Page 1 of Fae's Mate
Chapter 1
Seki
I try not to roll my eyes as the bell above the door dings. My shop has been empty for an hour and I was preparing myself for an early close. I plaster on a fake smile and turn to my customer.
“How can I help?”
“Oh, I’m just looking for a moment.” The blonde woman on the other side of the glass counter says.
I’ve seen her before. She hides her full figure under baggy clothes, is always polite, and always buys more than one cake. I turn off the tap and return to cleaning dishes, sighing heavily as I scrub orange buttercream from a mixing bowl. The Halloween cupcakes I made didn’t sell as well as I had hoped they would. Another week of barely turning a profit.
“Okay, I’m ready.” My customer calls.
I turn with another fake smile, wiping my wet hands on my apron.
“Can I have two of the Halloween cupcakes, a rocky road and a chocolate brownie please, oh, and a pumpkin spiced latte to go, please?”
“Of course,” I reply with thinly veiled sincerity; I just cleaned the coffee maker, now I’ll have to do it again.
I push in the coffee and clip the porta filter to the machine, reminding myself that I should probably make small talk. “Do you have anything nice planned for this evening?”
“Oh, me? No, I live on the top floor, so I tend not to get any trick or treaters. I will probably just watch a horror movie.”
Nodding politely, I grab a box and fill it with her order, then place it carefully in a paper bag so the buttercream doesn’t get smushed. A strange smell fills the air and I wonder for a moment if it’s simply the blonde woman’s perfume—a light floral fragrance—but as I walk over to froth milk for her latte, the smell intensifies.
The air suddenly feels thick—heavy—like it does in the summer, and I wonder if I left the ovens on again. When I turn to look at my customer, she is looking around curiously, sniffing the air. She must smell it too, and tugs at the neck of her hoodie as if she too feels the intensity of the air.
A weird ringing sound fills the shop, and the air thickens more, becoming almost misty, and as I look around, it shimmers. Am I seeing things?
“What’s going o—”
Everything disappears in a blinding flash of white light, and for a moment, I feel nothing. Everything is still, quiet, and calm. As if the entire world is paused. Floating in the nothingness, I feel like I could almost drift away…
But then I hit the ground.Hard.
Winded, I stay on my back, eyes closed as I struggle to suck in the air. I didn’t initially realise I had been denied it. The surrounding air is earthy and damp, and the ground beneath me is soft and soggy. With a groan, I finally open my eyes. Above me is a vast canopy of red and orange leaves, almost completely blocking out the sun. A rustle sounds beside me and I quickly sit up to look around.
I’m in a forest, though it doesn’t look like any forest I have been in before, and I am not alone. Ten feet away is the blonde woman from my shop. Scattered nearby are a handful of others, all sitting up groggily. To my left is a dark-skinned woman with glasses, wearing a paisley shirt. Beside her is another blonde, but younger looking, with big doe like brown eyes. Opposite me, leaning against a tree, is a slender woman with bright blue hair, a big, flared skirt and bangles gracing both her arms.
“Where are we?” the doe eyed blonde asks.
I wait, but no one answers her. I stand and wipe away the fallen leaves clinging to me as best I can. Now that I’ve had a good look around, the forest seems to stretch further than I can see in every direction. I can hear a babbling brook nearby and birdsong, but no cars. We must be miles from the city. A sob breaks through the quiet. A woman, to my right, with gorgeous long golden-brown curls.
It’s then that I notice the bodies on the ground.
I step over to them without alerting the others. I should probably say something, but I don’t want to cause a panic. As I draw closer, I see they are both male and unconscious. Not dead, because their chests are rising and falling. One has strawberry-blonde hair, braided like an elf from a fantasy movie, and the other has a halo of black coils. Both are dressed as if they’ve been to some sort of fair, the kind where people dress up as wizards and hobbits.
As I frown at the two unconscious men, another woman comes to stand beside me.
“Do you know them?” She asks.
I shake my head, then look over at her. This is someone new, a tall woman, with a large set of headphones resting around her neck and ginger hair that is shaved on one side and falls to her jaw in waves on the other.
The dark-skinned woman with glasses joins us and crouches beside the men. She presses her fingers to one of their necks, checking for a pulse, then pushes auburn hair away, revealing a high pointed ear. She scoffs, then reaches for the ear and tries to pull the cosplay extensions off. Except they aren’t extensions, but hisactualears. The woman stands so quickly that she stumbles back and lands with a thud, pushing up her glasses.
“They’re… they’re f-fae.”
“Fae?” I ask.
