Page 20 of Into The Green

I watched as a myriad of emotions crossed her face, crossed her mind, her heart. There was the refusal to believe, the confusion, the curiosity. I could feel her flipping through all her memories, seeing some things that had bothered her all her life start to make sense.

"It makes sense, doesn't it?" I asked, reaching out and taking her chin between my fingers, forcing her head up to look at me. "You probably don't look like your parents, like your siblings. You've always been a bit off, felt like you didn't fit. You can't tolerate meat or dairy for no good reason. Except there is a good reason: you're not human."

Her slight body shrank with her exhale as I saw the battle play across her features. "How?"

I had the almost overwhelming urge to comfort her, to find the softer words, the gentler explanations. But that wasn't who I was. "It happens more than you'd think. Some fae swap out their offspring with human ones to protect them. Some do it because the fae babies are inexplicably ill. They put them in the human realm and they somehow perk up, get fat and healthy, then the eventually get drawn back to The Green when they're older."

"But why take the human babies then? Why not just put the fae babies up for adoption?"

"Because they want to know where their babies are going. They want to keep an eye. Your system for orphans in your world is criminal. And, well, even fae mothers are still mothers. They want something to coddle and raise."

"But then what happens to the human babies when they grow up and the real fae kids come back?"

I sighed, shrugging, not particularly liking that part of my ancestry. "They usually end up as servants in the fae households."

"That's... awful."

"It is," I agreed. "Some get out somehow. They stumble through the woods long enough and find a perimeter that is weak and slip through back to the human realm where they are usually left homeless and thought crazy for babbling on about fae people."

"So you're saying that I'm like... that thing from those stories. Shit," she said, brows furrowing. "What are they called?"

"Changelings. You're a changeling."

She sucked in a deep breath, held it, then released it. "And what about my parents? Is there some way for me to know who they are?"

"Maybe," I said, trying to soothe her, then thinking better of it. "Honestly? Probably not."

To that, she nodded. "There are good and bad fae, right? If the tales are right."

"Seelie," I corrected. "They are the Light, the sort of good fae. Then there is the Unseelie, or Dark fae, who are more... malicious," I said carefully, sugar-coating how bone-deep evil they actually were.

"I guess I'd just kind-of like to know if I was good or bad, you know?"

"You're good," I said immediately, without thinking.

"You don't know that," she said with an eye roll.

"I do," I said, and I did. I knew it. I felt good in her. "Besides, your name is Celestine. That isn't the name an Unseelie would name their offspring." She nodded to that but stayed silent. "You alright?"

She nodded a little tightly. "Yeah. There's just a lot to think about there I guess. I just need to stretch my legs," she said, swinging her legs to one side of Onyx and touching her toes to the ground. The second her sore feet hit the ground though, she was falling.

And, well, what was a man to do but catch her?

FIVE

Cece

The second I put pressure on my feet, both the pain from the cuts and the soreness of my muscles objected to the strain, my legs all but turning to Jell-O beneath me and I felt myself falling.

But then the next second, I wasn't. Jasper's strong fingers dug into my hips and hauled me upward, plastering the whole of my front against his front and the contact was enough to completely knock the wind out of me. Everything about him was firm and strong against my soft and weak. And my body reacted. My breasts swelled; my belly flipped; my sex clenched a little too deliciously seeing as I really had no interest in Jasper that way whatsoever, save for the moment of blinding insanity that made me a little turned on when I slept on him the night before.

"What is it with you two and all the cuddling?" Doyle's amused voice asked, appearing out of nowhere.

It was just the sobering thing I needed to stop me before I went full-on crazy and leaned into Jasper's body. I wrenched away from him too quickly, stumbling back against Onyx who looked up at me curiously. Swiveling, I found Doyle, shirt off, displaying a glorious eyeful of muscular masculine perfection. And... nothing. Literally nothing. No breast swelling; no belly flipping; no sex-clenching. Nothing. Which made absolutely no sense seeing as I actually liked Doyle and he was hot. But he did nothing for me.

He was stepping up the bank down to the stream, which had been getting consistently deeper as we followed it, water trickling down his body as if he had washed up. The envy I felt was almost overwhelming. Every inch of me was sticky and dirty and disgusting and there was more than a slight chance that I might have actually started to smell at that point.

"You can take a swim if you want," Jasper said and, if I wasn't mistaken, he sounded amused, having likely 'overheard' my thoughts about stinking. Great. That was wonderful.