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"I said, do you promise--?"

"I heard you"

We stared at each other while he considered ain, and as before, I didn’t like the gesture one bit Soame "Yes, Miss McQueen I proreeht now it does I don’t think I’ll be saying the sah"

Aubrey’s s to hurt me way more than it hurt hi with fairies, as taught to me by Calliope:

1) Do not say thank you, EVER

2) Do not accept gifts Accepting a gift is acknowledging the fae has given you soive the comes for free with a fairy, so unless you want theive you anything shiny

3) Do not eat anything the fae offer you As ht suck, sah, as it was commonly used as a way to bind humans into the fae real back

4) Compliment them as much as possible Fairies are ht They cannot get enough of hearing how beautiful, clever and marvelous they are The more you compliment them, the more likely they are to do what you want

5) Last but not least…spend as little time with the fae as possible, especially on their turf Everything is different within their borders, from the phases of the moon to the laws of physics Time itself functions differently in a fae reality

This last rule was heavy on uided Holden, Desned cha- as both a gift and a curse A curse because he was clearly in a ift because in spite of how close he was to the brink, the weird phases of the iven h I knew his tenuous hold would break

We were on borrowed ti anted to play with my head Hopefully that was all he wanted to play with, because ood to him

The hob left us in the dark foyer of our rooate the space

"Desrumbled

"I have to ask Are you okay?"

He sluht had beco to stay on his feet this entire tiainst the wall and kept his arms around his midsection

"He looks peachy," Holden observed

"Thanks," Desmond said, and his voice was so quiet I couldn’t tell if he meant it sarcastically or not

I crouched on the floor in front of hi hot and icy cold all at once, a sure sign his body was fighting against the olf’s natural urge to escape Wolves ran hot, so the feverish cold was his hue

"You could--"

"No"

I chewed on h his wet hair "Why are you fighting it so hard? It’s hurting you"

"I need to be here for you"

"You’d still be here for me if you were…" I let my hand drop away "You’d still be here for me"

He shook his head sternly "Dominick told me what happened in Louisiana The way you responded to the change What if ives your wolf permission? What if she doesn’t care how badly you need to stay human? You of all people should kno hard it is to stay in control once the wolf has the power"

My jaw felt slack I hadn’t told Desmond about my experience at Callum’s compound The way my wolf had pushed me out of the driver’s seat and ht, I had almost no control when I was inall neolves experienced, but I never had before The way he described it to h, was exactly the way it had felt when I’d been running on four legs through the woods

So far my wolf had been on her best behavior But if Desmond was in wolf form, would her attitude stay the same? I couldn’t be sure I’d already been worried about ould happen during the full overn the shift the saht not be a pack king--whose wolf fore into their animal selves--but he was my soul-bonded le" style="display:block" data-ad-client="ca-pub-7451196230453695" data-ad-slot="9930101810" data-ad-format="auto" data-full-width-responsive="true"></ins>