38. Chapter Thirty-Eight
~Felix~
Evalina went into the bathroom to clean up while I pulled my clothes back on in my room. She swore she didn’t feel sore at all, which must have been part of the same magic that helped her accommodate me in the first place. I offered to clean her up myself but she got adorably shy at the suggestion, even after everything we’d just done together.
As much as I would have liked to stay in bed with her all day and teach her many, many more lessons, as much as my body craved her again even though we just finished, the rest of the world didn’t stop because I found my mate. At least there were no possessed sasquatches roaming our territory like when Vaughan and Calista were trying to solidify their bond. I’d have to take that as a win.
When I grabbed my phone off the floor where it had fallen when I tossed my clothes aside, I saw a message from Savannah.
Why did I have to hear from my brother that you found your mate?! He won’t give me any details, says it’s ‘complicated’. Spill the beans, Felix. Now!
Finding her mate didn’t seem to have changed Sav at all, and thank the goddess for that. I wouldn’t want her any other way.
See for yourself.
I attached the photo of me and Evalina that we took that morning in front of the lake, knowing it would only be a tease and she would still have a million more questions, but the response that came through a moment later wasn’t at all what I expected.
You’ve got the dopey-in-love look down, but how about you send me a picture of your mate instead?
Very funny. I know she’s short, but she’s not that short.
What the hell are you talking about? There’s no one in that photo but you.
My brow furrowed, I scrolled back up, double checking that I had sent her the right photo. Evalina’s sweet, smiling face looked back at me
What are you talking about? She’s right beside me.
There is no one beside you in that picture. Jasper agrees, so don’t try to gaslight me.
With a groan, I realized what the problem had to be. Neither Sav nor Jasper had ever been to the fae realm, so they wouldn’t be able to see Evalina. It hadn’t occurred to me that it would apply to pictures too, but apparently, it did.
Shit. My mate is a fairy, which means she’s invisible to most people. I thought you’d be able to see her in the photo but I guess I was wrong.
The phone rang a second later.
“Invisible?!”
Savannah didn’t even let me say hello before she screeched in my ear.
“How can you have an invisible mate?”
“The same way you had a rogue one? This is what Vaughan meant when he said it’s complicated.”
“Hang on.” I could picture Savannah taking a deep breath, trying to compose herself. “Are you seriously saying you can’t see your mate?”
“I can see her now because I’ve been to the fae realm, but when she first appeared, I couldn’t. I could only smell her. Kai could sense the bond, but we couldn’t see anything. I thought I was losing it.”
“I can imagine.” She exhaled, the line crackling in my ear. “And no one else can see her?”
“Vaughan, Calista and Darius came with me, so they can see her too, but no one else.”
The more I explained it to her, the more I had to actually consider the implications of Evalina’s invisibility in the long term. It would make it difficult for her to interact with others on her own, and I wanted her to have as much independence as she wanted. Selfishly, I also wanted to be able to show her off.
“So… if you kissed her in front of anyone else, it would look like you were making out with the air?”
The absurd statement shattered my somber reflections on impact and a burst of laughter left my mouth right as Evalina opened the bathroom door. The corners of her mouth lifted into a smile at the sound of my laughter, as if my happiness made her happy too. It probably did, since it worked that way for me.
“Yeah, I guess it would. Calista’s doing some research into all things fairy-related to see what our options are, but we’ve got other things to worry about in the meantime. We found out there’s a portal to the fae realm in our territory and Evalina’s former prince might try to come here and track her down.”
Sav let out another breath as she processed all of that. “Never a dull moment, is there?”
“You’re one to talk, Beta of the Ravenstone pack.”
Her laugh rang with both amusement and pride. “Actually, I’d love to pick your brain on some Beta-related stuff soon, but you’ve obviously got your hands full right now. Besides, my mate is naked and waiting for me and looking like he might explode if I make him wait any longer.”
“Too much information, Sav,” I warned while Jasper tried to stifle a laugh in the background. “Go enjoy yourself. I’m happy for you.”
“I’m happy for you too. I’d love to meet this woman soon, assuming I’ll be able to see her.”
“We’ll try to figure that out,” I promised, saying goodbye before we both hung up. I lowered the phone from my ear and Evalina stepped over to me, looking even more radiantly beautiful than before. A post-orgasmic haze looked damn good on her.
“What were you doing with that?” she asked, pointing to the phone in my hand.
“It’s a communication device. It lets me speak to anyone anywhere in the world, if they consent to it. I was talking to Vaughan’s sister. She lives in another pack several hundred miles away.”
I offered the phone to her and she took it tentatively, turning it over in her hand as if she could figure out all its secrets by examining its exterior. “You used it earlier to make the portrait of us.”
“It does a lot of things. It’s incredibly useful. I’ll get one for you, if you like.”
That same smile as before pulled on her lips. “I would be interested in learning more about it, but perhaps we should wait. Like you said, we have other things to worry about first.”
Indeed. “We should get something to eat and check in with Vaughan. He said he’d contact me when he needed me and he hasn’t so far, but he might have been trying to give us some time alone. It doesn’t mean…”
My sentence cut off part-way through as a different sound echoed in my head, one that I knew very well. The wail of the siren pierced my consciousness, ringing loudly for a couple of seconds before fading to a dull roar in the back of my mind.
Someone had crossed into our territory, uninvited.
Report .
Vaughan’s voice growled through the mind-link shared with me, Darius, and the border patrol teams.
We don’t see anything, the guards at the main crossing point stated. It’s quiet here.
Here too, said the men patrolling the western ridge.
Team after team, the same answer came: no one had seen anything. The alert didn’t seem to originate from any of the borders but rather from right in the heart of our territory.
And if no one saw the intruders, maybe that meant they couldn’t be seen, at least not by anyone who hadn’t already seen their kind before.