Chapter 20 Raine
Raine
Because there might be a time when I’m not there to listen anymore.
Well, fuck, that hurt, and it started a damned fire under his skin. Raine stared after the angry little female as she slapped a huge smile on her face and took the hands of two other half-Fae to drag them onto the dance floor.
She wanted him to use his words? Raine ground his teeth when that bastard Frecco mouthed “Are you okay?” over the heads of the others and Frelina wrinkled her nose as she nodded.
Something he hadn’t felt in a long time vibrated across his skin, and he blinked when he realized just what the foreign emotion was.
The will to fight.
Raine blinked again as he watched Frelina lift her arms over her head, spinning around as if she didn’t have a care in the world amidst the Fae, half-Fae, and hesitant humans surrounding her, her blue dress looking as fucking free as the smile on her face.
He’d never backed down from a fight before—at least before Solana died—and now?
No, there was no fucking way he would. Not when he’d realized…
he’d somehow fallen in love with Elessia’s sister, had fallen right down when she stomped on his feet, scolded him as if he were but an adolescent, and dragged him out of the dark hole he’d spent far too long in.
If she wanted him to, he’d use his fucking words.
But he needed to find the perfect ones after everything he’d put that amazing female through. He couldn’t just stroll up to her and declare that he’d realized he’d fallen in love with her.
She deserved so much more from him… and it was time he stopped fucking moping around and did something about it.
Raine could actually hear Solana cheering him on as he started walking toward the dance floor, and for the first time in a long time, he let her face remain in his mind, her smile somehow driving a warmth through his veins he’d almost forgotten the feeling of.
And despite Frelina ignoring him, pretending she didn’t know he still stared at her, a smile tugged at his features as he watched the crowd shift before him, cups being handed to those out of reach of the barrels and laughter breaking through the soft tunes from the drums and the Fae who’d stepped up to sing one of their old songs, one about witches and their love spells that hiked Raine’s lips up further.
Then something in the air shifted, and Raine stilled, his muscles locking, and every nerve inside him sparked, ready, as he scanned the crowd again, letting his eyes travel across this ship and the two beside him.
When he didn’t immediately pick up what was amiss, he dropped the barrier he usually kept up to keep people’s thoughts out, letting the happy minds and the ones touched by sorrow fade into the background as he focused on those that glowed slightly crimson, the ones that told him rage drove whatever they planned on pursuing.
A shifter’s mind was what caught his attention first, unfairness weighing heavily in the male’s thoughts as he made his way through his crowd.
Around him were a few other shifters, their minds colored by the anger of the leader Raine had identified first, the almost animalistic tinge to their thoughts wrapping around him like a cool breeze.
We need to confront the regent and that fucking Fae, the male shifter thought, and Raine tried to lock onto his mind as his eyes flew across the crowd.
But as always with shifters, it proved more challenging than with humans and Fae, and the claws he usually could dig in, in less than a second slipped across the volatile whirls.
The nature of shifters was their unpredictability. Especially once they gave in to stronger emotions, such as anger, desperation, or fear, and acted more on instinct than on human and Fae rationality, capturing their minds and bending their wills worked only about half the time.
This was not one of those times, Raine realized as the shifter sensed something and like frightened prey his mind started spiraling, thoughts mixing with memories mixing with plans mixing with pure instinct, causing Raine’s own head to spin.
Fuck! Whirling around, Raine found Loche and Iviry, and he didn’t hesitate as he stormed up to them, even if it finally looked like they’d come together somewhat; their eyes were only on each other as Loche elegantly led her across the dance floor.
When two of Iviry’s guards tried to get in his way—as if he were the fucking danger—Raine forced his way into their minds, snarling, You’re letting me the fuck through or I’ll throw you off this ship.
“Regent, Iviry,” he snapped when neither looked his way, even as Iviry’s guards dropped to the side, letting Raine barge through the moving crowd.
They were too fucking careless.
And he needed to have a word with Iviry’s damned guards if it was this easy to get to her.
Finally, blue and gray eyes found his, and Raine forced himself to lower his voice not to alert the entire crowd.
“Trouble is heading this way,” he rushed out. “Five shifters. Strong ones—and ones trained to evade mind control. They are angry and drunk, and I am betting they’re about to corner you.”
As Raine finished, that sense of warning—the flicker of electricity—charged the air, and the peals of laughter and low murmurs that had previously seemed welcoming dropped a few octaves, the sounds becoming darker, more apprehensive.
When the crowd shifted again, Raine realized he’d been wrong.
So fucking wrong.
It wasn’t just five shifters.
Somehow, during the time he’d approached Iviry and Loche, more shifters had joined them, as well as several half-Fae. The group that pushed through the paling crowd, which scrambled to the sides of the ship as they took in what was happening, was over thirty people.
But that wasn’t what had Raine’s blood first freeze and then heat so much that a menacing sound he didn’t even know he could conjure wound its way through his throat.
The half-Fae flanking the five shifters whose thoughts he’d picked up each dragged a person with them, and Raine quickly understood it was almost the entire new Havlands council.
Venko was yanked forward first, and while he sported a black eye, the one still open was wild, and he spat and snarled as he tried to get out of the much taller half-Fae’s grip.
A human woman, a Fae female, and Dedrick Reinsdor were hauled forward next, each with varying degrees of injuries, but it was Frelina’s furious face as a shifter held on to her neck, shoving her behind them, that Raine couldn’t tear his eyes from.
Those fucking—
“Iviry, get behind me,” Loche ordered, and to his credit, there wasn’t an ounce of fear in the regent’s sharp order.
When Iviry snapped something back, Loche shot her guards a look that had even the two Fae shrink back, and they quickly went around him, each flanking the Fae leader as Loche remained a step ahead of her.
Red tinted Raine’s vision as he glared from the regent to the shifter holding on to the female he’d just realized he was absolutely and utterly obsessed with, and he fucking missed Merrick and Kerym and Thissian so much his chest ached.
With one look, they would have been able to come up with a plan to get these fuckers to stand down.
Instead… Raine shot his narrowed gaze around.
Instead, they had two guards who didn’t even fucking hold on to Iviry—their fucking leader, who appeared as if she would spring before Loche any second.
Instead, he caught frightened gazes from the people hovering by the railings.
Instead, the crowd seemed even more divided than it had been to begin with as the half-Fae and shifters snarled at humans and Fae alike who came too close.
“Please tell us why you are ruining a perfectly good evening?” Loche drawled as the ones who had once been rebels—the ones the regent had freed—came to a halt before them, the instruments that the musicians had left behind lying by their feet.
“And why our council looks like they’ve already been to war? ”
A lethal smile threatened to break out across Raine’s face when he caught Loche’s eyes.
The regent was as furious as he was, and while Loche didn’t have magic, Raine knew what it felt like when your mate was threatened. The human leader would not need any powers other than those of his weapons, should the idiots try to step around him.
They can’t get out alive, Raine hissed into his mind as the leader moved a step forward. No matter what shit comes out of their mouths. No more chances, regent.
Agreed. Loche didn’t look his way again, but his fingers curled by his side, ready for the sword that hung there. If you have any brilliant ideas for how to keep the council alive, though, please jump in. If these bastards don’t, Lessia will surely rip our heads off, if Frelina is injured.
Raine bared his teeth at just the thought, and he knew his eyes flared as one of the half-Fae before them stumbled back.
Get them to talk. Raine turned his head to Iviry for a second. And don’t come after me, but your soon-to-be wife is about to kill those guards for listening to you and not her. I know you want to keep her safe, but I think we might need her skills if we’re going to take all of them out.
Loche’s eyes hardened for a moment before he released a breath through his teeth and turned to Iviry, waving her forward.
“Just because I am female doesn’t mean you get to boss me around,” Iviry snarled under her breath, although it was loud enough for Raine to hear—probably on purpose, since she must have noticed their silent conversation.
“We are equals, regent. And I won’t be having you trying to protect me just because I don’t have a cock. ”
Loche’s jaw drew down for a moment before he caught himself, and Raine would have snickered at his next words if Frelina hadn’t let out an involuntary sound as the shifter pressed her neck farther down.