Chapter Twenty-Four. Etan
TWENTY-FOUR
ETAN
Fallon was quiet as she caught her breath, her face tucked into the crook of my neck. I had no desire to leave her, but also didn’t want to crush her with my weight unnecessarily. Every one of my limbs trembled, not from exertion but the crash of adrenaline as the last dredges of magic fled.
The choice had been made, and while I’d long suspected that Fallon would be the one who was chosen as the true heir, it didn’t ease the tiny sting I felt.
It meant she had to have magic of her own, that it was the Summer Court she truly called home, and even when she’d started to open up to me, that was one secret she’d kept for herself.
The Summer Court wouldn’t have chosen her to lead otherwise.
Fallon sighed and stood, sliding herself out from beneath me with a shaky smile.
She seemed suddenly uncomfortable in her nudity, a flush hitting her cheeks when my gaze lingered on the curve of her breast before gliding up to her breathtakingly ethereal face.
She looked at home in this place—this sanctuary that was filled with mysticism and where magic coated the very air.
She couldn’t seem to meet my gaze, her attention pointedly elsewhere.
I followed after her as she found her underwear on the bank beside the pool, tugging it up her legs and hiding that part of her from my view.
“Talk to me, min solios,” I said, touching a hand to her shoulder. She spun to face away from me with an odd expression, but didn’t move away from the contact altogether. She shook her head as if she couldn’t get a handle on her thoughts.
“I don’t know how,” she admitted, her voice trembling.
“How to what?” I asked, pulling her closer.
She didn’t seem to mind my nudity or the way I touched her, my arms wrapping around her waist. She turned and circled her arms around me as if she craved that closeness, returning the embrace in a way that communicated it wasn’t her body that was revolting against what had happened.
She buried her face in my chest, taking deep breaths that worried me.
“How to anything! It was stressful enough thinking I was just going to be your queen, but I was willing to do it if it meant I could have some power to choose for myself. I didn’t expect the magic to choose me.
What does that even mean for us? For my freedom?
” she asked, the urgency in her voice conveying just how panicked she was by the thought.
“Nothing needs to be any different than it would have been if the magic had chosen me as its host, Fallon. I will still be King and you will still be Queen, and we will still work together to rule our court to the best of our ability,” I said, hoping the words would reassure her.
“Yeah?” she asked, her voice shaking. “Then tell me this, what if one of us were to find a mate? Who would remain as the ruler then?”
I gritted my teeth, hating the answer. Fallon didn’t want to rule in truth, not yet anyway, and the Summer Court had been my haven from the world for as long as I could remember. But the answer was sure and swift; the magic had left no room for doubt.
“You do,” I said, the very mention of her mate enough to make my blood feel like fire in my veins. I’d always had a strong reaction to the notion of losing Fallon to another male, but it felt different now that I’d had her.
Now that I knew how she felt wrapped around me, and I never wanted to leave that embrace.
I hated to think it, but on the off chance that Fallon had a Fae mate and not a human one, the monochromatic color of her Fae Marks meant that he would be a Summer Court Fae. It almost made me not want to take her home, not want to risk losing the chemistry we had found together.
“I’m not ready for this,” she said, her voice filled with the sting of tears.
“I don’t understand. You were willing when you stepped into the pool. What happened?” I asked, trying to catch her gaze as I pulled back. But Fallon studiously avoided me, turning her head to the side in a way that broke something inside of me.
The need for distance didn’t make sense. None of this did.
“It was supposed to be just sex, Etan,” she said, her voice soft with the traces of emotion she didn’t want to convey.
She was pushing me away and I knew it, and I knew that meant I’d gotten too close.
She couldn’t dismiss what had happened as an effect of the magic because she’d allowed me to make love to her even without it.
It was supposed to be.
The words struck me in the chest, the casual admission in them making me tuck her loose wet hair behind her ear.
“I’ve had plenty of just sex and that is not what that was.
For either of us,” I said to reassure her that she wasn’t alone in those feelings.
I hadn’t expected it to be so much more than what I’d experienced before, but somehow it was everything.
“I will not be owned,” she asserted, but she didn’t move away from the affection of my touch. The words didn’t make sense in the context of the conversation, especially not when I hadn’t made any mention of attempting to own her.
“I don’t have any interest in owning you, min solios,” I said, snagging Fallon by the chin. I turned her to look at me, my heart racing as her stare dropped to my chest. “Why won’t you look at me?”
Her eyes shuddered closed, her breathing coming in harsh pants and her heart beating out of her chest. When she finally tipped her head up and thrust her eyes open, sunfire flashed through them in a sudden spark.
I felt it all the way down to my toes, molten heat tearing through me and centering on my viniculum, where it pulsed with deeper red.
My eyes widened as I stared at Fallon, understanding what she had felt before I did. The bond that the offering had revealed pulsed between us, an invisible thread that could never be severed. The woman I’d thought I’d chosen for myself in the absence of fate was no longer.
Because Fallon was my mate.
Fallon and Etan’s story will continue, along with Caldris and Estrella’s, in book five of the Of Flesh & Bone series, What Roams Beneath the Stars.