Page 40 of Fake Dating a Human 101

Dranian evaded Cress as they marched through the woods. Cress continuously tried to sneak up on him, tried to smack the back of Dranian’s neck or poke Dranian’s hand. Ever since Luc admitted that all they had to do was touch to get their bodies back to normal, Cress hadn’t let Dranian out of his sight.

“Just give him his body back,” Mycra murmured to Dranian after Cress’s fourth failed attempt. “You don’t need it anymore.”

Shayne watched Dranian shake his head. And despite Shayne’s troubles, he smirked.

The situation was everything Shayne could have ever dreamed of. But his laughter fizzled out when reality set it. He’d lost his smile somewhere between his decision not to kill a dreamslipper and having his human home threatened.

He released a heavy breath and fiddled with a button on his coat now that Lily had returned it to him. It was all he could do not to stare at the pretty human as she led the way up front with Mor like she owned the forest. Like she belonged here, which she didn’t.

Lily, Lily, Lily. What was he going to do with her?

Shayne noticed Cress scheming another sneak-up attempt on Dranian. He almost made it too, but Shayne flicked a pebble ahead with his toe. It hit the back of Dranian’s leg, and Dranian whirled just in time to duck Cress’s swinging fist.

Alright, he couldn’t help it. Shayne laughed.

But once again, his laugh fell off, hit the dirt, and was trampled beneath his bare feet as he walked.

He had to tell them. He had to tell Cress, and Mor, and Dranian. He couldn’t let his true brothers stay here when Kate, Violet, and Greyson were in trouble. They had no idea how important it was that they return before the two days were up. Shayne pressed his fingers against his faeborn heart, an ache forming there. He wasn’t sure he could solve his problem to begin with, but now that Cress and Mor were here, it only made sense for them to take everyone home with them. Except for Shayne.

Shayne would tell them their humans were in trouble as soon as he dealt with the fox. And then he would head to the House of Riothin to try to save his future. It was the only way Hans-Der Lyro might be afraid enough to keep the House of Lyro from meddling with Shayne’s life. Shayne didn’t have the heart to admit to his friends that if Lord Riothin decided not to kill him, Shayne would still likely have to stay there for several years before he could slip away and return to the human world. That only then would things have passed over, and he might be free.

Years of casting fake smiles in an enemy House was better than a lifetime in a highest chair.

“What a fool.” Cress fell into step beside Shayne and folded his arms. His scowl seemed fitting on the body he wore.

“You make a good Dranian,” Shayne said. “Maybe you two should stay switched.”

Cress’s eyes rounded, and only when he spotted Shayne’s smirk did he seem to realize it was a joke. “I’ll not have you making such preposterous suggestions in my presence, Shayne,” he stated. “We came all the way here for that body. Imagine how distressed I was to wake up from my nap and realize my eyes had changed colour, and my shapely hair was different, and my face—oh, my face! It’s awful.”

Mycra cast a mean look back at Cress. She took hold of Dranian’s arm as if to assure him Cress was crazy, and Cress made a loud, repulsed noise.

“Don’t you dare think about doing anything of the frisky sort in that form, Dranian! If you violate my precious body, if you eventhinkabout kissing that female with my mouth, I’ll take your tongue and bury you in a cauldron of bloodsucking slugs!” Cress shouted in return.

Dranian tugged his arm away from Mycra, and they both stepped a few inches away from each other. But a minute later, Mycra leaned to whisper something to Dranian. Shayne watched how Dranian looked back at her with what might have been the grump’s best version of a smile. How his eyes followed Mycra wherever she went. How he was always just an arm’s reach away.

The fool was practically obsessed with her.

Shayne stopped fiddling with the button on his coat and chewed on his thumbnail instead. He’d considered more than once he might be best off to grab Mycra Sentorious and drag her back to the House of Lyro with him. She would be a good bargaining chip. She might be enough to give Shayne a way out in the end.

His gaze hit the ground.

Could he steal Dranian’s happiness for his own? Even if Shayne miraculously found a way to use Mycra to set himself free, Jethwire and Massie would just make their returned dreamslipper haunt him like they had before. Eventually, Shayne would probably be driven mad. He might run himself off a cliff or face some other dramatic end of his own doing.

He didn’t want to see Mycra as a prisoner again anyway. And he didn’t want to leave Dranian alone. One of them had to take care of Dranian, and Shayne knew it wouldn’t be him.

He never imagined when he first went to his childling home that he wouldn’t be able to return to the human realm. That his blood brothers would know of his life there. That they would do this to him. He should have never left the café to begin with. He should have suffered through the nightmares for eternity.

Shayne’s stare found Lily’s back again. Truly, he’d thought he would eventually force Lily to marry him, and he could give her the happily ever after he knew she secretly wanted. He thought he might become a police officer too and terrorize the poorly behaved humans of the city at her side. He hadn’t even found a way to steal a kiss from those tempting lips of hers yet.

“Did you know you were in love with a human?”

How many times had Massie’s voice sang through Shayne’s head with those wretched words? Shayne rubbed his forehead and pressed a hand over his heart as it flittered off for a beat. Massie was diabolical. He sputtered nonsense for fun. Just because Shayne had found comfort in his moments with Lily and had often thought of her over the long months of battling his nightmares, it did not mean helovedher.

It was just another trap.

Shayne chewed on the inside of his cheek as he watched the way Lily walked. The way her hair swished with her movements. The way she breathed. The way she—

He nearly fell when she looked back over her shoulder and almost caught him staring.

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