Page 90 of Phoenix Falling
“Dessert after dinner,” I warned the little girl as we approached that end of the table.
“Seems like Demetri didn’t take that rule to heart,” I heard on my other side as Demetri focused on Clara.
Jerking my head around, I saw a slightly older male, salt and pepper sprinkled in his hair and beard. His expression told me I had been right about the sour note I’d heard in his words.
Begin as you mean to go on, right? I couldn’t ignore this or I’d be ignoring a thousand more moments just like it.
“Excuse me?”
The male met my eyes after giving me a once-over. “I said, Demetri seemed to have jumped the gun a bit, didn’t he? The rest of us didn’t even know y’all existed.”
“What am I, a piece of meat?”We wouldn’t have chosen you even had we met you, not with that attitude.Aloud I said, “Demetri was a part of our rescue. That’s how we met.”
“He only got that job because of that sister of his. Any one of us could have volunteered.”
“Then why didn’t you?”
He looked taken aback. Not used to a woman speaking her mind, huh?
Turning fully to face him, I said. “You know, your people have been exposed to the value of women from your inception, it seems, whereas human males have had to be convinced of this fact. I would think, based on that, that the knowledge that women are no more than prizes to be handed out would be long gone from here. Apparently not. So let me point it out to you—you might consider us a scarce commodity, butwedo not. Mating is mutual. It’s all about a woman’s right to choose. Or did y’all forget that somewhere along the way?”
The male sputtered. “But—”
A big hand landed on my shoulder—my mate. I could feel the warm approval of my words in his mind. And his amusement at the male’s serious miscalculation of his audience. But his voice was stern as he asked, “Evan, are you harassing my mate?”
Alarm flared in the shifter’s eyes. “No, of course not. I was just—was just—”
“That’s what I thought.” Demetri nudged me along the line toward the desserts where Clara stood, trying to make up her mind. Another little girl about her age was doing the same while the two threw curious glances at each other as well as the table. But it was Demetri that held my attention.
“Do you need to take Nala’s class all over again?” he was asking Evan. “I’ve heard some of the males are having to repeat it due to their stubbornness.”
“No,” the male denied. “Not me.”
“Hmm.” Demetri glared down at him. “I don’t know; I think you might need to.”
More denial, this time a bit panicked. Finally Demetri nodded. “I’ll have to think on it, then. Keep an eye out for a little while just to be certain. Lyris is very protective of her charges, you know.”
“And repeating the class would ban him from contact with those charges,”Demetri said in my mind.
“That’s not nice.”
Demetri turned from the shifter toward the dessert table.“Neither is his attitude, but he’ll learn. We won’t risk our precious ones with someone who thinks like that.”He dropped a kiss onto the top of my head before lifting a piece of cheesecake to the stack of plates he already carried.“He’ll learn eventually, even if he has to take Nala’s class a hundred times.”
ChapterThirty-Four
RISK
Ifelt Sun’s eyes land on me the minute I walked into the dining hall. It didn’t matter that he never paused his speech, didn’t stutter or even seem to take a breath—I could feel his gaze on me, feel his displeasure. Lyris seemed confident her plan would work, and for the chance to see Raine and make sure she was all right, I’d risk it, but a part of me was braced for judgment, for punishment.
Sun’s attention just about guaranteed it.
One ear tuned to his speech, all about a coronation and some kind of ceremony, I focused the rest of my attention on the crowd. Most of them were smiling at the females who had entered with me, the females Sun and his warriors had rescued from the Anigma compound. I recognized some of them. They looked better than they had leaving their jail weeks ago, far better. Sun’s people seem to have treated them well, at least those who knew about them. Lyris had told me they kept the women a secret from the majority of the Archai until they were all healthy, even the little girl who’d been in a coma when they rescued her.
It started a funny feeling in my chest, seeing them here, watching them be accepted into the group. Or clan, Lyris had called them. The King’s clan. Sun’s clan. I saw the way his people looked up to him, admired him. Had he put two and two together yet? Did he understand that I was the one who’d led them to these females? It had been the one goal of my life to save as many of them as I could, and here, right before my eyes, was the fruit of my labor. The only time I’d succeeded.
No, those weren’t tears in my eyes as I watched Clara wave at another child in the crowd. Definitely not. Tears were a waste of time.
When Sun finished speaking, he walked into the crowd. Despite so many big shifters around, it was impossible to lose sight of his red hair among the others, so I turned my back to watch the clan sidle up to the buffet—warriors, the elderly, females, families. Not as many children as I would have expected, but a few here and there. Mostly boys, I noticed. For some reason that fact left me uneasy.
