Mabel exhaled sharply and pulled her hand back. "Yeah, right. Forgot about that bit," she muttered, her humor bone-dry. Stuck with him. The Alpha King. No woman in her pack could have imagined such a fate.
"Don't worry," Kyllian said, watching her carefully. "The Vampire King is working on it already. You do not have to live with the burden of protecting the goddess for too long."
"Thank you again," she said.
"Anything for the goddess."
Mabel chuckled. "Now I feel inconsequential," she teased.
"Next to the goddess, we all are."
They both laughed then. Neither of them realized it, but intimacy was already beginning to thread itself through their half-smiles, their clumsy jokes.
*****
