’s expensive TV. Shayne began gathering mugs off bistro tables, suddenly prepared to resume business as usual.

Dranian, though, glanced back to the wall where the TV had been. His eyes settled on something resting on the shelf and he headed over to it. He grabbed the remote, held it up, and said to Shayne, “Ah. Is this what you were nodding to?”

Mor slapped a hand over his face. “So much for secret-y things, you fool,” he muttered.

“Wait…” Lily let out a laugh of disbelief and turned toward Shayne. “Secret-y things?” Shayne didn’t seem so eager to make eye contact anymore. “What secret-y things? What have you four been up to?” Lily put her hands on her hips, but she swallowed her words when Shayne spun back around with a look that said,“If you ask, I’ll tell them your secret-y thing.”

Lily dropped her hands from her hips as her gusto fled. She swallowed and made a show of looking at her watch. “You’re lucky I have to get to work,” she said. She pursed her lips and stared at the floor, pretending to see something interesting down there. Then she turned for the café door.

“Goodbye, Human. Your hair is quite ugly today,” Shayne called after her in his most affectionate voice.

Lily’s jaw tightened. “Your face is ugly,” she snapped as she shot him a look over her shoulder. But he just smiled in an obnoxious way that made it clear he knew she was wrong.

She cringed at her own lame response as she pushed her way outside and pulled on her police cap. “Unreal,” she muttered. Even a middle schooler could have come up with a better comeback than that.

The morning air tickled Lily’s nose as she walked. She realized she’d left her coffee behind after all that. She sighed at the thought of having to drink the weak blend with the metallic aftertaste they had at the station. Officer Westbow had once cleaned out the coffee machine with vinegar, and the coffee had the sharp flavour mixed into it ever since. Lily considered going back to Fae Café to get her coffee, but…

Somehow, she became more helpless under Shayne’s gaze than when she was looking into the eyes of a charged criminal. He shouldn’t have been able to rattle her so much; she hadn’t suffered through a lifetime of challenges and beaten the odds stacked against her just to be thrown off by a fairy who most people in her world only thought existed in children’s books.

Lily adjusted her hat with a vengeance and marched all the way to work without looking back.

2

Shayne Lyro and the Present

The amount of glitter on the Lyro table was a form of eye torture all on its own. Shayne squinted when the late evening sun dipped low enough to pierce through the arched dining room windows and reflect off the thousands of silver flakes adorning the tablecloth around everyone’s plates. It brought a whole new meaning to the term ‘blinding sunset’. He covered his eyes and peeked through a slit in his fingers, his gaze falling on an empty seat at the far end of the table. A seat that had been empty for more years than he could remember now. Truly, he almost forgot he once had a sister.

Shayne sighed and dropped his hand, deciding to close his eyes for the rest of the dinner instead. He wasn’t even hungry. He wouldn’t have come to this feast at all if Hans-Der—Shayne’s ever-smiling blood father—hadn’t required everyone’s attendance for whatever unimportant announcement he claimed to have to make. It made Shayne wonder what he was even still doing in this House.

He’d come to kill a dreamslipper. To rid himself of his nightmares. To sever the new, creative hold the House of Lyro had on him and be done with themforever.

Unfortunately, he didn’t realize until he got here that he couldn’t kill the pretty, trapped fairy. That he perhaps didn’t want to—ever since the moment he saw her in that miserable gilded cage and read the story in her eyes that told him she despised the Lyro name just as much as he did. Truly, he’d expected to meet some powerful siren queene working alongside his brothers and laughing in the rewards of their mutual wicked deeds. But Mycra Sentorious wasn’t that.

No, she was a night blossom with her petals torn off. A butterfly with ripped wings. A lovely beast with its ankle caught in a snare. She was, in every way, a prisoner.

And Shayne didn’t kill prisoners.

He adjusted in his seat, his heavy boots getting caught on the floor because he once again forgot he was wearing them. Down the table, a few of his blood brothers and his father’s esteemed guests lifted their heads at the boot-stomping ruckus. But they soon forgot about Shayne’s tap-dance show when the wide doors were opened and the Lyro’s favourite family prize was guided through their midst: their lovely, imprisoned dreamslipper with her wildly piercing green eyes and silk black hair.

The most powerful allies of Lyro grinned around the table, nodding their approval and clapping—including Lord Isbeth; former war fae with wind power that could rip up a forest. Many allies of the Lyro House were terrifying in their own way, wielding North powers so great they could freeze enemies or bury a fairy in the cold earth with a sweep of their hand. Shayne was no match for them, but that had never stopped him from chasing their daughters for kisses and challenging their sons to reckless duels in his youth.

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