She snorted. “You don’t seem nearly as unhappy by all this the way I do. How could this not bother you? We’ll be walking through some of the worst, most nightmarish parts of Kingdom.”
He shrugged. “Because I will succeed. There is no other option. And so I know I will not fail, nor will you.”
Lilith rolled her eyes. “Because you’ll save me.”
“I would be a fool to even think it.” He crossed his arms behind his back.
Chuckling beneath her breath, because the man completely befuddled her, she stepped through a dense bed of shrubs, disturbing a nest of fireflies that sprang into the air with a dazzling flourish of glittering golds, greens, and blues. Bobbing and weaving through the night sky with each flit of their wings.
The forest was strangely silent. The night birds did not coo, the insects did not hum—other than the ones they currently disturbed. She glanced at Giles side-eyed. “The creatures are never this silent. I would say they fear you, but I could not honestly see why—you’re as docile as a kitty.”
Though not entirely true, he’d obviously dispatched a gang of alphas. But nettling him was fun.
His lip pulled back as if offended, which caused her to snicker. But rather than answer her question, he asked her one of his own. “Why would your parents worry about your being unchaperoned?”
“You are a boy scout, knight. Can you not sense it?” She lifted her brows, giving him a knowing grin.
When he shook his head, she stopped walking and planted her hand on his chest. Stepping boldly into his body, she released her pheromones, inhaling his own scent of smoked cherry. “I am in heat.”
He gave no reaction whatsoever to her blast of scent.
“Ah,” he said stoically, “that would explain the behavior from earlier.”
Thoroughly confused by him and a little perturbed that he’d not even batted an eyelash when she’d wrapped her scent around him, she shook her head. “I’m beginning to suspect there is something seriously wrong with you, knight.”
Scratching his jaw, he shrugged. “I suppose so, shifter. What I can tell you is that if your parents worry for your virtue, they needn’t. I would never touch you.”
The way he said it, like she was inconsequential and without any charms whatsoever, offended her mightily. If the man had made an attempt on her, she’d have shoved her claws through his jugular and laughed while she’d done it, but that he didn’t even want to…
Goddess, that rankled. Of course it was probably for the best; there was the whole pact with the devil thing to consider. She’d been a fool to even try and flirt with the man, and she needed to remember who she was.
Tossing her head, she shoved in front of him and walked the last few yards home in silence.
Being stared down by the Big Bad Wolf, a mountain of a man with shaggy black hair and piercing golden eyes, was bad enough, but add the firecracker of his wife, Violet—a.k.a. Little Red Riding Hood, a.k.a. The Heartsong, a being of such infinite and dark power that all of faedom would tremble at the mere mention of her name—and for the first time in his long-lived life, Giles could admit to feeling a slight case of the nerves.
And the tension only continued to mount the deeper into the den he went. Three other sets of eyes glared at him from within shadowy alcoves, shifter males whose throaty rumbles broadcasted much louder than words what they thought of the strange male entering their home.
One of the males glared at Giles with murder clear in his eyes. The other two brothers had come around the young lad and pushed him back into a separate room, muttering low beneath their breaths at him.
“Don’t worry,” Lilith whispered into Giles’s ear. “They smell the adrenaline of St. John and the pack on you and me. Erich is only fourteen and his wolf is a wee more volatile than the rest—he is simply confused. But they shouldn’t kill you once it’s all been sorted out.”
She said it so blasé, and with a flick of her wrist, that he almost wanted to laugh at the absurdity of his situation. Not that he wasn’t powerful, but a clan of five—and with one of them being the Heartsong—filled him with a shade more insecurity than he’d normally feel.
Lilith walked with her spine ramrod straight several steps ahead of him. “Heel, boys,” she said matter of factly. “The knight’s with me.”
The brothers simply nodded, but all eyes were on him. Swallowing hard, he inclined his head, knowing to show even a hint of fear was like the ringing of a dinner bell to predators of their caliber.