Page 69 of Falling in Love with A Tiny Bat

Nope!I cannot keep replaying that night. I can’t. And I shouldn’t. And if Idare, I really should focus more on the freaky black globs Alexios devoured as I pulled out of my nightmare,nottheotherstuff.

“Zahra let me sleep with her a few nights ago.” Alexios pushes a fork full of spinach into his mouth.

Brittny’s cheeks explode red as Ollie’s dimples vanish.

Looking half sick when he swallows, Alexios shudders. “I understand both you and Zy spent quite a bit of time in your animal forms with your lovers none the wiser. I also understand that in their ignorance, you both shared the same sleeping arrangements for nights on end.” Alexios pulls his scowl off hisfood to meet Ollie’s shocked eyes. “How did you manage the overwhelming stimuli of your soulmate’s scent without a single enchantment to numb it?”

Ollie’s mouth opens. He catches Brittny’s gaze. Clearing his throat, he says, “Um, poorly.”

“What unfortunate news.”

It occurs to me that, perhaps, the fact Alexios looked half dead the morning afterThat Incidenthad nothing to do with him taking care of Ash before I woke up to him. Maybe he didn’t sleep at all that night.

I would feel worse.

If I didn’t want to skin him alive and make a tiny white bat scarf out of his hide right now.

Shoving more food in my face, I remembergratitudeand mumble, “We did notsleeptogether.”

Alexios frees the shortest breath of a laugh. “I suppose I did misspeak… It’s true that I did very little sleeping.”

Dude is not helping me out here.

Glaring, I snap, “Ollie, is it possible to make a calzone with mushrooms in it?”

Alexios’s absently soft expression mutates. “Why do you hate me, Zahra?”

I bat my lashes and steal a chunk of decimated buttery bread off his plate. “No particular reason.”

“Did you not want me to tell them we slept together?”

“Sweetheart, that’s a euphemism, and if you’re not aware of that, I might be able to forgive you. But, see, I’m not that naive.”

Alexios peers down his nose at me, letting long moments pass. Thenevilovertakes him. Smirking in a horribly handsome sort of way, he toys with a morsel of spinach. “If you hate when I have fun, say that.”

“I hate when you have fun.”

“No, you don’t.”

“You are the bane of my existence, the reason I cry myself to sleep. The trauma of existing in your presence is wholly unrivaled. Explain yourself, or I will find a means to attain revenge that will haunt you forever more.”

He chuckles. “Zahra had a nightmare. I handled the boogeyman. Then I shifted into my bat form and stayed with her in case she whipped up another one.”

“I like you about as much as a broken nail,” I mutter.

“I was not aware you were so fond of broken nails.”

Ollie interrupts what I’m realizing too late looks likeplayful banter. “Does Pollux know about the boogeyman?”

“Why would Pollux need to know about the boogeyman?” Alexios asks.

Ollie takes a bite of his second calzone, and I discover that both he and Brittny are over halfway done with their food. They’ve been munching away, and watching us, like theater. Ollie says, “Because…you know…what happened with Zy and Meda. You’re kind of proof that unseelie fae bred from humans with high concentrations of fae blood turn out powerful. What if it comes back?”

“It won’t.”

“How can you be sure.”

Alexios lifts the sliver of spinach to his mouth. “I ate it.”

---