“Go to hell, Ryder! I don't want to Transition at all! What if it changes who I am? What if makes me evil, like the Fae who killed my parents? Or worse, what if I change into some grotesque monster?”
He smiled gently, and moved closer. “It won't change how you feel, or who you are. You could never be grotesque, either. Vanity isn't something you give a fuck about, so don’t start now. You're worried you will have to admit that being Fae doesn’t make you evil and that you will have to fuck in order to feed. There are other ways to feed, not through Transition, but after. You can lie to yourself all you want, but don’t expect me to buy the bullshit you keep feeding yourself.”
“We don’t even know what I am! You have no idea what I will change into. No one does. You knew what you would change into when you Transitioned. I don't. Hell, Adam doesn’t even fucking know!”
“Dark Fae. Adam is Dark Fae. His brands are fully developed now. He's your familiar, so my guess is that you are as well, which means I'm your Prince fucking Charming.” His eyes sparkled mischievously.
I snorted. “My ass you are. You're not Dark Fae, Ryder. You may not be the Horde King, but you sure as hell are not the Dark Prince. You can sell that lie somewhere else, because I ain’t buying.”
Chapter Six
I showered and laid down, ignoring everything…or trying to, with my brain running at warp-speed. My dog had been a Shape-shifter and I hadn't even noticed—well, to be truthful, I didn’t have much to do with Shifters in the past, so it wasn’t as if I really knew what to look for. Everything I knew about them, came from a Guild textbook. According to Ryder and Ristan, I was starting to go through Transition, and I wasn’t going to be given an option about it. I wasn’t ready. I had barely processed the idea of being Fae. I hadn't gotten to the acceptance part of it or that I'd soon become a fully Transitioned Fae.
I was starting to think it was like the stages of grief. I hated not knowing what I would change into, or, worse, who I would feed from for the rest of my life. I wasn’t the type to go from lover to lover. I wasn't a fucking ride at the damn carnival!
Who the hell abandoned a child? Had I been bad, or born wrong? Had my real parents handed me off to my foster parents, or did my foster parents find me? The Guild was notorious for not wanting to have anything to do with the Fae, much less cooperating with them, until my ‘interview’ with Ryder. Suddenly, the Guild was BFF’s with the Fae, and now they were back to Guild business as usual. Looking over happier memories with my parents they had to have known I was a Fae child, but why would a Guild couple knowingly take in a Fae child? Add that to the fact that my father had been in a very high position on the council, it only added to the confusion I was trying to sort through. I hated not knowing, and I couldn’t keep it off my mind. To make matters worse, if Mister Fancy Pants had been right, and telling the truth, there was a radical group of humans out there fucking with the Fae—and I’m not sure I could blame them for it, considering how much the Fae seemed to use humans.
I rubbed my eyes and sighed. I'd bought a damn dog so I wouldn’t do this, and here I was doing it! My dog hadn't even been a damn dog. You couldn't buy this kind of bad luck. I wanted to blame it all on Ryder, because my life might not have been perfect before I met him, but I'd been in control of it, for the most part. Now, the only thing I could manage to control, was the on and off switch on my coffee pot!
I'd put things together and accused Ryder of being the Horde King…as if I could put my foot any further into my mouth. He'd withstood the wards, walked right the hell through them. I turned and punched my pillow. I needed to get control, and I needed to do it quickly, before I was so far in that I couldn’t climb out.
I closed my eyes again and, the next thing I knew, he was there. His dangerous, sinfully-beautiful, golden eyes laughed at me as he watched me. Gah! The man was taunting me inside my head, and what was worse, I wanted him. I wanted his hands touching me, his mouth seducing me…
I felt myself falling, and tried to right myself on the bed, as if I'd drifted to sleep and felt that instant of falling through the air weightlessly. I landed, hard, on beautiful, gray and black mosaic tile, with water covering my hands and cascading around me. I spit water out, and tried to sit up. I pushed the water out of my face and eyes and let out a startled moan. I was staring right at Ryder’s dick.
His deep chuckle made me look up further. I was in a thin Betty Boop pajama short set, soaking wet, on my hands and knees at his feet…in his fucking shower! “What the hell?” I growled, trying to get to my feet and slipping. Why the hell was he in the shower anyway, seeing that he could snap his fingers and be insta-cleaned?