King Kincaid took a step forward, obviously deciphering I was upset. “We decided to tell you once they had all arrived, and we were planning to this weekend, since Eda finally made it here.” Dark eyes scanned my face. “Honey, is there something wrong?”
Jack whistled low, figuring out what I had, the errant thought I couldn’t rationalize away.
My eyes met Antonio’s. He was the one who had brought them here. He was the one who might have asked. I felt like an ice sculpture when I questioned, “Did you tell each of them to stick close to us?”
Antonio held my gaze steadily, his words blunt. “If you’re asking if I told Felix to have sex with you to keep you close, no, I did not.” His golden eyes never left mine. “Nonetheless, however he chooses to do his job,” he shrugged, “so be it. Just as long as he does it.”
I sucked in a harsh breath. God, Antonio was so brutally honest. If you wanted sugarcoated words, even if they were hard to say, he wasn’t the one to ask. He just told you how it was when he actually deigned to answer a question asked.
A deafening muteness overtook the room’s occupants.
King Kincaid’s eyes began narrowing furiously.
Antonio held up a stopping hand in the King’s direction and cocked his head, eyes on me. “I didn’t think you two were serious. Was I wrong?”
Ignoring the obvious answer to that and my voice cracking, I stated harshly, “Tell me, Antonio, would you want someone to take you to their bed because it’s their job to do so? And then, to top it off, you have no clue you’re just a job in the first place? Instead, you just think, hey, someone actually thinks I’m nice looking, actually feels something for me sexually, and not because magic made the person feel that way.”
Shaking my head, I felt hot tears rolling down my cheeks. I quickly swatted them away. “I don’t look like any of you! You’re all so damn perfect. And me? Not so much. Do you know how hard that is to be around all the time? To have people only sleep with me because they think it’s a privilege to sleep with their Prodigy?” I snorted and swiped away a few more tears. “And now, I’m just a f**king job. The freak-fucking-Queen lay.” Another shake of my head. “I wonder if he ran to the bathroom every time afterward, so he could throw up.” My stomach churned; I was feeling sick myself.
Silence.
Everyone stared. Like normal. But this time, their jaws were hanging open.
Pearl and Ezra had death grips on my arms, and Jack even had a hand on my shoulder.
Shaking, I tried to calm down, realizing everything I had just spewed.
King Kincaid took a tentative step forward, appearing very much like a man unsettled, not knowing how to deal with an upset woman, like the rest of the Kings appeared. With his palms out wide, he said softly, “Honey, Dominic thought you—”
“Dominic was drunk the first night we had sex,” I cut him off, my anger flaring once more, on a damn roll. After a Mystical’s Awakened, their magic knows. Elementals feel the pull to their intended mate when their magics meet. Mages much the same. Vampires know by the blood. Shifters through intercourse or, more specifically, right at their climax. It had been two weeks before my Shifter Awakening when we’d first had sex, so I hadn’t known then. He had. “How can I not wonder if it was just the magic talking?”
A shake of my head. I had thought about this a lot since he died. “I can’t. And now, not only am I a freak,” my glare turned on Antonio, “I’m also just a damn job. Thank you for that.”
I lurched away from my friends and stormed out of the room, needing to get away before my mouth decided to spout anything else I would rather others not know about me. I, normally, gave off a very confident vibe. And that, in there, hadn’t been. Definitely not the tough side I usually tried showing to cover my insecurities.
King Kincaid’s voice carried down the hall, growling, “I’m going to kill Felix!”
“King Kincaid…” Antonio murmured in reprimand.
I didn’t hear anything else because I picked up my pace, purposely not listening as I rushed out of the house to the backyard. Tears stung my eyes, wetting my cheeks, and my throat felt like it was clogged and burning. Choking on a sob, I ran to the nearest tree I could find. I wasn’t going to really run away because I found out a guy had screwed me to keep an eye on his job, to protect me, but I definitely needed some good self-pity time. Even if Felix had just been a fun time for me, it still hurt my ego, the fragile thing that it was to begin with.
Jumping, I caught a branch, and swung my legs up. I hung upside down for a few moments until I coughed on another sob, and then swung myself up. Climbing from branch to branch, I aimed for the large, thick limb halfway to the top. Once there, sitting on the heavy branch, my cheek resting against the hard bark of the trunk, I let the tears take over.
So long I had wondered about Dominic. We had jumped in so fast. When Felix took what I thought to be an honest interest in me physically, I had believed, maybe, just maybe, Dominic might have actually found me attractive like he had said. Oh, he definitely had once we were mated, but that could have been the magic. Now, all those doubts were back.
If I was honest with myself, my issues weren’t solely focused on my late mate. They were also inner-focused. On me. I hadn’t lied when I had said it was hard being around all these perfect Mysticals. They were all so tall, and curvy, with everything perfectly proportioned. Everything I wasn’t. It was pitifully vain, but it still hurt on a daily basis.
My sobs eventually quieted to a sniffle, or two, when I heard footsteps on the grass below. I tried to scent the air, but my nose was too stuffed up. After a moment, I didn’t need scents to tell me who was coming. Two heads of hair came into view below through the branches. One blue and the other black and red. The men had found me.
They didn’t even look up. They just started climbing.
Wiping my cheeks and rubbing under my nose, I hastily cleared my throat.
Neither glanced in my direction, but both found a branch to sit on near me.
A beat later, Pearl was below, grumbling about breaking a nail, but didn’t hesitate when she started climbing, finding a perch under the three of us. Oddly, she seemed at home in the tree as she lay back on the branch, gazing up to me. My eyes darted away, completely mortified from all I had spewed, and she sighed. There was a flash of gold, and she snapped her fingers, stating, “Truth time.”
Jack and Ezra groaned, but didn’t argue with her using truth magic.