I felt better approaching this day clean and ready for battle.
Walking through the solid wall, which was as weird as it sounded, I used the wall guides to find my way back to the main dining room. Shadow and Ixana were the first people I saw, in deep discussion, and what do you know… there was food between them.
Looked like they did eat on occasion.
My view was cut off by Angel, half-running and half-gliding across the wide space. She’d clearly been waiting on me, zooming over the moment I’d appeared. When her arms wrapped around me in a tight hold, I found more of my natural quirky disposition returning.
“I’ll kill him,” she murmured in my ear, her hold almost to the point of painful. “How dare he parade her in front of you!”
I had to chuckle at her ferocious nature. Since my father’s death, I hadn’t been able to trust new people, but Angel had blown through those barriers, and now I couldn’t imagine my life without her.
This friendship might be the true love story here.
“It’s fine,” I said, not quietly, because why the hell was I protecting anyone else in this situation? “It’s no secret that I was always just a side-chick until the frontrunner showed up.”
I had no idea if Ixana heard me—she didn’t stop chatting animatedly to Shadow—buthesure as fuck heard. The fire in his gaze drilled into me as he watched every step I took across the room, Angel at my side, and my confidence exactly where it should have been yesterday.
I’d had a moment of weakness in my room, fucking him again, but that was all it would ever be. A moment. I could never settle for the mistress position, while someone else held his heart and soul. I deserved better.
For the first time, I didn’t let my eyes remain locked with his. I turned away.
Angel, the smartest and most observant being I knew, wrapped one arm around me as we walked toward the table.
“Never let him see he’s getting to you,” she murmured.
“Never,” I parroted.
And in that moment, I meant it. Shadow hadn’t been exactly warm with his “true mate” since our arrival, and he was clearly playing some sort of game. Until I knew my part in it, I had to be cautious with my approach. For my future sanity.
When we took our seats at the table, I looked toward the food, which was in a long line down the center of the crystal. There was absolutely nothing I recognized, but with the help of Angel and Midnight, who popped down from the ceiling long enough to wrap around me in a welcoming hug, I managed to find some food I would have eaten on Earth. Mostly the realm’s equivalent of fruit and crackers. “They don’t always eat, but when they do, it’s definitely the good stuff,” Angel told me. She, of course, still wasn’t eating, but she did move a plate of food around.
Just like old times.
While eating, I drank about ten gallons of fresh water, my body needing replenishment in more ways than one, and the entire time I chatted to Angel, who told me about their dash across the realm to find us. “We had days over the water,” she said with a huff, “and I would have been more than a little drained if Midnight hadn’t allowed me to regenerate some energy through their network.”
Thank you.
Midnight responded immediately.Your family is my family.
I honestly couldn’t thank it enough. And while this unexpected bond had freaked me out at first, I felt differently now.
I’m so honored that you’re part of my life. That we are bonded.
Midnight swelled larger and did a jiggling move with lots of sparks of its synapses.
The honor is mine.
We would work this bond out over time, and even in the short days we’d been together, I was growing used to the feel of its energy within mine.
Speaking of… “I felt you when you got closer,” I told Angel, eating a soft “cheese” spread on a cracker. I hadn’t bothered to ask what it really was because that would probably gross me out. I preferred to just enjoy the new experiences.
“You felt me how?”
I tapped my chest, swallowing the last bite. “In here, like a warmth that flared harder as you arrived in The Grey Lands.”
Her smile was near-blinding. “I mean, we were warned about never bonding to any being not from Honor Meadows, but… I had a gut feeling, as your humans would say, and I went with it. The fast evolution of our bond is quite exciting for me; I think it speaks of a connection truly destined to exist between us.”
“What warning did they give?”
