Taken by my mate

Spencer

Covyn rubbed the bridge of his nose for a solid minute with his eyes closed tightly. “Are you telling me there are four dragons somewhere in the woods trying to get to you?”

Evadiene’s brows pushed together. “Not at all.”

He sighed. “Can you elaborate on all the points I’m wrong about and why?”

“Now you’re getting it,” Sequoia muttered, flipping through more of the pages.

“My father wouldn’t be with them, his curse prevents him joining any fight directly, and they aren’t trying to get me, they’ve always known where I am but they can’t interact with me because I was banished. They’re trying to end my banishment.”

“How will they do that?” He continued, all of us feeling like onlookers between his returning anger and her even-temperament.

She sighed an exasperated sound. “I’d be guessing,” he nodded for her to continue. “For me to lose my memory of it and my phoenix, I must have asked for a life. I thought it would be my mate…” she looked at him sadly. “So there’s someone here I knew before, when they were someone to me, and my brothers are coming to kill them.”

The room fell still, except for Evadiene who look at what part of the book Sequoia was on. Sequoia was reading something, gently running her finger under the words that ran vertically and then side by side in horizontal lines. The words hung like icicles off and invisible line and the next line began from the start of the invisible if it were running under the longest word from the line above.

Sequoia pointed at a word and looked to Evadiene. “Car-eeO-tik?”

Evadiene looked at the word. “Karotis, it means… it’s like …. *huff* when you make a deal wanting to do so much good but, due to the nature of deals, the price is at great personal cost. The deal you made was karotis.”

Sequoia nodded and then looked to me. “Evadiene has been teaching me to read her language for hundreds of years but I always mix up the ‘tik’ and ‘tis’ sounds.”

“It’s not practical knowledge anyway,” Evadiene encouraged.

“Did you make that kind of deal?” I asked.

She looked at me with the most serious face. “Absolutely.”

I wasn’t sure I wanted to ask her but I wet my lips and tried. “What was the karotis deal you made?”

She bit her lip and her seriousness returned. “I won’t tell you.”

“Why not?”

“I won’t tell you that either.”

“But you…”

“I have to be asked to give an answer, and I can’t lie, but I’m not required to answer.”

“That’s your choice Evadiene.” I had almost forgot the Alpha was there, with the intense eye contact I had with Evadiene, with the absence of his growling. “Right now I’m more concerned with the deals your brothers made.”