“Right, right.” I shut the door. “And this one? Would you have come out for this one?”
“Yes, but only because I’m curious about Aurora. People are in awe about how quickly she’s rising in this pack. She still has a ways to go.”
I nodded as I walked on the brittle grasses of the field, the vegetation broken and dead from winter. “This setup isn’t anything like when I was challenged.”
“Oh yeah?” He checked his watch.
“On time?”
“Ten minutes early. You can continue to drag your feet if you want.”
I huffed. “Is it that obvious I don’t want to be here?”
“Yes. Why is that? You’re worried about Aurora getting hurt?”
“Yeah, and fear of what I’ll do if that happens. Sometimes, my gargoyle sweeps me away, and I get really violent without meaning to. That happened during my challenge, but it was okay because it wasmychallenge. I can’t mess this up for her or Austin.”
“She’ll probably get hurt, and I’m sure she’ll get bloody, but Alpha Steele or Brochan will step in if it gets dangerous. They’re very experienced,” Tristan assured me. “They’ve had to step in multiple times during challenges. She’ll be okay.”
I took a deep breath, held it, and let it go slowly. I knew that—it had been explained to me—but knowing didn’t negate the fact that I would have to witness family get ripped up.
“How the hell am I going to handle this when Austin fights?” I murmured.
“How’d you handle him fighting the phoenix?”
I thought back as I neared the others. Aurora leaned around someone, catching sight of me. Her mouth moved, but I was too far away to hear her. The people she stood with looked around and spied me approaching.
“Watch your body language,” Tristan murmured. “You’re advertising how nervous and uncomfortable you are.”
I tried to rein in my emotions. “The phoenix thing was different. It was attacking, and Ivy House was after a blood oath, and Kingsley was in my way, and Sebastian was freaking out… It wasn’t like standing on the sideline and watching two people tear into each other.”
“Have you watched boxing? UFC?”
It was annoying how much sense he was making, and far more annoying when he laughed at me. Clearly, I’d relayed that in my body language, too.
“No one will die,” Tristan said, peeling away as I neared Austin.
Austin stopped talking and turned, his stern shifter persona melting into a grin. “Hey, babe.” He checked his naked wrist for the time. “Mr. Tom is keeping you on schedule, I see.”
I furrowed my brow. “We’re fighting about that.”
“Right now?”
“Yes, right now, we’re in a fight.”
His smile was a thing of beauty as he let his arms fall around me. “We can’t bang it out here, I’m afraid. Time constraints and all.”
It was hard to keep a straight face. I angled for a kiss, and he complied eagerly, his lips soft. Afterward, I glowered. It was important to keep up pretenses.
“You could’ve just told me you wanted me to get better about watching the time instead of throwing me to the wolves,” I groused.
He smoothed his hands down my back, holding me close. “I’d intended to. This was Niamh’s idea, actually. Not just to corral you and your crew, but to help Tristan step into a more active role. Where it concerns you, he’s languishing. She thinks he needs a kick in the arse, as she put it.”
I pulled back so I could get a better look at him. “How did she know his managing my schedule, of all things—or even that he would end up managing my schedule—would be that kick in the ass?”
His eyebrows rose. “Was it?”
I told him about Mr. Tom and Patty arguing about managing me, and Edgar pushing for a meeting, and Tristan handling it all. “And then, on the way here, he’s suddenly talking about better aerial training and how to work as a team in the air, even when mages are present. Which…” I ran my hands down his chest to his flat stomach, thinking about it. “It’s a good idea. I’m like a hot potato with those guardians, a wild card that they basically improvise with. I always mess up their organization. It’s not like with my crew, where we’ve all learned to kinda figure it out and work off each other. With them, it’s more disruptive, which is dangerous in battle. I can’t just get out of the way like Cyra and Hollace do because I’m not strong or fast enough.”
