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“Do you know what she meant?” Alana asks, watching the street ahead in a way that seems distinctly avoidant.
“She meant we should wait until we have a fae chaperone unless we’re prepared for the possibility of having our controls reversed. I’m not really okay with those odds.”
Her head shakes. “I mean when she said I wasn’t like you both.”
My brow furrows. “Oh. I guess she meant you aren’t mated to a faerie. Her mate’s Zylus, a vampire cat, hence the background noise. As far as I know beyond that, she’s human like us.” Ollie told me she was from my world, but why did it sound like I’m only partly human and wasn’t going to be for much longer? Another joke?
Or foreshadowing?
Alana switches lanes, heading toward the road in our city that hosts all the fast food restaurants. “How do you get a faerie soulmate? I would like to order one, please.”
I laugh off my apprehension. “I have no idea. I haven’t asked that question yet.”
“In some stories, faerie blood is weak, but human blood is strong, so the faeries kidnap humans for procreation purposes or start cults or…” Alana glances at my expression as it grows more horrified, then she coughs. “…sorry. Too graphic?”
Dumbly, I nod.
“I’m just saying that if there are any nice faeries in need of a wife, I volunteer as tribute.” She unleashes a sigh. “Ollie sounds like a werewolf, which means you’ll have to deal with alpha drama—have fun with that. It’s a bit too growly for my taste, but I could totally go for a noble high seelie in some nature-themed court that’s tainted with so much political intrigue you can’t tell who’s good or evil. Also. Also. Wing hugs, you know? I’d kill for a wing hug. Alternatively, some darling, misunderstood unseelie prince could kidnap me and fall helplessly in love with my ample charms before he knows what’s happening. Enemies to lovers, hundred K, give or take bonus chapters of scandal that you sign up for on the author’s newsletter.” With finality, she says, “In conclusion, I grow weary of human society. Donate my flesh to the trees.”
“Alana, we really don’t know what we’re dealing with. Maybe treating yourself like a willing offering is…bad?”
She turns into the Taco Bell, parks crooked, mutters a word in a foreign language, then eases back to realign. “You’re probably right. I’m just so tired of putting on a smile and pretending that I’m okay with my life.”
“What do you mean?”
She cuts the engine and lets out a hard breath. “I wanted to go to college, B. I did. I wanted to…how does Mom so lovingly phrase it? Make something of myself? But I barely survived high school. Fiction is all that kept me from feeling like a prisoner in my own head all the time. You were the only one who didn’t ostracize me for what I liked. Now, you’re telling me there’s a world out there full of what I like in the kind of way where it’s so normal it’s literally life?” Her eyes close. “I’ve always felt like we don’t belong. What if we really don’t? But what if I’m not lucky enough to get an invitation to the place where I do?”
Alana always seems so confident and in control. I never realized how deep these thoughts went, or that they had persisted. I kind of thought I’d grown into them while she’d grown out of them. “Once Ollie feels better, I’ll talk to him, okay? Maybe there is a faerie ointment or wine or whatever you were mentioning before that would let you be a part of it, too, with or without claiming a soulmate.”
She smiles, but something in it doesn’t seem quite right. “Thank you.” Leaning into the backseat, she reaches for the bag of faerie treats she brought. “Can I set up a tiny place setting for any tiny faeries, assuming that tiny faeries would be inside Taco Bell?”
“Willow told us not to engage.”
“Can I set up a tiny place setting for any tiny faeries, assuming that tiny faeries would be inside Taco Bell, and not engage if you tell me one has come to enjoy a cookie?”
I set a hand on her bag. “Let’s just wait until Ollie can chaperone us so we don’t wind up losing our souls, okay?”
Alana pouts as she puts her bag back. “Discrimination against those of us without souls to lose.”
“Ha ha. Whoever gets to the line last pays.” I lunge out of the car, but even with my false start and several extra inches of leg height, Alana wins.
Chapter 15
~~~~~~~~~~~~
I do not mean to torment my mate. It just happens naturally.
“Faerie wine makes you really, really drunk. Which, okay, yes can cause you to think you’re hallucinating and see us, but it is not a medium I would recommend. And I don’t think I’ve ever heard of a faerie ointment in the context that Alana is implying.” Ollie lies beside my bed on the floor, one arm hooked beneath his head, and his other hand holding the burrito I got for him when Alana and I left Taco Bell several hours ago. “Humans aren’t built for Faerie, even the ones who think they’d like it. Every story I’ve heard where one of us has gone against nature by forcing a human into our world ends with the human going mad.”
“If that’s the case, what about me? Won’t I go mad?” I whisper through the shadows so I won’t disturb Alana in her bed on the other side of the room.
“You’re a different sort of case.”
“Because we’re mates?”
He doesn’t clearly answer that question. “I’m not saying your sister wouldn’t fit in or would go mad if it were possible for her to see my world. I’m saying that we shouldn’t make those calls or try to force nature, just in case we ruin something. It’s best not to even entertain it.” He takes a bite of his burrito, chews, then softly says, “Right now, I don’t think either of you fully understands what it means to be a part of the world I know.”
“Is it something you can explain?”
