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I needed to stay the fuck away from her.

5

NEW LIFE

RAE

As much as I didn’t want to meet the council after what happened in Cholian, I was grateful to be away from the guys’ home.

After Cyn fled the bedroom with blood all over his face, I’d wanted to scream—both in sexual frustration and confusion. He’d stuck me with the awkward task of explaining things to Zeke when I didn’t understand them myself.

Zeke took it surprisingly well.

He’d thought Cyn had snapped and hurt me, but I made sure he knew everything that happened was consensual.

Looking back, offering Cyn my blood sounded stupid, even if Zeke agreed it was a sound idea.

I thought if Cyn got a taste, he’d calm down and we’d live amicably until I found a new place to live.

What I hadn’t expected was us ending up in bed grinding on each other—especially when he’d encouraged me to stab him if he lost control.

I thought he meant losing control like an animal and trying to kill me, not… whatever the hell that was. More than anything else, I thought what happened between us scared him, judging by the look on his face when he saw Zeke.

I shook my head.

I needed to stop thinking about him and focus my attention on the situation at hand.

I knew royal palaces and castles in movies were big, but seeing the palace in person far exceeded my expectations. Even the opulent sitting room Zeke left me in dwarfed my old living room and kitchen combined.

Cream and gold covered every inch of the room, from the plush cushions on the ornately carved sofas to the elegant vases filled with unfamiliar white blooms on small tables throughout the space. A small marble fountain mounted on the wall across from me trickled a never-ending stream into a bubbling basin on the floor.

“Raelynn?”

I looked up as a woman wearing a forest-green pantsuit smiled at me.

“Yeah?”

“They’re ready for you now.”

I stood and straightened my blouse, ensuring my sleeves covered my tattoos. I’d chosen jeans and a long-sleeved blush top to hide them and the mark on my leg.

The woman gestured for me to pass her into the hallway.

Either she’d partially shifted to come get me, or she stayed in her alternate form. A pair of horns, only a few inches long, extended from her hairline at her temples toward the back of her head before curling forward. Her eyes looked like mine, with white sclerae, but her slit-like pupils cut through larger brown irises.

Zeke had explained on our way through the palace earlier that many people in Elyrdin choose to stay in various states of their alternate form, while others remain in their “human-looking” form.

I wished he were with me, but shortly after he led me to the room, a guard called him away, leaving me to face the council alone. Though considering the way I suspected they treated him, I wasn’t sure I wanted him near them.

The woman led me through a massive set of dark-stained wooden double doors flanked by two beefy guards in black tactical gear who watched me as if I were hiding an assault rifle in my back pocket.

Considering the number of beings within arm’s reach who could tear me to shreds or incinerate me, I didn’t see how they expected someone who couldn’t even shift to be a threat to them.

The woman guided me past sheer red curtains on the other side of the door and down a pathway lined with the same fabric. Glowing amber globes on pedestals lit our way until we reached a large central chamber.

Entering the space, the first thing I noticed was the ten thrones on the other side of the room.

Ezra and Cyn’s parents sat on ornate thrones at the top of three steps, the seats forming a semicircle around an empty area in the center of the room. Six thrones sat empty at their sides.