Unknotted

“Made an absolute fool of yourself.” Tydeus grabbed my elbow and steered me toward the exit.

“What about the damages?” I glanced over my shoulder and cringed at the sight of the broken glass, a dumbfounded station manager, and wary travelers. It would take years to pay for it all on my salary.

“I talked with the manager. They’ll send us the bill.” Tydeus’s hand tightened on the back of my arm as we passed through security, the troll staff eyeing us.

“I’ll pay for it,” I insisted. “It’s my responsibility.”

“Right now, all I want you to do is lower your face incase every news station is outside, ready to snap your picture. We don’t want word out that a Keadanian soldier attacked the portal station, its staff, and its travelers.”

I didn’t need any more encouragement. My eyes went to the ground, shame heavy on my shoulders. “Did I hurt anyone?”

“Other than that woman?”

I flinched.

“No.” Tydeus lead us through a side door labeled “Staff Only” and into an employee parking lot behind the station. A black SUV was waiting for us. He jerked the door open, and I slid in, feeling like a three-year-old in trouble for throwing a tantrum in the store. Chet hopped into the passenger seat. Tydeus climbed in behind the steering wheel and shoved the keys into the ignition.

“The station manager said he’s never seen that troll. While you were breaking his windows”—Tydeus scowled at me through the rearview mirror—“he ran her ID. It’s stolen. The troll doesn’t work here.”

“What?” I leaned between the two front seats. “What does that mean?”

“Means that troll wasn’t supposed to be there. She must have conspired with that woman to sneak her off the hemisphere.”

I scrubbed at my face. “But why? It’s not like she knew she would run into me, and I would—” My teeth snapped together.

“Maybe it wasn’t you she was after.” Chet flipped the visor down and checked the state of his hair. It was perfectly messy, as always.

“Who says she was after anyone?” Tydeus shifted into gear and pulled out of the lot. As he predicted, half a dozen news vans were outside the station. Though the windows were tinted, I still pressed myself into the leather seats, hoping to disappear.

While Tydeus drove, turning onto the paved highway, I ran through my strange and volatile encounter. How had my attempt to return a book to a stranger gone so horribly wrong? I leaned between the seat again. “Did anyone grab the book she left?”

“You mean this?” Chet opened it and scanned a page. His eyebrows climbed toward his hairline. “Maybe you should read this. Might learn the proper way to react to a woman’s attention.”

Growling half-heartedly, I snatched the book from his hands and studied the cover of what I could only guess was a cheesy romance saturated in cliches and passionate make-out sessions.

“We should dust that for fingerprints,” Tydeus said.

Chet stretched out his legs and dug around in his pocket. “I doubt you’ll find any clear prints after the night it’s had.” He pulled something from his pocket that jingled. “She also dropped these.”

I barely managed to catch the object that Chet tossed back before it smacked me in the face. I turned the woman’s keys over in my hands and wondered what each would unlock. One was obviously for the truck I had prevented her from climbing into. The smaller keys had to go to lockers or boxes or padlocks of some sort. The last key was likely a house key. I fingered it, idly wondering where a woman like her, one who had escape plans ready at a moment’s notice, would live.

Chet was still smirking at me over his shoulder.

“What?” I shifted uncomfortably.

“I would have dressed as a gremlin or Ripple or something if I’d known you were going to try to organize a parade tonight. Where, exactly, were you planning on marching her to?”

I rubbed the back of my neck, embarrassed. “I don’t know. Somewhere…”

“Somewhere private?” Chet waggled his brows, purring.

Heat pooled at the base of my neck, and I kicked the back of Chet’s seat. “She obviously wasn’t interested. Core between,” I mumbled, not even sure if I would have been interested if the magic hadn’t pulled me to her. “Of course, she wasn’t. I acted like an animal.”

Chet shrugged. “Some women like that.”

I glared at him. “Not helping.”

“Sorry. It’s nice seeing someone else, especially you, Mr. Always-in-Control, lose it.” His grin fell a little. “What are you going to tell Dariya?”

Groaning, I rested my head against the window. “Nothing unless she asks.” Since Dariya rarely called or answered my messages these days, I could avoid speaking of this night to her until it faded into the past.

I watched Keadan zip past the window, cities giving way to savannah. After several long moments of silence where the events were running through my mind on replay, I asked, “What did she look like?”

Tydeus’s eyes flicked up to the mirror again to stare at me, while Chet shifted in his seat, mouth slightly ajar.

“You mean,” Chet said, “after staring longingly into her eyes, wrestling her to the ground, and chasing her across the sky—all of which is more action than most men can boast of on a first date—you don’t know what she looks like?”

My lips pursed. “I remember nothing except her form.”

Chet sat back in his seat and peered out the window, mumbling, “She’s pretty, man. Real pretty. Black hair. Blue eyes.”

“Blue?” I sat forward. That didn’t sound right. I was sure they were a warmer color. A brown, yellowish color. Golden… “Topaz. Her eyes were the color of topaz.”

Chet shook his head. “Nah. Pretty sure they were blue, man.”

“Maybe…”

“What are you planning to do about her?”

My question died, replaced by Chet’s more important one. My fingers tightened around her keys as an ache settled in my chest. Not at the thought of never seeing her again—I knew nothing about her except she drove a truck, read smutty romance novels, and had unusual friends. But the thought of never feeling the magic as strongly as I had when we had touched throbbed unbearably.

There was one other thing, one single frightening thing, I knew about her: She was as dominant as I was. Should I ever see her again, and the magic ignite a knot between us once more, and my dominance burst free of my control, we would either accept the Core’s plans or kill each other. It would be better to give up hope of feeling that powerful magic again, than cling to the prospect of the woman surrendering to the pragmora knot.

I sighed. “Nothing. I plan to do nothing about her.”

“But the Core? It was knotting you to her,” Tydeus said. “That’s a precious gift.”

“Or a curse,” Chet laughed. “That woman seems like a vicious handful. Still can’t believe she charged you first, without knowing your beasts form.”

“It was stupid and reckless,” Tydeus snapped. “She’s obviously untrained and naïve. Angevin”—he glared at me in the mirror—“you need to find her before she gets herself killed. The death of a pragmora is—”

“I know the effects,” I said, my mood dampening further. Not many hybrids survived that kind of grief. “I don’t think we completed the knot though. She’s not my pragmora.”

“You must find her,” Tydeus insisted.

“Leave it alone.” I tossed the novel on the seat and closed my eyes.

Tydeus wouldn’t, not when it came to matters of following the Core’s will. His phone ringing through the vehicle’s radio saved me from the lecture though.

Ultra Metallia’s voice screeched through the speakers. “Where are you, Tydeus?”

“Twenty minutes from the camp, unless you need us to run damage control at the portal station, Ultra.”

“Damage control?” She scoffed. “Your men caused the damages and are obviously too savage to be in a portal station right now. Get here and bring that animal who destroyed an entire portal gate. It’s all over the news. Tides, we just claimed that station and the first thing you brutes manage to do is destroy it.”

I, feeling a little smaller with each passing moment, could see Tydeus glaring at the road as our ultra continued ranting for several more minutes. Each time Metallia paused for breath, I hoped her tirade was wrapping up, but she only dropped back into another. Tydeus finally met my eyes through the mirror.

I’m sorry, I mouthed. The only one of us who deserved Metallia’s ire was me, for not keeping better control of my dominance.

Tydeus shook his head, his dark eye softening, communicating that he wasn’t angry with me. But why wouldn’t he be? I deserved it.

“Thank you, Ultra Metallia. We’ll see you soon.” Chet hit the end button.

Tydeus nearly swerved off the road as he jerked the wheel in his surprise. “You can’t hang up on your ultra.”

“I just did.”

I groaned. “She’s going to be even more ticked.”

Chet flashed me a grin. “Good. Now we can share the brunt of her anger. That’s what friends do.”

“You’re crazy to welcome that on yourself.”

Chet shrugged. “If we go down, we go down together.”

There was some comfort in the idea of not dying alone.

“Now clean yourself up.” Chet grabbed baby wipes from the middle compart and chucked them at me. “You have blood on your face.”