“How old is the Life Tree?” I sputtered, desperate to change the topic in order to stuff down the anxiety crawling up my throat.
“Almost as old as Fairie itself,” Vin answered. “It’s said to be the first seed to take root in Fairie’s soil.”
That wasn’t really an answer, but by now, I was used to the male’s cryptic, unhelpful answers. “Well, it’s beautiful.”
“Yes.” Vincent’s tone came out strained, making me twist in his arms to peer at him. For a second, I saw past the monster to catch the image of a homesick man.
“You’ve really missed your home.”
He made a gruff sound in confirmation, throwing up his stony mask once again. “Yeah. But coming back here hasn’t been easy. My mother had a lot of questions for me when I came for the storm glass needle.”
My hand shot up to the hollow of my throat where the pendant rested, fingers stroking the tube of glass containing the fae artifact. The needle belonged to Vin’s mom, but somehow it made me feel closer to my own. Maybe because I knew one day soon it would lead me to her.
“How much have you told her about everything? You know, with the coven and being a vampire?” I tongued the tip of my fangs, watching him intently. “And about me?”
Vincent’s steely muscles flexed against me as he tensed. Which told me all I needed to know. He barely told her shit.
“She knows my heart no longer carries a beat. When we embraced, she recoiled. She scented death. My mother is a shrewd fae. She knew dark magic was at play. So when we go back, they’ll be wary.”
If I wasn’t misreading Vin, and I usually didn’t, he was just as nervous as me.
Yup, this was going to go swimmingly.
I closed my eyes, thinking about what Eros had said about time working differently in Fairie. He’d said I’d had a week and a half until the vampire king arrived. That meant that ten days in Fairie time was about two in the mortal world. So time passed by about five times as fast. “You’ve been in the mortal world for a decade, right? That means you’ve been gone from your people for almost half a century.”
“Must have been some family reunion. I’m surprised you didn’t stay longer.”
“I went for two reasons. To tell my mother I was alive, in a matter of speaking, and to collect your birthday present. Didn’t need more than a couple of days for that. Besides, you weren’t the only one that felt the stress on our bond.”
I gaped at him. “But you hadn’t marked me yet.”
“Didn’t matter. I carried your claim. I could sense your presence.” His breathing went shallow, and his eyes went dark. “Until I couldn’t.”
“Then you know what it’s like for the mating bond to be stretched so tight.” My fingers trailed from the pendant to the collar of scars Sterling had left on my throat.
“I know what it’s like,” he said in a paper-thin whisper that I barely caught over the thrashing breeze.
I absorbed this new shred of information in quiet, mulling it over as I watched the dark fae’s life tree grow closer. Maybe Vincent’s understanding of the hell my other mates and I were going through was part of the reason he’d come to his damn senses on the matter of taking me home. It made me trust his sudden change of heart just a little more.
But I couldn’t shake the sensation that there was still so much more he wasn’t telling me.
“So, what exactly does your mother know about me?”
“She knew I had a mate the second she laid eyes on me. Dark fae don’t claim their mates through physical marking, but there are other species in Faerie that do. So she knew what the mark was the moment she saw it. Even if it wasn’t visible, she scented it.”
Vin’s mating mark went red hot. “So they’re going to know I’m also marked by three other men?”
“Yes.”
Great. This just kept getting better and better.
“Everyone is going to think I’m a huge slut, then. Perfect. Can’t wait for everyone to hate my guts. That’s going to make for an outstanding show when everyone watches us fuck. Thanks, Feral.”
“Their opinion of you can be changed if you wish to change it.” The way his voice caught had my chest tightening with a strange sensation I wasn’t used to feeling around the fae.
“Is there anything I should know before we land?”
From the way he tensed, I got my answer before the words left him. “Stay in your monster form if you can.”
