Now, I understood his lack of a shirt.
Shifters bodies ran hot…
My eyes rounded in horror.
What in the Fae fuck was going on?
Wait. Is that…
No, that could not be what I thought it was.
A small gasp left my parted lips.
Oh my Fae, that was a golden circle crown resting against his forehead, just like my father had. It was simply getting worse.
Sweet Fae above and below, this couldn’t be right.
I was going to faint. Every gasping breath I took in only made his smell that much more compelling. The urge wasn’t as horrible now that I couldn’t run away from…King Athon.
But soon, like any other time the urge had happened to me, the effects would only get more persuasive without relief.
What. The. Actual. Fae. Fuck.
Did the Fae accidentally screw up? He was a shifter. I was an elf. Death this way comes to those who break Fae law, their rules carved in death-blood. And it was sure as Fairy against their laws to have sex with someone not of your own kind, much less, to be put into a Fae fucking urge.
His shifter black eyes met my elven emerald ones.
King Athon froze completely. He didn’t even breathe.
Yes. Welcome to my freak out, King Athon.
“What in the five kingdoms…,” he muttered quietly.
His voice even turned me on, deep and rolling gruff, not the elven proper style I was used to. It was a Shifter Kingdom accent with bite and brawl, built from a lifetime of ruling the wildest and heinous people in all the kingdoms. And their king was crueler than all of them.
My lips pinched into a thin line. “This has to be a mistake.”
“No shit,” he growled, abruptly shoving forward to yank a fistful of my red hair up and away from my right ear.
I stiffened and held still in surprise as he crouched down in front of me to see what he had uncovered. His lush lips pulled back from his gleaming white, blunt teeth in an ugly snarl as he glared at the top of my right ear—the pointed tip, unlike his own rounded ears.
“A colossal damned mistake of a Fae fuck up!”
I broke free of my shock that the shifter was touching me. I knocked his hand away from my hair and stepped to the side with the fluid grace of many years of training, placing space between us again.
With my heart beating frantically in my chest, I hissed my reprimand, “Keep your distance, King Athon.”
The King of Shifters slowly rose to his full intimidating height of six feet, six inches tall. He wasn’t the tallest a shifter could be, but he sure wasn’t short for his kind, either. The king towered over my almost five feet of height by a Fae damned mile. The top of my head only reached the middle of his chest. This had to be a freaking joke the Fae were playing on us.
His arms crossed over his chest, and his eyes narrowed. That furious black gaze flicked to my hair before scanning my face.
He demanded brusquely, “What is your name?”
I flashed my fangs and took a step back.
King Athon stared at my mouth, and a quiet growl reverberated from his chest through the air, slithering into my eardrums.
Atiger’sgrowl.
