Page 12 of Griffin Food

And I’m still staring up at Rafe.

He hasn’t moved closer. Neither have I moved away.

“Thank you,” I say.

“No need to thank us, lass.” He steps back, moving to the table, setting down the saddlebag he was still carrying.

It ought to break the tension, but if anything, it cranks it up another notch.

Rafe

I am sweating. It breaks out across the surface of my skin, the length of my spine. I don’t know what the fuck is ailing the lass. But now I think I have been infected with it too.

Thank fuck she takes to her bedroom and closes the door.

I want to go to her. A protective type of go to her, for clearly, there is something wrong. Only it’s not my fucking place. If she needs a healer, she’ll let us know. That lass is no fool, and she won’t take risks with her life.

The door opens as I am lost in these worries and rumination, and Lark enters. His eyes slide from me to the closed bedroom door where our mistress has gone.

“Sent for a cold supper,” he says. “Aye, thank fuck she has gone to her room. Her scent was near enough to choke me.” He swipes a hand down his face. “I know that scent. Last time was when⁠—”

A knock sounds on the door.

I go over and open it. The tavern lass bustles in with a saucy smile and a laden tray. She puts the tray down on the table before the window—it’s still fucking open from when Violet stood there—then throws another coy smile Lark’s way. “It’s quiet in the tavern tonight. I could slip away for a bit if you⁠—”

“No, thank ye, lass,” Lark says gruffly.

I’m still holding the door, and the lass flounces out.

“I thought you wanted a lass?” I say with a scowl as I shut the door. Why I’m giving him a hard time when it’s none of my business who he ruts—and further, he might shut the fuck up with his uncensored babbling if he ‘drained his balls’ as he put it—is a mystery to me.

“As if I could fuck someone else right now?” he says, giving me a pained look. He nods at the closed door where Violet went and lowers his voice to a hushed whisper. “I know that scent. There’s an omega in there.”

Words delivered like a punch to the gut, he stalks for the second bedroom and shuts the door.

I sit down at the table.

I dare say Lark’s senses, even as a mute shifter, are far superior to mine. I was skeptical when he talked about his mixed blood… which is probably why he never mentioned it before.

The cold supper is laid out in front of me—bread, cheese, some sliced meat—and I cannot look at any of it. I pour a cup of ale and set it down without drinking.

Omega.

Two of her younger sisters were omegas. Both of them left under suspicious circumstances. Soldiers talk. You hear things. There were hushed rumors that Elijah tried to rape one of them…

Weak bastard. I never liked Elijah, nor his bitch Queen, Elisa.

But now I’m seeing the past and events through a whole new lens. Violet’s sudden desire for adventure when the lass is a bookworm through and through, and the least adventurous woman I have ever met.

Does she know what she is?

It seems likely.

And still she led us blindly into the fire with her.

Gods! I want to be fucking mad. I want to give the lass a damn good spanking and demand to know what the fuck she was thinking running off like this, an omega, with two men she barely knows.

But how can I be mad when I think of such a sweet, kind, clever lass being trapped thus, of her being terrified of that bastard Elijah or her sister finding out? She must have been desperate.