“Why the fuck are you smiling?” Riall snaps at Curio, and I look over to find a grin widening across his face.
Curio shakes his head and collapses down on the other side of the settee that he’s been calling a bed since Auset took over his. The furniture we ordered for the empty extra rooms on the ground floor has been delayed, and I’m undecided if that’s a blessing or a curse.
“Onlyyouwould think it’s all hopeless, completely ignoring that she went from trying to leave this morning to almost riding your dick by night,” he points out, his smile broadening even more as he does. “I’d say that’s progress, not failure.”
“You didn’t see the way she looked at me before she walked the fuck away. There was no progress in that shit. It fucking cut…deep,” Riall counters.
“She’s been through a lot, Riall, we all knew we’d need to be patient,” I remind him, but he shakes his head.
“We fucked up,” he sighs, dropping his hands to his lap as he continues to stare at the ceiling.
“She was young; there was nothing we could do then,” I remind him. “We’ve been over this and over this—fate brought us back to her. She may not see all the reasons why right now, but she just got here. Give her time.”
“And if she doesn’t?” he challenges.
“Then we serve what purpose we can in her life and hope she finds her way back here again,” I tell him evenly as though that statement doesn’t feel like razor blades in my mouth.
“Screw that, Tarek, I’m not letting her go,” Curio argues.
Shocked, I snap my attention to him. I expect a statement like that from Riall, as he’s always been the more impulsive of the three of us, but not Curio.
“You will if that’s whatshewants,” I correct him.
Shoving out of my chair, I start to pace in front of the fireplace. The drive to move, to process the sudden volatile emotions flinging about the room, makes my legs ache. I swallow down the trickle of panic that laces my saliva, and look for ways to solve all the problems suddenly creeping into my periphery.
“I shouldn’t need to remind you two that we all knew this wouldn’t be easy. Her desire to be one of us wasn’t a guarantee when we brought her here. We all understood that, and now what? You want to tie her up and force her to accept you?” I accuse.
Riall opens his mouth to argue, but I give him a glare and hold up a hand to silence him. Wisely, he shuts his mouth.
“She was taken, abandoned, abused, and now you expect her to justtrustusas she falls on her back and spreads her thighs for you? What about Auset makes you think that’s a viable expectation? She’d sooner slit your throat and remove your balls,” I warn them, shoving away the amusement I feel at the thought of her savage nature.
Curio snorts, the sound equally appreciative of the visual I just created, and shakes his head. “Yeah, that’s not our girl,” he agrees, relaxing a little into the cushions of his chair.
“I know it’s hard. None of us are very patient when it comes to taking what we want. But you both need to think less with your cocks and more about what she needs to see from us so she can begin to work through what’s happened to her. The nightmare we inadvertently helped create,” I point out.
Both of them lower their heads as though the shame of that fact is suddenly too heavy to bear. I ignore my own guilty stirrings and bolster myself as best as I can against the useless emotion. What’s done is done. We didn’t know what Tilleo was doing, how bad he’d strayed from what the ludere was supposed to be there for. We also didn’t know who the girl chained in Dorsin’s office would become, what she would mean to us some day. How could we? She wasn’t who she is now, and it’s because of who she isnowthat she’s ours. I equally hate and respect what she’s been through, but I can’t help feeling that in some way it all needed to happen just as it has.
“We owe her some answers about how Dorsin got her, which I’m already working on,” I point out, gesturing to the stack of sealed missives sitting in a tray on my desk. “We need to show her who we are and who she is to us, who she could bewithus. She’s smart enough to figure the rest out.”
“She’s stubborn,” Riall argues.
“Good, it’ll make earning her all the more worth it,” I contend.
“You act like it’s a done deal,” Curio points out with a cheeky smirk and an eyeroll.
“It is,” I assure him. “She’s special, we all know it. She’s one of us. She’ll get it, and then we’ll get her,” I state confidently, and there’s nothing about my certainty that’s fabricated.
I know in my depths that all of us belong to each other. I knew it when Eacon brought the three of us together, and I’ve known it on some level since the moment Auset walked into our tent, all sharp tongue and raw power.
Riall shakes his head while slowly exhaling a deep weary sigh. “She’s Sanguinna,” he professes, the statement pained. “A female. I didn’t think they existed anymore, and now here she is wandering around my home in Curio’s tunic and nothing more, loathing me and everything I stand for. She’s my Blood, I don’t think you two understand how hard it is not to sink my fangs into every inch of her, to claim her and demand she claims me right back,” he admits, and I know how much the confession costs him, how hard it is for Riall to embrace this kind of vulnerability.
My concern softens as I take him in. He’s come so far since the day Eacon brought him here. I’d never seen someone so jumpy and feral. He was filthy and terrified and absolutely savage in every possible way. I can still recall the cold night that Curio and I sat by the fire while Eacon recounted how their paths had crossed. Riall had been on the run and hiding for years. He’d been forced to survive solely on others’ blood, and he’d attacked Eacon and tried to bite her. Somehow she’d gotten him to come here with her, but she wasn’t sure if his Sanguinna side would ever give way to the calmer more civilized parts of him again.
I shake away the memory of the dirt-caked wildling Riall used to be, and focus on the lethal fae before me now. He’d once been hunted by the most feared fae in the Dusk Court. Khartik the Cut-Throat was no one to Riall when he showed up out of nowhere, back from war. Riall had never been told that his mother was married to the brute who led the king’s army. Khartik had been gone for a long time, conquering lands at the king’s behest. Riall’s mother probably thought the monster was dead.
Riall used to have nightmares about the night Khartik killed his mother and tried to kill him. The cruel bastard refused to hear a word in explanation of why his mate mothered a welp that wasn’t his. But Riall survived. He ran and hid and evaded for years until Eacon found him.
It took ages for him to get his instincts and urges in check. To think with his head instead of his fangs. Now, here he is fighting who he is at his core, all for a female his kind would raze the realms to find if they knew she existed. I empathize with where he’s come from. That the restraint he’s showing is unfathomable. I just wish Auset knew it too.
