26. Zeph
“Fuck!”Kols shouted, his focus on the space Shade and Aflora had just vacated. “I’m going to fucking kill him.”
“That’s assuming you’ll be alive to do it,” I muttered, looking around the field. “You fucking mated her, didn’t you?”
Kols expelled a long breath, several curses following before he said, “All three of us just fucking did.”
“Oh, I know that part.” I pressed a palm to my chest, irritated by the strand circling my heart and linking back to a woman none of us had any business claiming as our own. “I was referring to before our little quad formation. Aflora was drenched in your power.”
Kols grimaced, his palm gripping the back of his neck as he blew out a long breath. “We, uh, fucked.”
I gathered as much by her half-dressed state. She’d run out here without shoes on, her hair a mess, and her shirt on backward. It was part of the reason I’d chased after her from the Elite Residence. The other part was driven by guilt. I’d been hard on her today. Maybe a little too hard.
And now everything had gone to hell.
“I get fucking her”—more than I ever wanted to admit—“but why the hell did you bite her?” I knew Kols. He had better control than that, even around someone as alluring as Aflora.
“I didn’t. Not until just now, anyway.” He shoved off the ground to his feet, his focus shifting to the damage around us. “Her Elemental Fae bond initiated, taking us to the third level.”
My lips actually parted. “That’s why I smelled her all over you.” I’d known it was deeper than sex, but I couldn’t figure out why she practically oozed his magic. Now I understood it. “She mated you.”
“She did.” Anger colored his tone, but I suspected he was more furious with himself than with her. Kols knew as well as I did that the bond between Elemental Fae required mutual agreement to take form.
Which meant that deep down he’d wanted to mate Aflora.
And that had to be pissing him off.
“It caused our powers to merge,” he added gruffly, taking in the destruction. “She exploded as a result.”
“Your power sent her over the edge.”
“And straight into the deep end.” He shook his head, his annoyance palpable. “I have no idea how we’re going to fix this. The consequences will be severe.”
“They’ll absolutely kill her for this, and likely me as well.” Because I’d failed to protect Kols yet again. I’d also partaken in the four-way bond, not to benefit Kols but to save an abomination. That wouldn’t be forgiven lightly, if at all.
“Yes,” Kols agreed softly. “They’ll slaughter her publicly to punish the three of us. Then they’ll take your life as well to hurt me specifically. And my father will definitely postpone my ascension.” He uttered the words in a dead tone, his golden irises flaring with power and knowledge.
I slowly pushed to my feet, then tucked my hands into the pockets of my sweats. “Is that the path you choose?”
He arched an auburn brow. “Are you asking if I’ll let them kill you?”
“Will you?”
“No.”
“You won’t have a choice.” Once the Council found out about this, they’d have all our heads on a platter.
“There’s always a choice,” Kols countered, his gaze holding mine. “Killing Aflora will literally destroy a piece of my soul—thanks to our illegal mating bond—and leave me in a shell of misery. I’ve seen it done to other fae. It’s the worst kind of punishment imaginable.” He stepped forward to grab my shirt, yanking me to him. “And losing you is a fate I refuse to ever accept. I won’t allow them to take you or Aflora from me.”
Aflora, I knew, was more for his own survival. Losing his mate would destroy him, and she’d bonded him as both an Elemental Fae and a Midnight Fae, marking the consequences of her loss as undefinable. It might very well kill him.
However, he could absolutely live without me.
He just didn’t want to.
I grabbed his shirt with one hand, my opposite palm going to the back of his neck, and kissed him to return the sentiment.
As much as I sometimes despised this male, I also couldn’t live without him.
Even when I wanted to.
He returned the embrace, his tongue laced with Aflora’s blood as he delved deep into my mouth in a dominant sweep of power. I returned the move in kind, taking him with a ferocity I knew he couldn’t deny, and smiled when he groaned.
Now wasn’t the time or place.
I also wanted to add Aflora to the mix. We were all going to hell anyway, so I might as well grant myself the taste I’d craved for weeks.
But first, we needed a plan, and to properly form that, we required time.
“Your father would have felt the disturbance of power,” I said, releasing Kols almost as swiftly as I’d grabbed him.
He nodded. “I know.”
“Either you tell him the truth and damn us all or you give him a cover story. And if you choose the latter, then we need to do something to hide our connection to Aflora.” Because everyone who walked near us would be able to smell her in our blood and vice versa. It would be obvious to them all what we’d done tonight, and word would spread quickly through the ranks. Especially when several Council members’ children attended Midnight Fae Academy.
“I can handle the cover story,” Kols murmured. “But we need to make sure Shade is on the same page, as he’ll be the alibi.”
“You’re going to tell your father the two of you engaged in an illegal duel,” I translated.
Kols nodded. “It’ll explain this.” He gestured around the burnt clearing that Aflora had created with her explosion of power. “My father will reprimand us both, but it’ll be a verbal warning more than anything else. He’ll claim it’s a rite of passage for us to fight.”
A good and fair point. “That’ll work, but we need something to hide the bonds.”
“That’s going to be harder,” he muttered.
“No, it’s going to cost us,” I corrected. “A lot.”
“What do you mean?”
“I know a guy,” I muttered, massaging my jaw as I considered what I was about to reveal. “He can help hide things, like bonds.”
Kols narrowed his eyes. “Like protection oaths?”
“Yeah. Like protection oaths.”
He fell silent, his astute gaze holding mine as a myriad of emotions ran through his expression.
Understanding.
Hurt.
Anger.
Pain.
Each emotion hit me in the gut, making me feel worse by the second. Because yeah, I knew the guy as a result of my own research in regard to how to break bonds. Specifically, the protection oath I’d spoken to Kols. He needed someone else, someone better suited, to guard him. And I’d proven more than once now not to be the right man for the job.
Case in point, he’d gone and mated an abomination on my watch.
That marked me as the worst Guardian in Midnight Fae history.
“We’re going to discuss how you know him later,” Kols finally said. “For now, can you reach out to see if he can help us mask the mating bond?”
I nodded, saying nothing more. He could bring it up all he wanted, but it wouldn’t change anything. What was done was done.
“It’s a temporary solution that gives us time to figure this shit out.” Kols blew out a long breath, his focus shifting to the dawning sky above. A million thoughts ran through his features, each one tied to an emotion I could taste from his aura without him having to say a word.
Because I felt the same way.
This was so utterly fucked up.
When Kols suggested the three of us bite her at once, I didn’t hesitate. I’d accepted the solution almost eagerly. Too eagerly. To the point where I hadn’t once considered the consequences. I’d just wanted to save Aflora.
I should have killed her instead.
It would have made all of this so much easier.
Had I just taken her out when she first arrived, Kols never would have mated her, his future wouldn’t be in jeopardy, and he could have lived his life the way it was meant to be lived.
She’d been a weakness to us all from the day she arrived. Part of me hated her for it, hence Raph’s behavior in class today. He’d acted upon my aggression toward her, taking it out on her precious familiar.
Wrong, yes.
However, it’d felt good at the time to expel some of my frustration so violently. Until the guilt hit me square in the chest.
The female had some sort of magical pull over all of us, creating a web of dangerous choices that both Kols and I had fallen into almost willingly.
I despised her for it.
And adored her at the same time.
“I’m glad my solution worked,” Kols said, his mind clearly following a similar path to my own because I felt the exact same way. “It’s wrong, and I hate her, but I hated watching her suffer more.”
“Because you don’t really hate her.” Just as I didn’t.
“I know,” he agreed quietly. “But I want to.”
“I know,” I replied, purposely repeating his words.
A moment of mutual understanding fell between us, our minds aligned in that eerie way we’d come to respect over the years. It was why we worked well together, even when we shouldn’t.
“I’ll handle my father and Shade, while you...” Kols trailed off, his focus falling to the ground. He bent to pick up a discarded wand, his lips curling down. “I guess I’ll talk to Aflora, too. This is hers, right?”
I hadn’t actually studied her wand much, but it looked right. “Yeah, I think so. But I don’t remember her using it.”
“She probably summoned it without realizing it.” Kols eyed the magical tool with interest, raising it into the light provided by the rising sun, and frowned harder. “Her essence is all over this, so it’s definitely hers, but I swear it’s changed somehow. See that blue streak? Looks like a crack, doesn’t it?”
I studied the sharp gold tip and noted the letters inscribed at the top. “This wand used to belong to someone else. Are you sure it’s hers?”
“It’s definitely her wand,” he said, catching and following my focus to the word. “Lahaz. That sounds like a spell.”
“Or a name.”
“I’ll ask her if she knows what it means when I confirm this belongs to her.” He tilted the wand again, his brow furrowing. “How have I never noticed the cerulean lines before?”
“Maybe the wand changed formation,” I suggested. Magical conduits were known to grow with their masters. “It could be maturing, just like Aflora’s connection to the dark arts.”
His jaw clenched, his gaze finding mine once more. “She’s going to be a handful.”
“She already is.”
He snorted. “True.” With a soft curse, he shifted focus to the clearing again. “Right. You talk to your guy. I’m going to find Shade and give the asshole a piece of my mind. Then I’ll make sure we’re on the same page.”
“And if we’re not?”
“Then I really will have a duel to report.” He turned on his heel, frustration and irritation pouring off his essence.
All because of a girl.
One neither of us wanted to be tied to.
Yet I didn’t really regret claiming her, even though I knew I should.
That nagging little realization followed me as I made my way to the portal and all the way to Ching’s place. By the time I arrived, I still had no answers, only a resolute opinion that we’d done what we needed to do and that there was no real alternative.
Which couldn’t be true at all.
We’d shattered our futures all for a girl who didn’t belong here.
An abomination.
A wrongness.
So why did it feel so right?