Page 49 of Savagely Mated

“So you’re not going to make me go back in?”

“No.” Kirin shakes his head. “Einar’s got what he wanted out of that whole stunt anyway.”

“He has?”

“Yeah,” Kirin says, not elaborating. I don’t know what they’re up to. Well, I do. They want to kill the king, which is fucking insane.

“Is Rafe around?”

“Rafe doesn’t know I am here, and neither one of them know you are here,” Kirin says. “It’s just us.”

There’s something faintly menacing about that statement. The way he smiles after he says it, as if it is a triumph to get me all on my own.

“Oh, and uh, what’s… what are you… why…”

“Come with me,” he says, leading me away from the academy, down the river a bit until there’s a clearing in the reeds. I am surprised to see my Delivery 2 Go bike there, next to what I am guessing must be his.

“You brought my bike!”

“I did,” he says, tossing me my helmet, which he plucks out of the rushes. “Do you want to go to work, or do you want to do something fun?”

“Fun sounds like fun,” I grin. I guess Kirin doesn’t really like being bossed around by Einar any more than I do. I have the feeling that there’s a lot of politics in the group of three men who now all have some biological claim to me.

“What are we going to do?” I get on my bike.

He looks over at me, and flashes a young, handsome grin. “Whatever the hell we want.”

I don’t really want to go to work. I just didn’t want to do whatever Einar said. These men are still strangers to me, and there’s no way I want to get into a more structured environment than the one I just came from. I don’t care how alpha they are, or how scary they are, they’re not the goddamn bosses of me, and they never will be.

Kirin kicks his cycle into life and peels away, not waiting for me. I guess I’m going to have to chase him down if I want to see what he considers to be fun.

We head away from the academy, which makes sense. Not much point doing laps around the same place I’m trying to escape.

He heads through to the very heart of the city, where the buildings are so tall it feels like you can’t even imagine the top of them. There are some buildings with over a hundred floors in them, blocks and blocks of the most bustling life you could imagine, hundreds of thousands of people milling about broad streets.

I rarely get this far into the city. It’s a far cry from the more refined academy and palace areas. The lights are blazing bright here, even in the middle of the day. I see a lot of standard enforcement officers around the place, wearing their black andblue uniforms, staring around with set jaws and narrowed eyes as if they’re waiting for someone, anyone to do crime.

Ironically, there is crime absolutely everywhere. The police are mostly for display purposes, mean-mugging while the world around them crumbles. Well, I say crumbles. It never actually falls down. It just gets different, worse, better, awful, frightening, nicer, then terrible again. Science class calls it entropy. Everything is always falling apart, and everybody is always freaking out about it.

Kirin pulls away from me, sending his bike careening through the thick traffic with little regard for safety. I follow him as we hit top speed in a built-up area like a couple of absolute fucking idiots. Why is being stupid so much fun?

Drones flash, and I know we’re being caught on film. I don’t care. I’m fully encased in leather armor. All they’ll get is a reckless driver on a D2G bike, and pretty much all D2G riders are reckless. Kirin’s bike is almost certainly treated to keep the drones from being able to get a clear picture. He’ll be a blur in the middle of a flurry of action.

There’s a vehicle transport truck with the ramp down, one of those ones that goes up all the way to the top story of the truck. Kirin hits the ramp and goes flying over the cab of the truck, over several moving cars, and somehow manages to not die when he lands on the road on the other side.

It’s stupid, show-off boy stuff. I see it all the time in the academy, and yet, somehow, I can’t help but be impressed. It takes real skill, strength, and bravery to pull off what he just did—plus a general disregard for life.

I catch up to him and the two of us head out of the city to the south. It’s nice to the south; it’s the warmer side of the city. There are vineyards and rolling hills and a general sense of peace once you get far enough out, which we make sure to do.

We stop in a village, and Kirin buys cheese, wine, and bread. I grab some grapes and a thick roll of salami. Between the two of us, we have a virtual feast. This is much better than sitting in my room at the academy, waiting to be yelled at again.

We park up on a hill overlooking the river as it winds its way into the city, on the way to the beach in the north, and we drink and eat and talk. It’s remote out here. Most of the people have left the villages and moved to the city where there is work.

I’ve spent no time in the countryside. I’m surprised to find that it’s actually nice. There’s not much to do. In fact, all there really is to do is just be.

It might be the first nice thing I’ve done in a long time. I’m kind of surprised it’s happening with Kirin, and I tell him that.

“This is nice,” I say, my tone incredulous. “You seemed so mean when we first met. I didn’t think you’d turn out to be the most romantic one.”

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