How to Keep a Fae (Coveted Fae #1)

Chapter 11

Chapter Eleven

Adaline

I am happier than I can ever remember being. I feel like I float upon clouds most days. I don’t know how it came to be, but Jayga and August are the only warriors I see. When I sleep alone in my nest, with their shirts snuggled next to me and their scent in my nose, I dream about them. When I wake up, it is with a sense of anticipation and joy.

There is a little niggle at the back of my mind, a longing for something more, for the true bonding of mates. There are also glaring holes in this fantasy, but I brush over them and focus on what I have.

My happy bubble pops when the cramping pains start.

Like many omegas, my heats are irregular. I can’t remember my last one. It has been many months, maybe close to a year. I have forgotten the terrible, debilitating cramps in my lower belly and the inferno of heat that sweeps through my blood.

Worse than any pain is knowing the warriors are due to return any day now .

Only I won’t be there. Denna will lock me away. Denna with her sad eyes.

Denna with her secrets and pain.

I try to hide what’s happening, suffering under the delusion that nobody will notice. All the while, praying that Jayga and August will return and tend me through my heat.

This is their chance to claim me. My only chance.

I am deep into my heat fever when Dede finds me shaking uncontrollably, my body bathed in sweat and made insensible with pain.

“Adaline! Goddess, what are you doing? Why did you not call for help?” She presses her hand to my forehead. “You are burning up!”

“I don’t want to go.” I push the words out between the frantic chatting of my teeth. Between my legs is a sticky mess and a terrible empty ache for a male to tend me.

Conflict is reflected in Dede’s eyes.

“Please,” I beg. “Don’t tell Denna. She will send me to the hall of solitude. The warriors will return soon. I can bear it until then.” I had a wild notion that they could claim me, but that is not the only force bearing upon me. “What if I am not here? What if they go to someone else?”

“My sweet, dearest friend. You cannot bear this. No omega can. Denna sent me to look for you. We cannot hide this. She expects you to be in the day room—she will come searching if we do not arrive soon. And you are suffering so very much. It breaks me to see you hurting like this.”

I fall to sobbing, and it only makes the pain wracking me worse.

“Tell her something, anything,” I beg. “Do not let her give me the herbs.”

She rises and paces. Through my bleary eyes, I see tears on her cheeks .

“I will do it,” she says. “And even though I hate to see you like this, I will try if it is what you want.”

“Please,” I say.

“Dede! Adaline!”

The house mistress’s voice rings like a proclamation of doom. The curtain is thrust open, and she strides in.

“She is not well,” Dede stammers.

“Foolish feeders,” Denna hisses. “The fae has gone into heat. Why did you not send for me in an instant? You play with her life to hide this!”

What follows is a blur as I’m taken to the isolated chambers where they put feeder omegas during their heat. It is dark and quiet.

As bitter drink is forced upon me, one that takes the edge off my pain, I know even should my warriors be here and find some secret way to meet me, it would be too late.

It seems obvious now, even in my befuddled state, that the herbs would mitigate any hope of mating.

Sharp words are spoken, but I am too far gone to make sense.

The door slams shut.

Dede dashes to my side, pressing a cool, damp cloth to my forehead and throat.

We have done this many times for each other over the years, offering what small comfort we can to each other. When the heat fever reaches its peak, she coaxes me to the bathing chamber where, teeth chattering, I sink into cool water.

I return to the bed, where another bitter drink is pressed upon me.

Even drugged with the herbs, I float in and out of potent hallucinations where my warriors return. Coming to me here. Tending me. Claiming me. Dreams so perfect and life-like that I weep for the loss when my heat finally abates and I come out the other side empty and raw.

“You’ve been so brave, Adaline,” Dede says, her voice little more than a whisper as I sob, grieving for something that was never mine—grieving for an illusion. “There is a fresh bath waiting. Come, you will feel better for being clean.”

I let her guide me. My legs shake as she helps me into the bathing chamber, where a bath full of warm water is ready.

Dede pulls up a stool beside me and helps me to bathe.

“Did they come looking for me?” I ask.

“I have been with you the whole time,” she says. “I do not know.”

“Will you find out for me, please?”

Her eyes glisten. “Don’t ask. You never asked before.”

“It was different then,” I say. “They were not mine.”

“Adaline,” she says. “I love you well. You are the sister of my heart, and I tell you this bluntly, not out of cruelty, but because you must be strong. They are not yours. They were merely gifted to you for a time. I pray that when this is over, they will be yet again. But we do not get to choose. They are never truly yours unless they claim you as a mate.”

I sob piteously at her words, even though I know they are the truth.

“There are ways,” I say. “You said there were ways. If I could have hidden my heat, maybe... Maybe forgone the herbs.”

“There are rumors,” she says. “That is all any of us have. And who knows, perhaps this is better than becoming like Denna, where she never feeds or experiences intimacy ever again. Losing a man you love is hard enough. Losing a mate is a thousand times more devastating. Trying to go through your heat without the herbs might also have hurt you badly, or worse… Please don’t ask me to do that again. I cannot be the one who watches you die. And think of August and Jayga. Th ink of what it would do to them when they returned and found you too far gone even to tend. Maybe lost to them completely.”

Her words rock me. Fresh tears spill down my cheeks.

I was not in possession of my wits when I begged her to help. My actions were selfish and borne of desperation. I am not alone. My actions have consequences for those I care most deeply about.

“I’m sorry,” I whisper. “I should not have asked that of you. Nor been frivolous with the life that the Goddess gave to me. If the risks impacted me and me alone, I would take them in a heartbeat.”

She pulls me to her, tucking my head against her chest while I cry. “I know you would,” she says. “I know.”

Time passes, my tears ease. I feel wrung out, not only from my heat, but from the weight of many secrets.

“There’s something I’ve been meaning to tell you,” I say. My heart thuds sickly beat inside my chest. “What you told me about Denna, about her being mated. I didn’t know that part.” I can feel her confusion although she continues her gentle strokes and does not interrupt. I swallow. “But I do know that the warrior who died, the one she loved, the reason she became a house mistress and not a feeder anymore, was the father of her first and only child.”

She stills, then her hands tighten. “Oh, love, sweet Adaline. I didn’t know.”

“How could you,” I say bitterly. “It’s not like she ever lets it show.”