“We?” I ask, eyes snapping back to his.
He nods. “You probably need your cloak back. I can shift back and then you can take it. Did you get everything you needed here?”
I furrow my brow. “Everything I needed? I don’t understand.”
“You’re collecting ingredients again, right? Are you done, or did you want to look for something else before we go home?”
I let out a bark of laughter. “Oh, I’m not going back with you. I just need my cloak back before you leave.”
He makes a frustrated growl in the back of his throat. “What the fuck are you talking about?”
I cross my arms. “I’m not going back to Vernallis, I’m going to Thermia.”
His eyes widen, and a muscle in his jaw twitches. “You’re not serious. Why?”
“Don’t you already know? I thought that’s why you were following me.”
“I wasn’t,” he says roughly.
“Liar.”
“I wasn’t,” he insists. “Not until you hit me with your magic and let that deer get away.”
“I just didn’t want to watch that poor thing get eaten.”
“If I were anyone else,youwould have gotten eaten,” he growls. “Whatever you’re doing out here obviously isn’t safe. You’re going to get yourself killed.”
“I don’t think that’s any of your business,” I snap, bristling. “And for that matter, I don’t think I’m required to explain myself to you,” I say lightly. “What I do doesn’t have anything to do with you, right? Isn’t that what you wanted?”
He growls low in his throat. “You need to go home, Aurelia.”
I glance back. “Excuse me? Does barking orders like that usually work for you?”
He doesn’t respond, just raises an eyebrow as if to say:usually, yes.
I scoff. “Sorry, you don’t scare me.”
Fox makes a frustrated growl in the back of his throat.
“Gods, I can’t believe I never realized before now that you’re a shifter, what with all the growling,” I mutter. “Oh well. I suppose I missed a lot of things. Just leave the cloak please, I’ll come back for it in a minute.”
I turn on my heel, boots crunching over frosty ground as I stride back toward the riverbank where I left my basket of food, stooping to pick up my fallen sword as I go. Behind me, I hear a curse, then the sound of his footsteps quickening. “Aurelia!”
“What!” I demand, matching his aggressive tone as I whirl back around. “What do you want?”
Fox stops short, looking surprised. I suppose he’s probably never heard me raise my voice before—I don’t do it often—but I think I’ve finally hit my limit.
“Thermia is more dangerous than you can possibly understand,” he says.
“I think I’ll manage.”
“No,” he rumbles.
I laugh. “No, what? What are you going to do?”
He looks taken aback, which part of me can’t help but enjoy.
“I know you’re not going to hurt me,” I continue, “you have no authority to order me around, and we have no relationship so you also have no right to ask me to consider your feelings. You have no idea why I’m even going to Thermia so there’s no chance you’re going to convince me otherwise. I suppose you could carry me back home, there’s not much I could do about that, but I’d just leave again tomorrow. So really, Fox, what are you going to do?”
