23. Aflora
AFLORA
Shade’s mouth mesmerized me.I could kiss him for hours, and I did. We lost time in the seclusion of his cabin. He brought me berries and the cookies he’d mentioned. He gave me a fruity drink to quench my thirst. He introduced his mouth to every inch of my body. And then he took me again and again.
If this was all a dream, I no longer cared, because it was perfect. A fantasy come to life, with the most unlikely of males at my side.
Yet I felt the bruises of his past echoing in his spirit. So much agony. Selflessness. A caring man hidden beneath a perpetual shadow.
No one knew him.
And for a few brief moments of time, he allowed me to truly see the real Shade—a strong, intelligent, conniving male who put everyone above himself.
Including me.
I couldn’t see everything, mostly because that wasn’t how our bond worked, but I sensed his sacrifice. “Do you regret biting me?” I asked him, my palm resting against his sculpted abdomen as I snuggled into his side.
He drew his fingers through my hair, tucking the strands behind my ear. “No.”
The bond confirmed he meant that. Yet… “I sense so much sadness in you.”
He said nothing for a while, his fingers drifting through my hair as he studied the wood beams on the ceiling. “I’m not sad,” he finally replied. “I’m just tired. There’s so much I want to share and can’t, not without initiating substantial risk. And if I have to choose between your safety and my comfort, I’ll pick you every time.”
I shifted upward to rest my head on the pillow beside him. “Is that why you won’t tell me why you bit me?”
“Yes.” He rotated toward me, so he lay on his side rather than his back, his icy blue eyes holding mine. “Do you hate me for it?”
“Yes,” I said. “And no.”
He seemed to understand that, not needing me to voice anything more. “One day you’ll understand. One day soon.”
“And will I hate you when the truth is revealed?” I wondered out loud.
“Possibly, yes.”
I was afraid he would say that. “I don’t want to hate you.”
“I don’t want you to hate me either,” he whispered. “But I’ll accept your disdain, as is my due.”
“You’re used to people hating you,” I realized aloud.
“I am.”
I pressed my palm to his cheek and drew my thumb across his lower lip. “I see you, Shade.”
“Do you?”
I nodded. “Yes.” I leaned in to kiss him softly, craving his touch with an abandon I couldn’t ignore. “I feel you, too.”
He palmed the back of my neck and allowed me to slowly explore his mouth with my tongue. It was a lazy embrace filled with unspoken words.
The bond had opened a connection to him unlike any I’d ever felt, yet something about it was familiar, too. I suspected it had to do with the roots we’d already established inside each other with his initial two bites. Now that he’d finished our mating, our link had blossomed into a world of color and sensation.
His pain became mine.
His fears, too.
Yet I didn’t fully understand them or why they existed. I just knew it had something to do with whatever he’d seen.
“You have Fortune Fae in you,” I realized suddenly, pulling back.
“Yes,” he admitted softly, sliding his hand down from my neck to rest against my hip. “On my mother’s side.”
My lips parted. “That makes you an…?” I couldn’t finish, surprise rendering me speechless.
“An abomination,” he whispered. “Of a sort, anyway. Fortune Fae Alphas are former Midnight Fae who refused to drink blood, making us all related at our origin. Yet we’re not allowed to crossbreed, why?”
“Because it makes powerful kin,” I breathed.
He nodded. “Yes. And those who are in power right now don’t appreciate the challenge cross-species pose. But a thousand years ago, that wasn’t an issue. My grandmother mated my grandfathers without much prejudice. One was a Fortune Fae Alpha, the other a Death Blood—the former king before the Nacht family took over.”
I frowned. “Wait, but you said your mother’s side had Fortune Fae?”
Another nod, his expression grim. “My father married into the familial line of power, then claimed it as his own because females are not allowed to lead.”
“An archaic law,” I muttered.
“Actually, no, it’s not. The Nacht family—Kols’s grandfather, specifically—enacted it. My mother would have been on the Council had it not been for his chauvinistic actions. He used my grandmother as an example of why women shouldn’t lead.”
“How?” I wondered out loud, captivated by his history. This was the most Shade had ever revealed about himself, and I felt through the bond how much this all meant to him. And instinct told me it all tied into our fate as well.
“She went into hiding shortly after the call for Quandary Bloods to be eradicated.” A shadow touched his features, one that darkened his ice-blue irises to a dark gemstone similar to sapphires. “Constantine Nacht stated that my grandmother’s emotional state forced her to choose family over duty. He said all women were born with that loyalty flaw and therefore were not fit to lead. Thus, my father was marked as the Death Blood incumbent over my mother.”
“He didn’t object?” I asked, shocked.
“No. Actually, he fully supported it.” Shade’s jaw ticked, showing how he felt about that. “And the rest, as they say, is history.”
“But what happened to your grandmother and her mates?”
He studied me for a long moment. “They suffered a similar fate to the Quandary Bloods.”
“They died?”
“Not exactly,” he replied cryptically. “What happened with the rock, Aflora?”
His abrupt change in subject took me aback, some sort of wall going up between us. He didn’t want me to know about his grandparents, which meant he was hiding something.
As much as I wanted to press him, I sensed the importance of letting it go.
His Fortune Fae relations explained so much about him, particularly his penchant for secrets. He knew things others didn’t, giving him an advantage underlined in a myriad of liabilities. No wonder he kept me in the dark so often; he didn’t want to influence my choices, and yet, for some reason, he’d taken some of my decisions away from me.
Such as our mating.
“You bit me that day to prevent something else from happening to me,” I said, ignoring his rock comment for the moment. “Gina told me I had two paths, that I was already in your sights.”
“His sights,” Shade corrected. “Yes.”
My brow furrowed. “Are you saying she wasn’t talking about you?”
“She was, in regard to the paths,” he replied. “But I can’t tell you more. The rest you’ll need to learn on your own.”
“Why?”
“Because there are some choices I refuse to take from you, Aflora. This is your destiny to follow, not mine to dictate.”
“Yet you stole my ability to decide when you bit me that day,” I pointed out. “So you’ll alter some of my paths, but not all of them.”
“I alter the ones I’m destined to alter,” he replied, slipping his palm upward to cup my cheek. “Our paths were meant to intertwine. I just upped the timeline.”
I wanted to ask him what that meant, but I knew he wouldn’t tell me.
Fortune-telling was a tricky game. If he told me too much, he risked disrupting the balance and changing our fates to an unforeseeable future. Which was why he mostly focused on facts I already knew, detailing the past decisions and how they’d already impacted our lives.
But he carefully avoided anything that could explain what tomorrow held for us both, despite the fact that I could sense he knew perfectly well what to expect. Or, at least, he had an inkling.
Because that was how Fortune Fae worked—their visions didn’t often make sense, the images a cluster of thoughts that may or may not form a coherent prediction. And from what I gathered of Shade’s comments, there were multiple avenues for our futures to take. He only dictated the ones he could control, like that day outside the coffee shop.
“The rock,” I said slowly, returning to his question and giving him a reprieve from the fate discussion. I cleared my throat. “It, uh, showed me something devastating. The fire.”
His brow came down. “The fire?”
“Yeah. At the Death Blood Education Building.” I closed my eyes to consider what I’d seen and relayed the information to him. He remained silent the entire time, allowing me to tell him what I saw, how it felt, the horror of realizing I was trapped inside someone else, and the eventual kiss against the rock. “He said he’d see me soon, like he knew I’d have that vision.”
I shivered at the memory, my blood running cold as I opened my eyes again after several minutes of reliving the nightmare.
“How could he know that?” I asked. “Or was it…? Did my mind change it?”
He shook his head slowly, his expression holding more mysteries that I longed to decipher. “He must have placed the memory in the rock, knowing it would fall into your hands.”
“How is that possible?” It didn’t make any sense. “There’s no way he could have known I’d pick that rock in class or that we’d be playing with psychometry.”
“Unless he planted the idea in Headmaster Irwin’s head,” Shade suggested grimly. “Did you pick up the rock, or did it fall into your hand?”
“I…” I paused, thinking back on how I selected the item from the box. “I told you—it was the only thing that fit…”
“Because the other items were enchanted not to,” he replied, falling to his back. “Fuck.” He pressed his palms to his eyes and muttered a string of curses.
“You know who he is,” I said. “Don’t you?”
He didn’t reply.
Because of course he wouldn’t.
“Shade, I need to know who he is.”
“You already do,” he muttered, shaking his head. “Or you should, anyway.”
I frowned. “What do you mean?”
“Does he feel familiar to you?” he countered, arching a brow.
The moment he said it, my heart stopped. “The magic…” I trailed off, thinking about the day of the attack. “I… I recognized it.”
Shade nodded. “Yeah. You would.”
“Why?”
He just stared at me, sad. “We should get back, Aflora. I’m sure Kols and Zeph are worried about you.”
“And you suddenly care how they feel?” I countered, actually curious.
“You say you see me,” he replied, his eyes still holding that touch of despair that broke my heart. “But do you, Aflora? Do you really see me?”
My soul squeezed in torment, his tone and expression killing me a little. “Shade…”
“It’s okay,” he replied, his knuckles brushing my cheek. “But we really should go. They can’t sense or find us here, which has to be driving them insane.”
“They can’t?” I glanced around the cabin, noting the windows revealing a dimly lit field outside. Nightfall. “We’ve been here a while.”
“We have,” he agreed, his hand leaving my skin.
I immediately reached for him, not wanting to separate. Not yet. “Just a few more minutes?” I asked, pleading with him through my eyes.
He seemed reluctant but finally agreed with a subtle nod. “For a kiss.”
“No,” I replied, causing him to frown. “For more than a kiss.” I moved on top of him to straddle his hips, then leaned down to take his mouth with mine. His hands immediately found my waist, his palms gently sliding up and down my sides.
“Shade,” I murmured against his mouth.
“Aflora,” he whispered, one of his hands gliding up my spine to my neck and higher into my hair.
“I know you care,” I informed him softly, my lips whispering against his as I pressed a palm to his heart. “I feel it here.”
“Yeah?”
“Yeah.”
“Well, I’ll deny it if you tell anyone.”
I smiled against his mouth. “Don’t worry, mate. Your secrets are safe with me.”
He returned my grin and deepened our kiss. Then I felt the trickle of smoke surrounding us, the only indication he gave me of his power enveloping me to return us to the Academy. I almost protested, but his tongue silenced my ability, his grip tightening as he whisked us away in his trademark cloud.
And then I felt the familiarity of my sheets hitting my back, my room materializing around us. I giggled in amusement, and Shade nibbled my lower lip. “We can go back anytime,” he whispered.
“Promise?”
“Promise,” he vowed. “I made it for you, Aflora. Only you.”
“For us,” I corrected. “Our own little?—”
A banging against my door made me jump. “Aflora! Open this door right fucking now!”
I blinked. “Zeph?”
“Told you they would be worried,” Shade drawled, rolling off of me.
“Don’t you dare go anywhere,” I told him as I scooted off the bed to find something to throw on. I’d left everything at the cabin, including my boots after Shade finally let me take them off. Apparently, he had a thing for heels.
I grabbed a plain white shirt from my closet, as well as a pair of sleep shorts, and pulled them on while Shade made himself comfortable in my bed. “You could magic yourself some clothes,” I suggested, then frowned. “Wait, what about?—”
Our wands appeared on my nightstand while I spoke, Shade following my train of thought before I could speak. From what I understood about our new bond, we literally could communicate via telepathy but hadn’t yet.
Can you hear me?I asked him.
His lips twitched. Yes.
Good to know.
He winked. Answer the door before Zeph has an aneurysm.
Right. I cleared my throat and twisted the knob. Kols and Zeph stood on the other side wearing matching expressions of annoyance. “Well, at least I know the lock works,” I offered.
“Cute,” Kols drawled, looking over my shoulder at the male in my bed. Because of course Shade hadn’t accepted my suggestion to put on some clothes. Instead, he sat up with his back against my headboard, the sheets pooling in his lap in a very inviting manner.
He seriously looked like he belonged in my bed.
Which, yeah, as my mate, he sort of did.
Are we going to give them a show, little rose?he taunted. Because I’m game.
Stop.
I’m not doing anything.
You’re… you’re…
“Aflora?” Kols cut into our mental conversation, drawing my gaze back to the hallway. “Can we come into your room?”
I wasn’t sure what shocked me more—that he actually asked for permission or that he seemed uncertain of my answer. We’d shared a bed together every day this week. Why would that suddenly change? Although, it was his bed we’d slept in, but the principle still applied.
Clearing my throat, I stepped aside. “Yeah, please.”
Zeph’s jaw ticked, but he entered.
Kols followed.
Then Shade narrowed his gaze. “What happened?” he asked, suddenly serious and very alert.
I shut my door and leaned back against it, nervous.
“There’s been another attack,” Zeph said, his tone flat. “And it has Kols’s essence all over it.”