Chapter 23

Liri backed up and looked at the wall. She narrowed her eyes and studied it. There were sticky notes all over it. Different colors for each realm, and so far, all she had were the things recently discovered. Her plan was to backtrack on each point and hopefully get back to who started it all. The Alterealm family were determined that the mage Arwan had, but even as powerful as he was, there had to be others to get it all started. They’d known enough to cut off access to the circle of stones and to separate the realms—so there were traitors in all the realms. She bit her lip and thought of Bohdi. Someone from Interealm had to have been involved in the start too. Which was too bad because she liked everyone she’d met there.

A knock on the door had her spin around to see Abraham standing in the doorframe, taking up most of the space between it. “Hi.” She grinned and then realized he was staring at the wall. “I’m, uh,” she went over and started picking up the sticky notes she’d crumpled up and dropped on the floor.

“Establishing a timeline to hunt down traitors.” He walked into the room, put his hands on his hips, and looked at the notes.

“Yes.” She was excited that she didn’t have to explain it to him. “So many moving parts, as Prince Michael says, that I thought if we could have a visual to see it all at once, it would help.” She bit her lip, realizing the idea seemed better before she began.

Abraham nodded. “It’s a great idea.” He glanced around, “We should talk to my uncles, Michael and Victor, about moving this over to Alterealm and giving you what you need to work on it.” He glanced at her, “everyone will have things to add to it.”

Liri’s stomach did this little flip with excitement. “That’s,” she grimaced, “I thought others would think it was silly.” She waved her arm around, “and I’m banished to be far away from anything interesting, so I thought it would occupy me.”

“It’s a good idea,” his brows furrowed, “I don’t know why no one has done it earlier.”

Liri tilted her head and smirked. “I think they’ve been a little busy chasing down traitors, lost people, and forgotten people…”

“Yeah, we just found what we think is the hub of all their cameras and ways to stay ahead of us.”

“Really?”

Abe nodded slowly. “We actually got stuck in a hall. Steel doors appeared out of nowhere,” he smirked, “Aunt Beth made fast work of those.”

Liri sighed. “I miss anything interesting.”

“I thought you were helping to look for women and children that were left behind?”

She shrugged. “In a way, but it’s hours of reading through information from birth registries and comparing it to port records,” she rolled her eyes, “It’s not very exciting.”

“What did you do before you got involved in this at home?” He went over and took a closer look at the notes.

“Hid from my mother mostly, avoiding being paired up for the good of the realm.”

He turned and studied her, “that’s,” he blew out a breath, “ridiculous.”

She snorted. “Thank you, and yes, it is.” She glanced around and then took a deep breath. “I wanted to talk to you about…”

“We are mates, aren’t we?” He waved a hand up and down his body, “The urge to bite you is back, and I can’t seem to control my own body.”

Her eyes widened. “Bite me?”

His expression reflected annoyance. “Yeah, seems it’s a thing when you’re close to your mate.” He shook his head. “I don’t know how my aunts and uncles keep it on lockdown.”

Liri knew about the different feeders; besides Alona’s fangs, she’d never seen any of the men show them. “Well, that’s why I asked to talk to you. I confirmed it when we were parachuting. My soul wanted to wrap around yours,” she felt her cheeks heat, “or that’s what it felt like.”

He stood there for what felt like an hour and just looked at her, “I don’t know what this means.” He blinked and then motioned between them, “I mean, I understand the meaning of mates, and I’m surrounded by mated pairs at home, but we’re…”

“From different realms.” She blew out a breath, “I have to be honest, I’m a bit annoyed.” She grinned. “The first time in my eighty-year-long life, I’m allowed a bit of freedom, and I immediately find my other.”

“Other?”

She bobbed her head, “That’s what we call our souls’ mate.”

“Oh.” He rubbed his hand over the back of his neck, “I just,” he grinned, “I mean, you’ve probably heard some of the stories from my aunts about how well things went for all of them—”

“Oh my gods, yes, some of them were complete disasters but so funny at the same time.”

He chuckled, “Let’s not tell any of them how funny it is.” He cleared his throat, “I can’t deny how drawn I am to you,” she nodded, feeling it as well, “but I don’t want to rush into anything, especially with everything happening…”

“No, I agree.” She hadn’t even realized it until that moment. She bit her lip, “It will be a bit of a challenge to resist my soul’s draw to you, but I’m sure I can manage it.”

He studied her for a long moment, and she felt her heart beat heavier just watching his beautiful colored eyes looking at her.

“Your eyes are so beautiful, by the way, the color is…”

“I was uh,” he moved in her direction, “thinking the same thing. They look so dark but still so expressive,” he stopped in front of her, leaving a safe amount of space between them, “but…”

Liri’s breath caught in her throat as she watched the blue change to a deep red, “even red, they’re so colorful and intriguing.”

“I can’t seem to control it.” His voice was barely a whisper.

She looked at his mouth and then back to his eyes, “Do your fangs come out when they go red?”

“Yeah.”

She caught a quick glimpse of them when he took a deep breath. Liri wanted to reach up and coax him to open his mouth so she could look, but the urgent feeling of needing to be closer to him was startling and overwhelming her.

“It’s going to be hard,” he reached out and touched the edge of her jaw with one finger, “isn’t it?”

She nodded, forgetting how to navigate words for a moment.

“Let’s get to know each other first before there’s any—” He leaned down closer, and she could feel his breath on her mouth.

She balled her hands at her sides so hard she could feel her fingernails piercing her skin. “We should get to know each other,” she whispered, watching his red eyes as she spoke, “before sharing…”

“There will be no sharing anything.” Bastian burst into the room.

Liri spun around and looked at him, “who are you to decide that for me?”

Bastian waved his hand up and down his body, “I’m the one that will die a horribly painful death when your mother finds out. That’s who I am.”

Liri growled at him and put her hands on her hips, “I will deal with my mother when the time comes.”

“Well,” Bastian skirted around Abraham and stopped in front of her, “that time better not come until we’ve found the traitor in Solrelm, Aliria, because I’m pretty sure everyone would notice an Alterealm giant walking around with your soul imprint on him.”

Liri huffed out a breath, “I’m not stupid, Bas. We were talking about getting to know one another before anything happened when you barged in.”

“It looked like more than talking,” he chuffed.

“Oh, and you’ve never kissed Nova, right?”

Bastian scowled at her, “Don’t be ridiculous.” He glanced in the door where Nova stood, looking far too amused.

“You need to trust me…”

His head snapped back around, “Oh, I do, cousin. I trust you to do that most impulsive and ill-timed thing.”

Liri looked sternly at him, “It’s not your decision…”

“I’m the future king, I’m told,” he shrugged.

“Mmm, well, future as in not yet, and what if Tre or Elyas share their soul first,” she shook her head, “well, Trendan, anyways.”

“I hope he does because I don’t want to be king of anything.” Bastian put his hands on his hips and dropped his chin so he was looking at the floor.

She was trying not to smack her cousin. Of course, he’d immediately expect her to do the wrong thing. “You need to trust me, Bas…”

“You can,” Abraham’s voice was steady, “trust that we will consider all ramifications before any steps are taken.”

Bastian ran his hand over his hair. “I’m going to stab the ones responsible—when we find them.” He paused and looked at the wall, “what is this?”

“Liri is working on a timeline so we can keep track of everything and hopefully uncover a few traitors.” Abraham went over to the wall and pointed. “It’s a matter of back-tracing it from here.”

Liri was happy the conversation was not about her personal life and went over, “I think there has to be someone from Interealm, well, they’d be dead now, but at the start, someone had to be helping from that realm too.”

“Queen Daxx will be very unimpressed with that.” Bastian paused and pulled out his phone. “I have to go to work.” He motioned to the wall. “This needs to be shared…”

“I’m going to see if my uncles will give Liri some space in Alterealm, so she can work on this and, with Aunt Crissy’s help, maybe figure out a few more pieces.”

Bastian nodded. “The more pieces, the better. I want to speed this up.” He gave Liri a quick once over and then ushered Nova out of the room.

Abraham turned slowly and looked at her. “That didn’t go as well as I’d hoped.”

Liri groaned. “Solrelm women are not allowed to do or think of anything but procreating, so Bas was decent compared to the rest of the population.”

“That,” he frowned, “makes me angry. To know that you’re treated like a prize heifer in your own realm.”

Liri grinned. “Rest assured, my large gallant mate, I find ways around everything consistently.”

Putting his hands on his hips, he looked down at her. “That sounds like the exact opposite you just told your future king.”

Liri shrugged and couldn’t help the smirk her mouth was making. “When he’s actually my king, I’ll behave better. Until then, he is my cousin and quite often my co-conspirator.” Her phone buzzing was the only reason she managed to drag her gaze away from his eyes. She went over and picked it up. “Uh, it’s Mom.”

“I’ll leave you to that.” He inclined his head. “I’m going to go talk to Uncle Michael about giving you a room to work on this in.”

She bit her lip, excited that she would have something to do that would be helpful, “thank you. I’ll have to get Aunt Ama to procrastinate with Mom for me.”

“Aunt Ama?”

She nodded. “Queen of Solrelm.”

‘Oh.” He cleared his throat, “I forgot you are part of the royal family.”

Liri glanced up from her phone at him. “And so are you.”

Abraham frowned. “I forget that often too.” He nodded once, “I’ll be in touch about the workspace.” He turned on his heel and was gone from the room in a few strides.

Liri took a deep breath and then blew it out that hadn’t gone the way she’d hoped, but she was going to get to do something the help all the realms and she looked at the doorway. Her mate was a very decent man, which was more than she’d ever expected.