Chapter 27
Orion
The devious minx cries, “Mercy.” Again. But there’s laughter in her voice.
And by the gods, I want to hear it again and again and again.
So the game, the one without rules, is called Catch the Queen.
I toss Ash over my shoulder and race toward the other side of the clearing.
Little Unseelie bite-sized children snap at my ankles, their giggles sharp as teeth.
Ash pounds her fists against my back—not hard, not like she means it—and her laughter shakes through my spine like something I could get addicted to.
This. This is what I missed.
Not the sex. Not the wanting. This. Her weight against me. Her trust that I won’t drop her. The way she fights back just enough to make me work for it but not enough to actually get away.
She used to do this at the Academy. That night after the combat trial, when I carried her back to her quarters and she pretended to be furious the whole way. Kicked her legs. Called me names. Laughed into my shoulder when she thought I couldn’t hear.
I heard.
I hear her now.
We skid to a stop and I nearly crash into the tree. Ash yelps, her fingers digging into my waist, and when I spin her around to set her down she’s breathless and flushed and—
Her eyes flash green. Full green, no whites, like the forest looked through her for just a second.
Then it’s gone.
“Flame lord wins again!” Whispen races around my head then back to the others.
Laughter doesn’t just spill around us. It lightens the grove. The feeling of being lost in a world I’ve called home for far too long finally, finally loosening its grip.
My hands don’t leave her waist. Not yet. She’s still catching her breath, still smiling, and her hair—
Did it just shimmer? Silver at the edges, like moonlight caught in the strands?
I blink. It’s brown again. Normal. Human.
But my hands felt a shift beneath her skin. The thorns, maybe. No, this is more like the glamour finally falling away.
She doesn’t notice. Too busy laughing, too busy being present, too busy forgetting to hold herself like she’s bracing for a hit.
I notice. The shimmer. The shift. The woman underneath finally surfacing.
A tall wildling sets Tiana down gently, her smile stretching across her face. “What an absurd game.”
Ash wiggles out of my grip.
I don’t want her to, so maybe I hold onto the seam of her pants a little longer.
Sue me.
“Catch the queen.” Ash shakes her head as she struggles to catch her breath, hands on her hips, a twinkle in her eyes. Once, twice I swear they flash green again and her hair turns a shade of silver, or pink. I’m not completely sure.
Then it’s gone and she’s tilting her head in question.
How do I tell her that for a second, a very brief second, I saw her? The true Fae version beneath the human mask. That she’s blinking in and out of existence. The queen she’s becoming, whether she’s ready for it or not.
“Well,” Kestra heaves, Jadeve setting her down gently. “I for one find it—” She clears her throat when Jadeve steps too close. Again. He’s been doing that a lot lately.
“Come now,” Jadeve grabs her by the waist, leaning down to whisper against her hair.
Their intimacy carves a hole in my chest so sharp I have to look away.
Ash and I had that. Once. For a handful of weeks that felt like a lifetime.
Before Moros stole her. Before I spent a month bleeding through the borderlands trying to reach her. Before the Cauldron was ripped from my chest and I realized I’d been guarding her so hard I forgot to guard anyone else.
The scouts in the eastern quadrant. I still don’t know their names.
But I know hers. I know the exact pitch of her laugh. I know which shoulder she favors when she’s tired and the specific way her breathing changes when she’s about to cry but won’t let herself.
I know her. And I want her back so badly it’s eating me alive.
I turn to Ash.
She’s watching me watch them. Her expression says she knows exactly what I was thinking.
Busted. And not even sorry about it.
Except it looks like she was almost thinking the same thing.
I clear my throat. “Drink?”
I’m a gods damn Wild Court guardian, staring at the woman my line swore to protect, and I’m fucking tongue-tied.
It might be way too bold to tell her I’ve been hard as a rock for hours and need some kind of relief.
“Ah,” Ash looks around the grove before settling back to me. “I’m actually going to find a place to relieve myself.”
She is so damn cute. Her cheeks blush a little.
“There’s a pee spot over there.” I point through the trees. “Outhouses.”
“Well at least I don’t have to pee on a plant.”
“True. In the woods here the plant might bite you back.”
“Comforting.”
“I’m a comfort-giving kind of guy.”
I turn my body when she walks by, as though she is my sun and I orbit around her.
Which I do.
I watch her disappear between the trees before turning back to the fire and the dancing and the laughter.
Then down at my dick.
Fuck.
Holding her like that for that long—her weight against me, her scent in my lungs, her laugh vibrating through my spine—and not being able to bury myself inside her?
I need to get this out of my system before I do something stupid. Like follow her to that outhouse and take her against a tree.
I growl and stomp off toward the tree line. In the opposite direction of her. Finn and Kieran huddle near the fire, heads bent together in deep discussion.
Well if they don’t see me then Ash can’t ask where I went and honestly I just need a moment.
Once out of the circle of trees, the forest closes in on me.
I let it.
The Dark Forest knows Wild Court blood. It parts for me the way it doesn’t for the others—branches shifting, roots flattening, the undergrowth exhaling to make room. Not welcoming. Never welcoming. But acknowledging. The way an old wolf acknowledges another predator passing through its territory.
I’ve missed this. Being recognized by something older than the courts. Something that doesn’t care about politics or prophecy or the fact that I’m currently aching enough to hammer nails.
I thrash deeper into the trees, grumbling, because I’m so hard I might hurt myself with my own dick. And now is not the time. We’re in a death forest. We have enemies on every side. Ash is—
Ash is back there laughing like she used to. Letting me carry her. Letting me touch her.
That’s the problem. That’s exactly the fucking problem.
Groaning, I stumble toward a small clearing to the right. Not hidden—nothing is truly hidden in the Dark Forest. But private enough. The moss here glows faint blue-green, and the air smells like wet earth and something ancient. Sacred, almost.
Being wild in the wild. Letting the forest witness what courts and academies would call undignified.
The Wild Court was never about dignity. It was about honesty. About bodies doing what bodies do without shame.
My palm slaps against the bark of a tree and I look around.
It’s not like I haven’t done this before. Alone in a forest, hand on myself, thinking about someone I couldn’t have.
But I’ve never done it in the Dark Forest. And I’ve never done it with her scent still on my skin from carrying her.
If the forest judges me for this, it can get in line.
I rip apart the tie on my trousers, letting them fall to the ground, and grip the base of my cock.
A hiss falls from my lips as my warm palm wraps around the bulging shaft. My hips roll forward. My lungs cry for air and I spit on the tip.
Rolling my hand up and down, I think of how incredible Ash felt against me earlier. How right she fits with me. The weight of her over my shoulder. The way she pounded my back with her fists but never actually tried to escape.
I do not think about how fucked everything is. Because that is a problem for tomorrow.
Right now the only problem I have is tightening in my grip.
I moan and bite my bicep. My hand tugs harder, faster, thinking about her hips. The way she felt under me in the wilds not that long ago. The way my cock slid inside her tight wet—
The bond pulses.
Warm. Close. Getting closer.
I freeze, hand still wrapped around my cock, because that warmth is unmistakable. I recognize exactly who’s walking toward me through the Dark Forest, and every rational thought evacuates my skull, replaced by mortification and a reckless, stupid hope that she followed me on purpose.
Her scent hits me before her voice does. That particular sweetness beneath the forest dirt and the smoke from the fire. And beneath it—slick, warm, unmistakable—she’s aroused. Already wet. That knowledge makes me twitch in my grip.
She’s aroused.
She followed me out here and she’s already wet.
My grip tightens so hard on my cock I think I cut off the blood flow.
“So that’s where you disappeared to.” Her voice is soft. Amused and not at all surprised.
She knew. She felt me through the bond and she came anyway.
I don’t move. Can’t move. Because if I move I’ll either cover myself like a blushing virgin or I’ll drag her against this tree, and neither option feels like the right play.
Ash steps into the clearing. Slowly. Deliberately. Her eyes drop to my hand, still wrapped around my cock, and she doesn’t look away.
“I felt you,” she says. “Through the bond. You felt...urgent.”
Urgent. That’s one word for it.
“I, ah.” I clear my throat because I’m a Fae and not a bumbling human. “Gods, I need to come.”
Smooth. Real fucking smooth.
“You know.” She’s close now, short-circuiting my entire brain. “I could help with that.”
She drops to her knees.
Every rational thought evacuates my skull when her tongue laps at the tip of my cock. My eyes roll back. My balls threaten to make this a five-second trip.
No. Hold on. Hold on.
Look at her.
I glance down.
Nope. Should not have done that.
Her eyes, all green now. No whites. No pupils. Just endless forest staring back at me.
The human mask? Gone.
The woman swallowing my cock is all Fae. From the tips of her ears to the thorns pulsing beneath her skin to the silver-pink shimmer in her hair.
My queen. Finally showing herself.
And she chose this moment to do it. Chose me.
She nips at me. Pulling her lips back, a string of spittle follows.
Do. Not. Come.
“What’s wrong, Orion?” She leans back on her heels, fingers curling under the hem of her shirt, and rips it off. Her nipples peak toward me, hard and flushed, begging for my mouth. “You look like you’ve seen a ghost.”
“I’m looking at a queen.”
“Same thing, apparently.” Her smile has teeth in it. “Now shut up and let me work.”
The image hits before I can stop it, her on her knees, my cum painting her chest.
Fuck, this woman.
I grip her hair—once again silverish pink—wrap my hands around the strands and tug her closer. “Make me cum and I promise to make you my meal.”
Her lips tug into a cute smile before she devours my cock in the next breath.
I hiss as stars sparkle behind my eyelids. My palm slaps the tree beside me and my mouth falls open. Her tongue drags up and down before she swallows me whole.
I’m barely hanging on. I know it. She knows it.
She came to me. Felt me through the bond and followed anyway.
I shove the thought somewhere it can’t ruin this and focus on not coming in the next three seconds.
I pinch her chin. “I’m gonna cum, Thorn. Wh—”
She steals my words and my choice when she sucks the cum out of my cock and swallows every drop while holding eye contact.
I don’t even deflate. I grow harder.
And I wasn’t lying when I said I was about to make her my next meal.