Night Fae (Dark Fae Kings #3) - Meg Xuemei X. Page 0,36
after I’m gone.”
No one had ever made it out of the Wild Hunt alive. What made me so special that I thought I could survive the most brutal game? Being stubborn wouldn’t exactly win me the battle. If I had to think realistically, now was the time.
Rydstrom snapped his gaze to me, so intense it scared me.
“You’ll come out of the Wild Hunt in one piece even if we can’t find a way to call off the summons,” Rydstrom said fiercely. “I swear on my last breath that I’ll make sure you live even if I lose my soul. Catlin was my lover a long time ago. I was a selfish bastard. I pretended to fall in love with her to make Brigantia believe that she had my beloved as her captive, so she wouldn’t focus on my true purpose—you. So she wouldn’t find out that I’d been taking advantage of her blindness while I set up the outpost in the mortal realm to look for you. I always knew I had a mate somewhere, and I’d been waiting for you forever before the Seer even confirmed your existence. I was a cold, calculating bastard. I sacrificed Catlin, and she doesn’t deserve that fate.
“After you prevail in the Wild Hunt, I’ll bring Catlin to safety as well, but not before. In Vancouver, I told Brigantia a half-truth about how I tossed Catlin at her and called her Brigantia’s creature to spare Catlin a worse fate. When it comes to you and anyone else, Ileana, it’ll always be you. No one and nothing will stand between us.” His gaze darkened, but it never left my face. “Now you know the entire truth. I’m the King of the Night and Nightmare Courts. Darkness, cruelty, and ruthlessness were, are, and will always be part of me. I can’t be like those sweet boys you used to date in the human world. I can try to be better for your sake, but I’d be pretending. I can’t change my nature. If you now loathe me—” Agony filled his eyes, which were suddenly bereft of light and filled with swirling shadows.
We’d mated and bonded, yet we hadn’t really tested if our relationship could survive the trials of fire or flood, which would keep coming.
I could relate to his pain and guilt, just as I had once responded to Rowan’s when he opened up to me. And I had given myself to the Winter King only to find out that I’d fallen for the wrong guy.
Crossing my fingers, I could only hope that Rydstrom wouldn’t turn out to be like Rowan. But even if the Night King betrayed me at last, what did I have to lose? I’d be in the Wild Hunt within two days.
I was already in love with Rydstrom. Love was a decision, though sometimes it was a deception if one wasn’t careful or was unlucky, and I’d decided to go all in in our relationship and allow myself to free fall one more time.
If he didn’t catch me and instead let me shatter, so be it.
I promised myself I would never give up the chance of love just because someone else had wronged me, or because I’d tried and failed a few times. I was the one who was responsible for living my life to the fullest, no matter how little time I had.
“I have no intention of ever changing you, Ryds,” I whispered. “You are who you are. I’m far from perfect too. But I’ll promise you this: if I come out of the Wild Hunt, let’s find Catlin and get her out. We’ll make it up to her together.”
Rydstrom pulled me to him and crushed me against his chest. “I could not ask for a better female as my mate.”
“Don’t be so sure about that, Night King,” I said, but I snuggled closer to him, soaking in his radiating heat and cool, nocturnal magic.
The wind rose, catching the hem of my skirt and exposing my thighs. Rydstrom’s heated gaze darted to my legs.
“Eve,” he gasped, then inhaled my scent, heat burning in his dark sapphire eyes. “You didn’t wear underwear?”
His mood shifted instantly. I often found it funny that when lust overwhelmed a male, a warm female body was all he could think about. The powerful King of Nightmares was no different when his blood rushed to his groin.
“Well,” I said. I was fine with my king being full of lust for me, as my own desire pulsed in my