Page 86 of The Barbaric Fae's Soul
Halfway through the massive fruit I was eating—the one I’d always calledpurple shell-fruitin my head, my frustration reached a peak.
I was sweaty.
I was tired.
I was lonely.
And I wanted to go home, even though I still didn’t have a damn home after two decades in Vevol.
So I turned my anger to the guy who had been following me.
“I know you’re out there!” I yelled at the trees, cupping my hands to make my voice louder. I didn’t think it would help all that much, since Vevol’s trees were stupidly tall and wide, but I did it anyway. “Come talk to me for five minutes! I need directions!”
For two tense minutes, I waited for something.
Anything.
A sign that I’d been heard.
A sign that I’d been ignored would’ve worked, even.
But I got nothing.
Anger swelled in my chest.
“You are the fucking worst!” I shouted. Looking around the dirt at my bare feet, I grabbed the nearest rock—it was bigger than my fist—and hurled it at a tree. It collided with the trunk, making a noise that did not resemble an Earthly rock-on-woodthunk.
Sometimes, I missed Earth.
And sometimes I wanted to flip it the bird and curse its name.
Then again, I was like that with most places. And people.
And… everything else, too.
I needed an attitude adjustment, but I wasn’t sure how to go about doing that. At least I’d swallowed my pride long enough to apologize to Aev; that had made me feel slightly better about some things.
“Trying to kill a tree now?” A deep, growly male voice drawled behind me.
I spun around, clenching my fists and wishing I’d kept that rock.
The man in front of me was…
“Teris?” I blinked at the seelie.
The Wild Hunt’s sabertooth.
He was even bigger than I remembered him, and so muscular he might as well have been chiseled out of stone. While his chest and arms had been free of ink the last time I saw him, one of his arms was covered in black markings that began on his hand and snaked up over his shoulder and around his neck. They were intricately-detailed, but I couldn’t tell what they depicted from where I was.
But damn, I liked the look of them.
Why the hell had he followed me, though?
And… why was I so glad it was him?
I didn’t really need an answer to that last one. The answer could be found in our history. I just liked to pretend it hadn’t happened, because of everything that had come afterward.
He made a show of glancing over his shoulders one at a time, and the expression on his face was so sarcastic that I had to fight a snort. “Don’t see anyone else.”
