My weight shifts forward; I rest my head against Daire’s back.
Lanlin’s body tightens, as he appears to be reading the environment. Then he lowers toward the sand. His long claws bite into the ground, and his shadow wings surround Daire and me in a cocoon to shield us from the scattered sand.
Slowly, his wings lower again, only for the tendrils of shadows to wrap around Daire and me and lift us to the sand.
Even though my feet are on the ground, inside I am still flying.
Awe-struck, I stare at Lanlin. “I want to do that again.”
Daire is beating his wings, as if he hopes that he may himself take flight. “On the sacred ash, if my soul wasn’t already damned, I would sell it to ride you again. And I have a lot ofexperience inridingpeople to tell you that you’re the bloody best.”
Lanlin transforms back, stalking toward us both.
He looks wild, almost undone at our words.
“You don’t need to sell your soul. It is already mine.” Lanlin holds out his hands, and my breath stutters. It is such a rare gesture for him to willingly offer to be touched like this. Daire and I instantly hold his hands. “My bat riders.”
“Yours,” I reply.
“Do you, however, wish to be more than that?” Lanlin is staring at me with a strange intensity that makes me shift, uncomfortable. “We are alone now. I can speak openly. I have sensed a power within you that I didn’t understand. But I could tell that someone had suppressed your true power, as someone had Dove’s, to turn you into a non-shifter Omega.”
Has Lanlin worked out my true identity?
Did he fly Daire and me out into the desert to kill us?
Shit, shit, shit.
I stand very still and pull on every technique that Wraith taught me to hide my emotions and blank my expression.
How the hell do I play this?
The one thing that Lanlin is most frightened of…paranoid about…can’t forgive…is people lying to him.
And betraying him.
What would he do if he knew that I was truly the secret Queen of Fang Kingdom?
His mother tried to murder me. I have her blade strapped now at my waist.
Would he help me avenge myself on King Ulf and take back my kingdom? Or would his fury at my betrayal be enough for him to hand me over to King Ulf or worse?
Lanlin squeezes my hand.
I force myself to keep my breathing steady.
“It was why I was an outcast, forced to work as a servant within Fang Kingdom,” I say, using Wraith’s technique of mixing in the truth, while bonding over shared trauma. “I would have been killed on the night of the Mate Hunt for it too, if I hadn’t run.”
Lanlin’s eyes darken. “Barbaric that an Alpha should treat an Omega like that. I wish that I could visit every moment of your suffering threefold onto those who hurt you. But what I can do is try to free your shifter side.”
I forget every rule that Wraith taught me and gape at him. “Fuck off.”
Lanlin’s nose wrinkles. “As you wish.”
He tries to pull away, but I hold onto him. “I meant, seriously?”
Hope blooms through me, a hope that I haven’t allowed myself to feel for a long time.
It isn’t possible, right?
