Chapter 31
Chapter Thirty-One
Fenix
Present day…
The memory digs in. It always fucking does. But I shove it down and focus on the now.
Vander takes Rafe to get cleaned up. I’m not popular at the moment and fully intend to slink off where I can brood in peace.
Not a godsdamned chance. Atlas narrows his eyes on me like my mere presence offends him, and then motions Darrion and me to accompany him. Fucking great. Not only is he pissed at me, but he wants me close where he can remind me that he’s pissed at me.
The mutt falls in step with us. Lark is very attached to his direwolf form. Other than when he was getting blown by Violet last eve, he pretty much stays as his wolf.
Galeor decides now is the right time to bombard me with some filthy visuals he saved from last night. “Delicious,” he rumbles, preening his feathers in the back of my mind and crooning softly to himself.
Fucking crooning?! She has broken him.
Fine, she has broken me, too.
The moment we enter Atlas’s study, her scent crashes into me. My wings spread to their full width, as do Atlas’s and Darrion’s. The mutt is also fucking here. He’s as big as a horse and takes up what little room exists between our flapping wings.
“Atlas should consider getting a larger study,” Galeor observes. He has stopped preening and is riveted—as I am—by the omega nesting on Atlas’s couch.
“Oh,” Violet says, her eyes going wide as she takes us in. The blanket that was covering her slips from her shoulder.
“You have no idea how to dress a woman,” Darrion mutters.
I mean, he’s not wrong. The wool dress she’s wearing is ugly as fuck.
“We should keep her naked,” Galeor says conversationally. “Available for feeding.”
I swallow thickly as he drags up yet more detailed imagery of her coming. “Not fucking now.” Violet’s face has turned beet red, and she is staring at me.
Gods, she tasted so fucking good.
A growl erupts from Atlas’s chest. He is not ordinarily a growly sort of male. I turn and glare at him. “What the fuck? You have already put me in my place. It was not my idea to come here!”
The look he levels me with says he is thinking about thumping me again. He strides forward and lifts Violet into his arms before striding to his desk. He sits with her on his lap, and somehow, his wings remain open and proud, and not at all awkward.
Bastard.
Darrion grunts and collects a chair. I do the same. The mutt flops his giant body in front of the door, creating a barrier between us and any potential threat.
There is going to be a lot of adjustment needed all around.
“We need a plan,” Atlas announces.
Before he can say more, a knock sounds on the door—the mutt growls. Aldric must have words with it, for it suddenly shuts up and moves from the door.
“Enter,” Atlas calls.
A servant arrives with a tray bearing food. The items rattle. She gives all of us and the direwolf a wary look before placing it on the desk before Atlas… and leaves just as promptly.
“Are you hungry?” Atlas asks Violet.
She looks small on his lap, blanket clutched tight, staring up at him like he’s speaking in riddles.
Galeor rumbles his amusement. This is a side of Atlas we have never seen. Softer. Attentive. I hope his griffin, Aldric, is giving him shit. He needs to claim her already.
The mutt has barely settled back in guard position in front of the door—Violet has yet to answer—when another knock sounds on the door.
The mutt rumbles and heaves himself back up.
This time, it is Rafe who enters.
I thought the room was already suitably tense, but with his arrival, it cranks up another notch.
Violet
Being in the same room as Fenix after what happened last eve has already gotten me in a flutter when the door opens for the second time, and Rafe walks in.
Seeing him steals the air from my lungs.
In a stark contrast to the last time I saw him chained up in the dungeon, today he wears simple leather trousers tucked into serviceable boots and what appears to be a new leather jerkin.
His hair is a little damp, and even his beard is neatly trimmed. He looks devastatingly handsome, and my belly gets fluttery as I take him in.
The griffin who brings him here, Vander, nods his head at Atlas and closes the door as he leaves.
Silence follows. I want to go to Rafe. Yet I’m aware that I’ve already overstepped boundaries and pushed matters with Atlas today. We are all on shifting ground. The dynamics between us are moving faster than any of us is ready for.
My face, already heated by Fenix’s presence, grows yet hotter that Rafe—who has been such a steady presence in my life—must witness me nestling on Atlas’s lap.
My eyes search his, desperate to know what he thinks of me. Whether he sees me as naught but a shameful hussy… whether he still loves me.
Only, he does not once glance at me. No, he’s staring directly at Atlas.
“Ah, Rafe. Excellent,” Atlas says. “I’m glad you’re here. Now we can begin.”
He turns to me. “Are you hungry?”
Hungry? He has already asked me that once before we were interrupted.
I am not hungry. At all. I couldn’t put food in my belly if my life depended on it.
I shake my head quickly. I’m still clutching the blanket like a shield, trying not to breathe in the collective male pheromones lacing the air.
The cushion he usually has me kneel on is propped against his desk.
The thought of him putting me on it and feeding me while the others all watch—I might spontaneously combust. “No, thank you.” The words come out in a squeak.
His eyes narrow, like he believes I am hungry.
He must take pity on me, for he does not push the matter. Lark flops his big body down next to the door again, like it is his sacred duty to guard. Darrion rises, offers his chair to Rafe, and collects another one from the far side of the room, bringing it over to sit down himself.
“Good,” Atlas says decisively. And then he turns to me. “Violet. We have some news we need to share with you.”
The five distinct male scents filling the room are very distracting. I’m convinced he’s about to finally bed me—across his desk, maybe in front of the others. Or spread me out and spank my bottom. My thoughts are very wayward.
He does none of those things.
He opens the top drawer on his desk, takes out an item, and places it on the desk before me. I glance from it to Atlas and back again. It looks like a seal ring, attached to a long leather strip. I have seen captains sometimes wear such around their necks.
“I believe the seal is familiar,” he says at length.
I reach to pick it up, turn it over in my hand… and drop it.
Lark’s ears prick up. He curls his lip back and growls.
“Stand down,” Atlas says brusquely.
The growling immediately stops.
The seal ring is tucked back into the drawer. Then Atlas explains about the attack on the village, and how Lark recognized a fallen man—one of the raiders—who wore it around his throat.
My lips quiver. “My sister is here,” I whisper. My eyes flash to meet Rafe’s, finding his expression solemn.
“We do not know that for certain yet,” Atlas says. “But men bearing her seal are.”
“Does she…” I cannot make my jumbled thoughts into words. “Why is a man bearing her seal here?”
“I do not have the answers to that either,” Atlas says. “A part of me very much wants to shield you from this trouble. But to do so would be an insult to your intelligence and integrity. I do not know what shape the threat will take. But I would treat you as an equal as we face this together.”
Tears pool in my eyes, although now is not the time for weakness, and I steel myself to be strong. “She’s my sister. This is my fault. Let me go to her—to her people.” A dreadful premonition settles in my gut. “Maybe I can make her see sense.”
“Not a fucking chance I’m letting you face her alone,” Rafe says. “And you do not know Atlas if you think he would agree to it either.”
His tone is sharp. It almost makes me smile. It reminds me of the times when we were traveling, and our decisions did not align… and those few occasions when he put me over his knee and spanked me.
He is not so different from Atlas, on reflection, at least in ways pertaining to my care. And Rafe has always cared for me, ever since the start.
Goddess weep, I was so blind where he and Lark were concerned.
As I glance across at Darrion, all serious, and Fenix, all brooding intensity, then Lark with his ears pricked up as though he can listen to what we say—although I do not know if he can—I feel their quiet presences and steadying influences, a barrier between me and danger that is steadfast in its intent.
“Fine. It was a foolish notion that I might be able to persuade Elisa to do anything sensible.” In my heart, I already know she is here. I glance at Rafe, feeling his silent support.
I don’t feel worthy of him, nor any of them, yet they offer it to me without reservation, and regardless.
“My sister is a bitter woman,” I say into the waiting quiet.
“She thrives on conflict and misery. A chance to wage war upon distant lands for glory before the eyes of the High King? That would be something she would do. Life has embittered her. She was not always so. At least it did not seem obvious in her younger years. But her cruelty has grown over time. She is capable of anything. Even this. And worse.”
“I cannot bear the thought of her cruelty touching the good people of the eyrie, those few I met in Acton Trussell, or any other village or community under your watch.”
“Some people are just intrinsically bad. Some people thrive upon chaos. I am sorry to say my sister is one such person. Elisa is like a scourge, an infection spreading, a presence that leaches the joy out of life. And she needs to be stopped.”
“She will be,” Atlas says. The words carry such conviction that they set the little hairs along my skin to attention. “If it is truly here and seeks trouble, she will meet the full force of the Cairnborn Pride.”
“I have ever been drawn to griffins,” I say, unable to tear my eyes from his pretty, whirling silver ones.
“An obsession, if you will. I believe the Goddess herself brought me to you, that you might finally rid the world of my sister’s threat…
I bring change. I bring a terrible burden to your home and people.
And I am so very sorry. Whatever it is you need from me—counsel, words, action, anything—I will gladly, and without reservation, help. ”
His eyes seem to whirl faster. His hand covers mine before he entwines our fingers. “You are the furthest thing from a burden the Goddess put on this earth. And if she brought you to me that I might rid the world of a terrible, cruel queen, then so be it.”
He says my words back to me, and they slay me.
“Agreed,” Rafe says.
“Agreed,” Darrion echoes.
“Agreed,” Fenix adds.
From his place beside the door, Lark offers a low rumbly purr.