chosen to ignore and laugh away.
I wasn’t laughing now.
“I know you’re awake, little star.” His warm voice came to me on a breeze, followed by another tantalizing scent of home. My mother used to decorate our house with fragrances from the Water Kingdom. It was a secret indulgence of hers, one she claimed paired nicely with our earthy perfumes.
Somehow, Zakkai had bottled up that fragrance and wore it around him like some sort of sensual cloak. Or perhaps it was just his natural scent.
“Aflora,” he murmured, the taunt in his tone unmistakable. “Do I need to join you under those sheets and wake you up with my tongue? Because I’m happy to oblige, just like I did in all our dreams.”
Ugh. My cheeks flamed with the memories—the ones where I’d completely let myself go because I had thought he wasn’t real. The things I’d made him do to me...
I shivered.
He chuckled as though he overheard that thought. And maybe he had since he claimed to be my mate.
The heat of his body swept over me as he sat beside me on the bed—not close enough to touch, but close enough to feel.
His familiarity unnerved me, as did the sensation of his silky sheets moving along my legs as I rolled away from him. He didn’t try to stop me, just settled against the headboard and crossed his long legs at his bare ankles. I studied his feet for a moment before dragging my gaze up his pajama bottoms to his bare abdomen.
Because of course he chose to go shirtless.
Just like he had in all my dreams.
The chiseled perfection of his body left no mystery as to why I thought I’d mentally created him. He was too godlike to be real with those long wisps of white hair and silver-blue eyes.
“Keep looking at me like that and I’m going to accept it for the invitation that it is, Aflora.”
Ugh, his voice was just as velvety smooth as the rest of him.
The man encapsulated sex.
And the grin curving his full lips said he knew it, too.
“It’s not an invitation,” I muttered, curling deeper into his silky sheets.
A pair of dimples graced his flawless cheeks.
Yeah, he would have a killer smile, too. Because why not?
Maybe he was really an Incubus from the Hell Fae realm. But no, I caught the flicker of cerulean magic lurking deep in his fathomless gaze.
He took my wand, I remembered, frowning. No, he said it was his wand.
My heart skipped a beat at the memory and Shade’s aloofness as he just handed me over as though I meant nothing to him.
Why? I whispered at him. Why did you do this?
He didn’t reply. Not that I expected him to. I could feel the block in our bond—the one he’d placed there before giving me to Zakkai.
Zeph? I tried the other mate-strand in my mind, the one connected to my Warrior Blood mate. The ends of our bond felt frayed, his silence deafening.
Shade had created some sort of mental block to isolate me from them.
He’d warned me that I would hate him.
He was right.
I’d trusted him, loved him, mated him, and he’d repaid me by handing me over to the enemy.
There has to be a reason, I thought. He cares for me. I know he cares for me. I’d felt it in our bond, had witnessed it in his thoughts. Maybe Zakkai had coerced him? But why would Shade block my mating links?
My jaw ticked as I considered the endless possibilities of his intentions. Then I focused on the male beside me—the one who likely had all the answers I needed.
“Why am I here?” I asked, sitting up with the sheet clutched to my chest. “Why didn’t you tell me who you were? And how are you my mate? You never bit me in the dreams.” I also didn’t think a Midnight Fae could stake a claim in that manner.
If they could, that would be dangerous.
Fae, who was I kidding? Midnight Fae were danger personified.
The male beside me oozed lethality as wisps of power swirled around him. I could taste his essence in the air and sense it deep within my soul. He embodied the source in a similar manner to Kols. I mentally stroked it with my strands of dark magic, curious and wary.
His lips curled in response, his energy intensifying as though to welcome my prodding. “It’s fascinating, isn’t it?” His low voice rolled over me on a caressing wave. “Our gifts have more or less grown together