Page 44 of Demon Demands

“Mmm-hmm,” she agreed distractingly. “And what do the druids do? Bind us to the tree of life until we give them an heir?”

I chuckled at her sarcastic reply. “No. They bind our hands together with poisonous vines while we fast and seek out enlightenment.”

She stopped dead in her tracks. “You’re joking, right?”

“Only partially.” I winked, steering her toward Stone.

Sloane dug her heels into the ground, keeping me from taking her where she’d asked to go.

“York, what do the druids do?” she asked me seriously.

I sighed. I’d opened my mouth, and she wouldn’t stop until I answered. “It’s a little bit like this, dancing and mingling with the druidic people. We’ll have to grow a tree together, one that’s not already in the familial courtyard at the castle. And we get a blessing from the elders. Nothing dangerous or terrifying.”

“I don’t know if you’ve noticed or not, but meeting the parents of my mates is terrifying,” she sassed, shivering at the thought.

Laughing at her unease didn’t help me at all. She slapped my arm, stalking off as she muttered, “fucking druid.”

“Sweetheart,” I called, catching up to her in two long strides. I stepped in front of her, blocking her path as I grabbed her shoulders. “My parents aren’t much different from yours. Maybe a little less murdery, but they’ll love you. My dad is a shameless flirt, and my mom is a doting woman who will drive us all insane while she makes sure we’re comfortable in her home. There’s nothing to worry about.”

Sloane huffed at me. “Right. You’re right. I’m just stressed.”

I pulled her to the side of the room, out the enormous double doors, and into an alcove in the drafty hall.

“What are you stressed about?” I asked, giving her the opportunity to get it all off her chest so she could relax for the night. Not that Sloane had been relaxed at all lately.

She glared at me. “Are you serious?”

“Yes. I want you to tell me.” I sat on the cushioned bench under the window, patting my leg for her to sit down.

She groaned in frustration as she perched on my leg, gazing at the night sky before returning her attention to me. “Everything is happening so fast, York. I don’t regret meeting the guys or any of that. It’s everything else.” Shrugging halfheartedly, she reluctantly continued, “Sealing all these bonds and gaining titles brings on a lot of responsibility, and I really just want to do my normal day job stuff.”

“The titles bother you?”

“Yes and no. The titles don’t bother me, it’s all the things that come with them. We can delegate tasks, but we’ll still have to travel. What if they want you to stay in the druids’ realm? I can’t stay there indefinitely. I have the coven and the Underworld to take care of now. Not to mention eventually the shifter packs and the guild. What about the fae realm? Will they want Vaughn to stay?”

I rubbed circles across her bare back, feeling her take a deep breath. “I think you're getting ahead of yourself, Sweetheart. We have time to figure all of that out. We can make it work. It’s as simple as having a permanent portal between the two places. I could set one up in the greenhouse and then travel between the two realms whenever I needed to. That wouldn’t be difficult. It’d be like waking up and going to work every morning.”

“Is it that easy, though?” She peered into my eyes, the red ring of her iris glowing in the dim alcove.

“It is,” I assured her. “And I don’t think Vaughn wants to rule the winter realm. He mentioned turning it over to one of his sisters a few years ago. I don’t think his plans have changed, but that’s something you’d have to ask him.”

“I guess I’m just tired of all the fighting and not knowing what’s going to happen,” she admitted softly. “If Raguel is the mastermind behind everything… I wish I could just go straight to him and skip all the nonsense in between. But I know that won’t solve all the problems. He needs to see that I can stop him from all the angles, and that means speeding through my bonds with the guys. I don’t want them to feel like that’s all I’m after, you know? Like I only care about the power and not them.”

“Do you care about them?”

She chuckled at my question. “It’s complicated. There are definitely feelings there. Too many at moments. Some that I’m not quite ready to acknowledge, so I overlook them as best as I can. You know me. Emotions make me gag. It’s easy to admit that I fell in love with one person quickly. It’s much harder to allow myself to think about falling for several within weeks. Especially when I don’t know them as well as I knew you when I realized that I loved you.”

I didn't need to be a mind reader to understand what was going on in her head. I knew her inside and out, whether she wanted to acknowledge it or not. “You love Novak?”

“I think I might,” she confessed. Her words were barely audible, but they rang loudly in the silence around us.

“And why is that so hard for you to admit?” I was fairly certain the vampire knew her feelings and felt the same way. He’d almost let it slip while he was talking to Hyland.

“There’s no set time that it takes to fall in love. There are no such rules, Sweetheart. I know you like to compartmentalize things, but you can’t always do that. You might not have the depth of emotions that some of us do, but you still feel them.”

She shook her head. “It’s terrifying,” she whispered. “The only thing that can break me is people, York. Those closest to me hold a power over me that they can’t fathom. It’s scary, and the more I try to look at it, the more I realize that there are quite a few of them. There are sixteen, right off the top of my head, that hold some sort of power over me. I’ve trained, studied, fought, bled, murdered… for those people. And my list just. Keeps. Growing.”

“You’re a protector, Sloane. That’ll never change. But you have to realize that we don’t always need to be protected.” I placed my hands on her cheeks, kissing her forehead.