Chapter 24 Rowan
Rowan
"Rowan!" Ellie charges into the tent at daybreak, her red curls plastered to her head with droplets of starting rain. "You're alive."
"That seems to be the current consensus." I sit up on the cot, pulling a woolen blanket tighter across my shoulders. I’m cold and every muscle in my body feels like it's been pounded, stretched, then pounded again. "Though I might as well still be unconscious for all that anyone is telling me."
I glare pointedly at Logan, who's been stubbornly maintaining his wolf form ever since Kai and Kyrian made their hasty departure.
The wolf yawns, showing a set of very large glistening teeth, and sprawls across the tent's entrance like a furry, oversized door guard, golden eyes tracking Ellie's every movement.
"The whole camp's gone mad," Ellie says, dropping to her knees beside me. Her hands flutter over my arms and face like she's checking to make sure I'm real. "Scouts are reporting Eryndor forces massing just beyond the ridge, at least a thousand strong. Prince Theron left the night before, so Kyrian has command — except he is between a rock wall and a tsunami. We’ve too few soldiers to hold a line and not enough weapons to arm those we do have. If we hold our ground, we lose. If we retreat, we’d be leaving Lethara’s egg. It’s too young and fragile to be moved.”
“Shit.” I rub my face, distantly curious when Ellie started referring to the fae as we. “The Commandant probably thinks this camp is an attack force. And why wouldn’t she? Hell, it was an attack force until Thereon decided to outsource said attack to mercenaries.”
Ellie’s mouth twists. “And when we show no signs of retreating, it will only reinforce the image of aggressive occupation.”
“Exactly.” Commandant Ainsley doesn’t wait threats out—she crushes them. My mother’s reputation was forged on fields painted red with blood of fae who thought she’d hesitate.
“Then there is you,” Ellie says gently.
I sigh, leaning back on my hands. My mother would rather see me dead than have the Ainsley name tarnished, but the problem is that I’m inconveniently not dead. I’m kidnapped. By the fae. From under her nose.
“Enough about the next upcoming doom, when I don’t know nearly enough about the previous one.
” Ellie settles herself crosslegged beside me and points a finger into my chest. “You talk now. One minute you’re sprawled out sleeping next to me, and the next you are sending a magical pulse through camp, rust-dusting weapons, and sending a contingent of murderous dark wolves running for the trees.
And then you die. Or not die. Close to die. ”
"It seems you've got all the basics down." I shift uncomfortably on the cot, acutely aware of how Logan's ears have perked up at the conversation. Wolf form or not, the bastard is eavesdropping.
"Not the part about how you came back to life.
" Ellie leans forward, putting her elbows on her knees and glaring at me so expectantly that I suspect the ritual isn't quite the secret I was hoping for.
"Because last I checked, people don't just wake up from magical comas by themselves.
Especially not people who've been unconscious for a week. "
Heat rises to my cheeks as I remember exactly how not by myself it was.
The moonlight. The circle. The way their hands felt on my skin as magic coursed between us like lightning seeking ground.
It all seemed so right, so unavoidable at the time—the only way to survive the torrent of power that had been eating me alive from the inside out.
The only way to weather the primal overwhelming need that had seized every part of my core.
In retrospect, however, the details feel uncomfortably explicit. Considering I'd been naked under the stars with three equally naked fae males doing things that would make a brothel worker blush.
"Well?" Ellie prompts when I don't immediately answer.
I clear my throat and focus on a fascinating spot on the tent wall. "There was a ritual. To... redistribute the excess magic."
"What kind of ritual?"
The kind where Logan's mouth was between my thighs and Kai was behind me and Kyrian was— "A bonding ritual," I say quickly, hoping my voice sounds steadier than I feel.
Because now in addition to very, very immodest memories that make my core clench with phantom heat, I have a distinct sense of three bonds pulsing inside me, their presence both intrusive and intimate.
Like having houseguests who've decided to rearrange all your furniture without asking, and then proceed to lounge in it.
To make themselves comfortable. Because they never plan to leave.
They can’t leave. That much I’d have known on instinct even if Autumn hadn’t stayed behind to fill me in on the basics.
My magic is already interwoven so tightly with the males’ that separating it out would be impossible—and the mixing is only growing tighter as the hours pass, the bonds settling deeper into my essence with each breath I take.
"Bonding ritual," Ellie repeats slowly, her green eyes dancing. "The kind that requires clothing, or the kind that doesn't?"
Logan makes a sound that might be a snort of amusement.
I grab two pillows and throw one at each of them. Logan snatches his from the air, but Ellie’s lands with a satisfying thwack against her chest. “You are only asking because you already know the answer.”
Her grin widens. "Well those are the best kinds of questions, aren't they?
" She sighs dramatically and waves me off.
"Fine. Don't tell me what it was like to have the three hottest immortal fae warriors anyone's ever met all over you at the same time.
I'll just have to use my imagination. Which, given the state of your descriptive abilities, is probably the better choice anyway.”
I throw another pillow at her, but she dodges this one with practiced ease. "There are more important things to worry about than—"
"Than mind-blowing magical sex with gorgeous fae princes?" Ellie raises an eyebrow. "I'm going to have to respectfully disagree with that assessment. Especially since said mind-blowing magical sex apparently brought you back from the brink of death. That seems pretty damn important to me."
The heat in my cheeks spreads down my neck.
"It wasn't just about—" I stop, because explaining that it was a necessary magical ritual makes it sound clinical, and explaining that it felt like coming home makes it sound like I've completely lost my mind.
Both of which might be true, but neither of which I'm ready to admit out loud.
"Uh-huh." Ellie's grin turns predatory. "Your face is doing that thing where it goes all pink and you start stammering. Which means it was exactly as good as I'm imagining. Possibly better."
"Can we please shift focus back to the fact that there's an army about to descend on us?"
"We can multitask," she says cheerfully. "I'm very talented that way. Besides, if we're all going to die horribly in battle, I want to live vicariously through your supernatural love life first. Consider it my dying wish."
"You're not dying."
“A temporary condition.”
“And there is no supernatural love life. It was a practical matter of keeping me alive. Don’t confuse—” I stammer, looking for the right words, because mind-blowing magical sex with gorgeous fae princes sounds uncomfortably on the nose. “Practicality with passion.”
She scrunches her nose at my wording then turns to Logan. "Can you give us a minute?"
The wolf ignores her.
"Look, fur breath," Ellie says, her voice taking on that edge she gets when she is ready for a battle of wills.
"There's an army marching on us, and my best friend has just spent a week unconscious because your lot didn't know about some weird cult lurking in your midst. So between her almost dying yesterday and us all likely dying today, can I please have a moment to talk with her without you eavesdropping? "
Logan's tail flicks once.
Ellie leans forward toward him. "Also, it makes it really awkward to compare cock sizes and performance ratings when you're three feet away, no matter how deaf you pretend to be."
"Ellie!"
"What?” She shrugs, completely unrepentant.
To my surprise, Logan actually huffs and hauls his furry ass out of the tent—even if he moves slow as molasses to cover the few feet of difference.
The canvas flap settles behind him with a soft whisper, leaving us alone for the first time since I woke up.
I know that privacy is only an illusion when walls are made of canvas, but Ellie drops her voice so low that even I can barely make out the words.
"This bond…” she says carefully. “Why did the triad do it? Because deep down they truly care about you so much that they are willing to endanger their own lives for yours? Or because they have use for you, and it’s that use they are willing to take the risk for?”
I wince, because that's the question I've been asking myself as well, each time coming up with nothing but a stomach twisted in knots. Kai, Kyrian and Logan chained themselves to me. But they also chained me to them. I don’t know which one truly drove their actions.
"Which do you want it to be?" Ellie asks.
“No one wants to be used.”
She gives me a reproaching look. “That’s not an answer, Ro. Of course no one wants to be used. But the alternative isn’t without complications.”
I pinch the bridge of my nose. “I’d not trust my assessment of the triad’s intentions, even if I thought I knew what they were about.”
The admission tastes bitter. "I mean, I truly believed they cared about me back in the Spire—right up until they turned out to be fae agents and kidnapped me. Then the fake engagement. The real sex. The number of times this has gone back and forth is giving me whiplash.”
And that’s before even touching Logan's confession about me being his mate. What do you do when someone claims you're their other half, but only because some primal wolf instinct decided it for him?
I consider telling Ellie about it, but the words won't come. Not yet. Because they bring us right back to square one—Logan’s mating bond is a connection forged of compulsion. Just like the sex we had under the stars.
Biology wearing the mask of destiny.
"Life gets a great deal more complicated if there is love involved," Ellie says quietly, watching my face with those too-perceptive green eyes. "In either direction. So is there? Love, I mean. In either direction."
My chest aches where it tightens, the three lay lines inside me pulsing with a connective magic that’s keeping my heart beating. The bonds hum with warmth and life. With something that tastes suspiciously of contentment. But contentment isn't love. “No.”
“Good.” Ellie tips her head in thought, reminding me of Logan. Which only makes me ache more.
“Good?” I echo, aware of the voices approaching the tent outside. The bonds inside me brighten with recognition. Kai's clipped authority. Kyrian's melodic accent. Even without seeing them, I know they're coming.
Ellie glances toward the tent flap, then back to me.
“Look,” she speaks quickly now. “Eryndor is coming. For me, I’m staying as far away from that army as I can.
I became a traitor the moment I realized that the only thing Eryndor still wanted me for is so the Commandant could whip me to death as an example for others.
” Her voice drops even lower, barely audible.
"But for you, if your loyalties are truly with the queen and the humans, the Commandant’s assault will be the best chance of getting home you're likely to see. Don’t waste it.
And don't underestimate what the fae are willing to do to ensure you keep doing their bidding. "