CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO（Untitled）Wranth

CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

Wranth

I hold my bride in my arms, our combined scents still lingering, even after the water. Nothing can ever remove her scent from me fully, or mine from her.

She is mine .

Even if this is all I ever have, for this magical moment in time, I have someone who’s mine.

Naomi has no idea how precious that is.

Even with all this talk of parents and Avalon, I know in my soul this woman is all the home I’ll ever need.

If she wants me for more than this. If our tether doesn’t break once the doors of Faerie are open and magic once again flows between the realms.

Piercing whistles cut through the air, and Naomi startles in my arms. She places a palm on my chest and pushes halfway up to sitting. Her mouth falls open, and I track her gaze over to the edge of the trees.

A flock of pixies dart into view, their tiny bodies glowing light blue. A clump of them fly in formation, carrying…

“Oh, my god! Are those my panties ?” Her voice hits a high note as she sits up.

A tattered scrap of pink dangles from multiple tiny hands as the pixies head for the water. A second group emerges, carrying another piece of pink.

“And my bra!” My bride’s shoulders start to shake with suppressed laughter.

One of the tiny fae, who’d been flying overhead, breaks off from the others and swoops toward us on luminous blue moth wings. She wears blue birch leaves as clothes, and a thick shock of hair stands straight up from her head.

“Those aren’t yours!” she says in a high-pitched voice as her tiny finger waggles. “We found them, so they’re ours!”

The other pixies reach the water and dunk the pink scraps of fabric under, wings flapping furiously as they lift up and down.

Naomi shoots me an amused glance, picks up her shirt, and wraps it around her head. She presses the soft linen fabric against her wet hair until it darkens, soaking up water. “I guess we did kind of leave them behind.”

“They were no longer needed.” I grin, remembering the satisfying feel of the cloth ripping.

“I’m not so sure about that.” Naomi cups her breasts with her hands, her lips pursed. “Are there even bras in Faerie?”

“The other human women seem to have some kind of underthings.” My friend Sturrm had smiled when speaking of such—actually smiled. Yet it’s also true he’s been doing that in general since finding his bride.

I can now see the appeal of being able to rip such scraps of fabric off Naomi whenever I want.

“How badly did you rip it?” Naomi’s eyes linger on the pixies. “Is it worth trying to get it back?”

I shove upward. “I will retrieve it for you.” Anything my bride wants.

“No!” The little leader lets out a shrill whistle, and the pixies at the water fly straight up into the air until they float a good ten feet overhead.

Then she hovers right in front of us again, a sly look on her tiny face. “We will trade you one of the fabrics for pizza!”

Naomi’s eyes dart to mine. “Pizza?”

“This is not the human who makes pizza.” I gesture toward Naomi.

Disappointed cries ring through the air.

“But she can do something better than pizza,” I add.

“This cannot be! We’ve heard the stories.” The little imp clasps her hands together, a reverent look shining from her tiny face. “Nothing compares to pizza!”

“Sweet pizza!” one of her flock cries.

Naomi’s lips tremble as she meets my gaze and whispers, “Sweet pizza.” Then she shoves a knuckle between her teeth and bites down.

“Alright, yes. Maybe sweet pizza,” the head pixie says. “But sweet pizza is still pizza , and there’s nothing better than that.”

“What if I told you Naomi can open the doors of Faerie?”

The entire flock gasps, and the leader flies over to stare into Naomi’s face. “You can do this?”

“I sure plan to!”

Already small eyes narrow even more. “Are you trying to fool us? Because bigs like to fool us.”

“It’s the truth,” I say. “She’s already done it once. I visited another realm for several minutes.”

“I took him to Earth,” Naomi says, “the human realm.”

“Does your world have pizza?”

“Yes.”

“Her world is where pizza comes from,” I add.

The dropped pieces of fabric make sodden splats on the ground as the rest of the miniscule fae abandon what they were doing. They flock around my bride in a tiny tornado of glowing blue dots that smear into streaks of light. Their voices call out, normal pixie speech so high and quick the words become a chorus of excited whistles.

She laughs with delight, the sound piercing my heart. When the whirlpool of fluttering wings finally slows, the joy in her smile rivals any sun.

My bride’s been brought to a strange world, attacked by sluagh, and bound to a complete stranger, and yet she shines, able to find happiness in the smallest of things.

She’s a marvel, for far more than her magic.

“Promise you’ll take us to Pizza World,” the lead pixie says, the reverence in her tone capitalizing the words.

“Sure, I—”

My hand on Naomi’s knee stops her, and I give a small shake of my head. “Faerie is a place of bargains. Promises are binding.”

My moon bound nods and faces the pixie. “I will do what I can to take you to Earth.”

“Pizza World!”

“Pizza World,” my bride says, her lips twitching.

“I feel as if I too should know the joys of this pizza,” Shadow says, his smile appearing only a few feet away, with the rest of his body slowly solidifying around it.

“Cat,” I growl, tossing my shirt over Naomi’s naked front. “How long were you there for?”

“Don’t worry, orc.” He grins. “I didn’t get here until after . But the sentries tell me it was loud.”

Will my bride be upset that cat sith were near while we had sex?

My worry fades as Naomi chuckles and shoots me a saucy grin. “Sure was.”

I smile back. Pride fills me as I remember how she screamed my name.

“Anyway, you should come back to the den. We’re having dinner.” As he jabs a paw toward me, Shadow’s green eyes glow with reflected pixie light, which makes them look more mischievous than ever. “Clothing optional.”