Page 62 of Stormbinder King
Shame prickled my face, but I shrugged my shoulders.
“What do you care?”
“Why would I want my fated mate chasing after my brother? Instead of waiting properly for the meaningfulness of a mate bond?”
I felt a cold anger at the question.
“Maybe the dick is just too good,” I said, meeting Symeon’s dark eyes and making an obscene gesture at him. “I can’t give it up.”
His inscrutable harsh face didn’t change expression, but he turned abruptly and left without another word.
As I scrambled to my feet, cursing his jealousy and his stubbornness, I glanced back at the thyme plant and was startled to see it standing straighter, taller. Already its stem was thickening, the sickly green color looking brighter, sharper.
There was also a little patch of delicate white and yellow daisies, their beautiful bell-shaped heads waving gently in the chill spring breeze.
I frowned for a moment. I was certain there had been no patch of wild daisies there before.
How curious.
I looked again, brushing the last remnants of snow aside, and there was another small cluster of the flowers where my other hand had rested.
For several beats I stared at the ground, trying to piece together what had happened.
Surely that wasn’t somethingIhad done?
My eyes scanned the ground sharply.
Nothing else seemed to be amiss.
I looked at my hand, turning it around to inspect both sides.
It looked normal enough.
Maybe I had mistaken it.
But as I headed back to the clearing I couldn’t resist turning back one last time.
My little herb plot was certainly looking healthier, stronger, surrounded now with a little field of waving daisies, their pretty heads raised to the early spring sun.
18
Jack lifted me into one of the wide-bottom boats the Pack would travel in to the meeting and tucked a fur robe around my legs.
I would barely need it. Although the morning was cool, in a few hours the sun would be shining down, the trees around us starting to drip with humidity again.
Solomon and Symeon climbed into the next boat over, the King dressed simply as all the other men were, in a tight-fitting dark blue tunic and pants, with his thick hair tied back with a leather strap.
He did not need any outward signs to show his status.
Although he didn’t look at me, I could feel suppressed desire spilling from him, the mate bond he still kicked and fought against.
Fuck him
We began to make our way down the river, moving quickly for the first few hours, but after we stopped for a quick break, the boats took a left turn and the waters began to slow, the trees bow down lower, dripping dark fetid humidity into still waters.
Suddenly, a lookout hissed, “What’s that, my king?”
I turned sharply to see an ancient, mossy head rising from the dank stagnant water. It was a massive, dark sea serpent rising, slow and deadly, from the bone-flat waters ahead of me.
