Chapter 29
Chapter Twenty-Nine
Rafe
The night is long, and my sleep is fitful.
I miss Violet. I miss her waking me up with her demands for attention in the middle of the night.
I even miss Lark and his uncensored commentary.
Not the lugging rocks and chopping wood so much, but I would gladly chop a fucking forest for a chance to hold Violet again.
It’s funny how you look back on times that might not seem so perfect, and now, when they are taken away from you, you appreciate them as being impossibly good.
The time we have spent traveling with her, chasing her griffins, has had its ups and downs, for sure.
But I would not change a single thing. Not even that we are here.
Not even that I am chained up and my future is uncertain.
I worry that I will not pass whatever test lies ahead of me, and how that might impact Violet. The ride has been tumultuous. Fucking crazy. I believe the crazy is not done with us yet.
What are the chances of her sister being here? In some ways, it seems almost impossible, but also inevitable.
Unfinished business.
All that Atlas said is true regarding the changing landscape of the war with the Blighten.
How kings and queens turn their greedy eyes elsewhere.
Only Atlas is no ordinary adversary. Perhaps the Cairnborn Pride are the only ones who can finally keep Violet safe.
That is the most important thing. For that, I would endure anything without reservation or hesitation.
The door opens, and Pete enters. He brings me water, but no food.
“So they’re starving me now, are they?”
He gives me a sympathetic look, which does not bode fucking well. “Best on an empty stomach,” he says.
I drink the water that is offered, fill my belly with it, resigned to whatever is about to go down. Maybe nothing. Maybe this is the way it happens. Maybe they’re simply going to lock me up here in isolation with nothing but Pete and his pearls of wisdom to keep me company.
He has not long gone when the griffin wing leaders turn up… along with Lark in direwolf form. They fan out along the outer wall, as they did when Lark was turned.
I do a double-take seeing the red-headed griffin, Fenix. I swear he has grown half a foot and put on fifty pounds of muscle.
Did Pete put something in the water? I’m hallucinating, I must be.
Like last time, there is a pause, and then Atlas steps forward until he is a pace away from me. He takes a key from his pocket and reaches to unlock the cuffs around my right wrist, then my left.
We are getting down to the beating part, it would seem. Lark endured it. I can do the same.
“You are free to leave,” Atlas says.
My stomach drops.
“Or you can choose to stay.”
I don’t fucking blink.
“But know that if you stay, there will be terms.”
“Go ahead and lay them out,” I say. My heart is beating a mile a minute.
“There will be no more servant duties,” he says.
He means chopping wood and grafting, I presume. I’m waiting for the catch.
“And no more ritual chamber.”
My nostrils flare. “I’m not allowed to see her?”
“On the contrary, you will see lots of Violet,” Atlas says. “The ritual chamber served a purpose, but that purpose has now passed. Violet will be given… a place to stay as befits who she is.”
“And who is she?”
“A griffin mate. My future Queen.”
My fingers clench into fists, but I don’t fucking act. He’s setting out his stall, laying out the terms, as he called them. I feel sick. Pete was right not to give me any food.
“You have fucked her.”
His lips curve the tiniest amount. “I have not. Yet. But that is between Violet and me. She has indicated that she has chosen me.”
I swallow past a lump in my throat. I mean, it was fucking inevitable. And why wouldn’t she? This man can protect her. He’s fucking fearsome. I have never doubted that.
“Then what am I?”
“You are to be my adviser,” he says. “We have every reason to believe that troops are mobilizing. Troops belonging to Violet’s sister, a Hydornian Queen. I do not underestimate the threat to our people, nor how that might impact Violet.”
I nod. My empty stomach is roiling. He has not finished laying out his orders—there is more to this.
“Your words yesterday have left an impression upon me. That Violet has lived her whole life terrified to be who she is, an omega,” he continues.
“Always hiding. What she needs most is quiet into which she might breathe, learn to nest, and learn to be an omega. An omega can never truly flourish unless she feels safe. That is our job—our duty. We must be united—united in our decision to protect her from this threat. I want you at my side… and hers. Not in conflict.”
“I will give you no conflict,” I say. “But what about this turning of me you mentioned before? Is this you accepting I’m nothing besides a man?”
His smile is confusingly enigmatic. “As you have already pointed out, you are not a direwolf shifter. You’re Rafe. A soldier. The man who loves Violet. We each have a destination. I have the greatest faith that you will get where you belong in your own time.”
“That’s very fucking cryptic,” I grit out.
He grins. Claps a hand on my shoulder and releases me again. “Take a step at a time.”
Got it. A step at a fucking time. I gesture to the line of griffins and Lark, “What is with the parade… and what the fuck happened to Fenix?”
Fenix looks shifty when I call him out.
“They are here in witness… and Violet happened to Fenix,” Atlas says dryly.
“What the fuck does that mean?” Is he saying she’s mated him? Gods, my head hurts.
“Fenix is an indication that she is indeed destined to be the Cairnborn Pride Queen. Put simply, Violet is… griffin nourishment.”
My head is spinning. “Fuck,” I say inadequately.
“You always knew this?” I gesture at Fenix.
“That she would do this to you.” Fenix the bastard will not meet my eyes.
I cannot believe he would mate her before Atlas and still have his head attached to his shoulders, but something has gone down.
My fists clench again. “She had better have been fucking congenial.”
“Settle, human.” The bark in Atlas’s command makes every griffin stiffen and shuts me right up.
He tempers his tone before he speaks again.
“Fenix is a lot of things, many of which are questionable,” Fenix grunts on the far side of the room.
Atlas shifts a warning glare to him. “But he is not worthy of such an accusation. Only a weak man would force himself upon an unwilling woman, and an unwilling woman does not make a griffin glow.”
Well, alright then.
He clasps his hands behind his back. “You asked me why the pride members were here. They are here to stand witness to my decision. Once more, I remind you that you may leave. But if you stay, you must adjust, as we all must. You have lain with her. But that taught you nothing about your true self. An omega is worthy of worship, but now you must learn to stand beside her. You are and always will be her mate, but now you must move beyond the mere urges of the flesh.”
My throat is dust-fucking-dry. I nod. I understand what he is giving me, and what he is not.
She is now a griffin mate. He said she had chosen him.
And something has already happened between her and Fenix.
And then there is his second, Darrion, whose wings are also out and on display.
He’s a part of this, too. This is already in motion.
It has been in motion from the day we saved her from that damn runaway horse.
Lark is on the inside.
I am yet outside. These decisions, these changes are my pathway to acceptance. I may see her, but I cannot be with her again as a man and a woman until this is resolved. And I don’t have a clue what resolved looks like. Maybe it is a mental state. A physical one, like Lark. Or something else.
He is not denying me my place as a mate. He is telling me I may leave if I choose, knowing I never will. Perhaps that in itself is the test.
I will stand by her side. I will do anything and everything I need to do to ensure her sister is defeated and never threatens her again. Violet has ever been drawn to griffins. I’m not one to think about fate, but I believe her being here is fate. It was no mistake.
“You want my words,” I surmise, my gaze passing over the griffins and Lark. “Before these witnesses, I agree to your terms that are yet as clear as mud.”
“What you will go through, in some ways, will be far harder than what Lark had to go through,” Altas says bluntly.
I believe him.
Transformation is coming for me, but it feels quieter, slower, and more complex. I know this much with a clarity that does not waver—whatever they intend to shape me into, I will meet it head-on.
“And yes,” he continues. “I need your words.”
“I thought I made myself clear when we first arrived,” I say, voice carrying over the room. “But I will say it again, before these witnesses, so there is no misunderstanding. I am staying.”
“Good,” he says, and now his smile is rueful. “You will get some idea what it was like for us, for me, these past weeks.”
I believe him on that count, too.
A challenge is coming, perhaps the greatest, most important of my life. I fucking miss her already, a pain in the center of my chest.
Let the challenge come.