Someone invites her to dance, a Jaguar. Aerin agrees. She lets his hands touch her, the bare skin between her skirt and top, the curve of her hips. He purrs in her ear, telling her how sexy she is. The most beautiful thing he’s ever seen.
The words echo in her ears. The lights blur, double, then blur again. Aerin turns to face him, but his face floats between handsome and grotesque. He’s saying something about her tits. He laughs. She laughs. She kisses him and his tongue feels like a slug in her mouth. She pulls away, turns around again. His hands feel like hot brands, but she doesn’t remove them. She looks around the room as it swirls before her. She looks and looks. For blue eyes and massive wings. For height that towers over her and brown earnest eyes.
Fingers slide under the waistband of her skirt. Aerin can’t find her voice to stop him. She can’t find Malice. She can’t find Emrys. She is alone. The room churns, colors blurring and dancing before her eyes. Sounds are loud and quiet, coming in and out of her ears.
Aerin blinks and she thinks it takes her too long, like too much time passes while her eyes are closed. There is someone new in front of her now. Not Malice. Not Emrys.
She reaches for the blood-bond, but it feels far away. So far, she can’t find it. Can’t think.
Someone stands in front of her. Someone tall. Dark hair. Not Malice. Not Emrys. She can’tseehim. No features are distinct, just a blur of broad shoulders and black hair and black clothes. Aerin reaches out for him and is almost shocked to touch him.
He feels the way a violin sounds. The touch tugs on something inside of her, but it too, feels far away. Her thoughts can’t form. She can’t tell what’s real and what’s imagination. She searches her brain, but just like the blood-bond, this feeling is out of her reach.
She brushes black hair away from his face and then all she sees is red. Red. Red. Red.
Everything fades farther from her grasp, like reality is floating away. Aerin reaches for the blood-bond again. Reaches and reaches. Burrows into herself, past her heart and to her ribs. There are no words she can get out, no message to be sent. All she can do is grasp it, grip it, dig her nails into it.
She looks up again and sees red.
She blinks again. One of those long blinks that make it feel like time sped passed her. The red is gone.
Instead, Aerin sees blue. Blue. Blue. Blue.
When Aerin wakes,she finds herself in a bed in the Royal Village. Everything hurts: her head, her legs, her feet. Most of all her chest. She feels like a hole has been punched through her.
She looks at the floor and Emrys is there, his brown eyes watching her carefully from his Wolf form.
“I’m sorry. I’m so sorry,” Aerin says softly, tears pulling to her eyes. For once, she doesn’t have it in her to fight them back.
[It will all be okay, Alpha.]The honorific causes tears to form faster.
“Malice?” she whispers.
Emrys shakes his head ever so slightly before laying it back down on his paws.
The hole in her chest aches. The blood-bond in her ribs is agonizing. And there is something else, some other sense of loss, just out of reach.
Aerin rolls over and cries silent tears. She destroys everything good she touches. She isn’t worthy of her bond-mates’ attention, of their devotion, of their loyalty. She tellsherself it’s just the after-effects of the drugs making her feel this way.
Over and over again.
She never quite believes it.
59
AERIN
Shuffling into the tube cart after Vyx and Quinn, Emrys by her side in his Wolf form, Aerin ignores the open stares and murmurs of the creatures around them. Khortland walks behind her with Reyna, and after them, Malice. Inside are the two Zeneith Royal Guards the Hale King insisted accompany them.
Malice is pissed about the guards escorting them. It’s salt in the wound that weaves between them, a deep gash Aerin doesn’t know how to start healing.
Aerin’s hangover anxiety isn’t helped by Vyx and Quinn’s recaps of the night before. She remembers taking the pill the Spider Shifter sold her. After that everything is fuzzy, only flashes of colors. Apparently Malice felt pain in the blood-bond and went to find Aerin, who he discovered with a Jaguar Shifter draped around her, one hand under the waistband of her skirt and the other under the hem of her top.
Dropping into a chair at the back of the tube cart, Aerin rubs her forehead, headache far from easing.
“Are you sure you’re okay?” Reyna asks her.
The Human wears Aerin’s magic like a shield. Reyna’s Human and Fae forms are similar, but differences are there. She’s a couple inches taller and areas that scream “Human” like her cheeks, décolletage, even down to her fingers, are changed. The effect is somewhat sleeker. Like a brand-new model of something old. Her hair is the same chocolate brown, matching her eyes, nose and cheeks still speckled with the marks that are rare on Fae. Despite this, no one can look at Reyna and question her species, she looks undeniably Fae.
