Squirt barely slept that night. While many of the others were haunted with the sight of those wings, she was haunted by the name Valof.

  Families in this manner were more than just family unit. It was a word from archaic, ancient fey, a bonded group closer to the concept of a clan. Members were bonded with the head of the family, who would know if they were in danger or hurt. They were given a magic crest on their spine that existed so long as they were in the Family, the most famous ones well known.

  Just having the mark of a well-known Family would protect most fey from the simple fear of retribution.

  And Valof wasn’t just well known. They were infamous. Tinkerers, enchanters, mages, it didn’t matter—their members were those who pursued the creation of new works and the highest quality goods. The number of patents under their belts was easily in the thousands by now.

  If she had offered a spot in that Family, which there had been more than enough magic in her words to know that it was a true fey bargain offer, then she had to be high up enough in the Family to offer it.

  A fey could join a Family one of two ways—either get invited in and swear an oath or be born into it. Those born to a Family wore their crest until they left said Family, which they could do by renouncing their oath, dying, or getting kicked out by the Family Head.

  Taking on a title for Lord Everwinter would only tell him when she was dead, not how she was killed or that she had been in danger beforehand. It offered no real protection. A Family? That depended on the Family Head, the Family notoriety, and perpetrator’s standing.

  She finally got a few fitful hours of sleep before waking with the gray light of dawn and giving up on more rest.

  Instead, she strung her bow and set off for a hunt, only to find herself followed.

  By Ala’ole, the shadowfell, and the redcap, Qzi.

  The shadowfell, Zhadin, took her longer to spot. Qzi didn’t attempt to hide what he was doing, while Ala’ole was being stealthy, but not from her. Instead, her eyes scanned the general forest as she kept her eye out for danger.

  Squirt scowled but headed north, deeper into the forest than the traps were set, and not attempting to do anything more than keep an eye on them and be ready to disappear if things got ugly.

  Oddly, at no point did any of their auras turn murderous, even when they encountered feybeasts.

  More terrifyingly, Qzi’s aura didn’t change even as he slashed and beheaded any feybeast who came for him with a playful, melodic hum of satisfaction.

  Squirt tried not to think about that. Instead, she kept her distance and one eye on him. She didn’t have their magic sense, not in the same way. Auras that blasted out of their own accord she could sense, so she could usually sense other fey well enough for combat and other such things, but she wasn’t able to sense every rock and tree like powerful fey could. The image was more intuition and direction than a three-dimensional map.

  He, luckily enough, didn’t try to hide his aura. The edges of it blended naturally with ambient magic, making it a little blurry as to his exact location, but she knew his vicinity.

  The others? She only sensed the shadowfell twice—but far enough apart to know the fell was following her. Ala’ole remained a set distance apart, keeping her in line of sight, though her aura was almost as invisible as the fell’s.

  Checking the compass once, they watched as she rapidly scaled a tree, climbing up it with little spikes to hook into the trunk. Up in the canopy, she looked out across the forest for what she was fairly certain was another treebed.

  Spotting it, she scampered back down and trotted off.

  When she strung her bow and notched an arrow, all three of them disappeared. She knew they were there. Casting her gaze around, they weren’t really hiding from her, even as they stood behind foliage or ducked behind above ground roots.

  Her expression flattened as she understood.

  Assholes. She had a damn protection detail? In the fucking forest?

  Scowling at them, she pulled the goggles on her head down over her eyes, now with new and improved breathing notches, and crept forward.

  From this distance, she could just barely make out the edge of the treebed.

  And just like she thought, a nest of chameleon cats.

  Lowering herself down, she counted them, pulling out her notebook and marking down the general vicinity on a quickly drawn map, then started to tally. They watched as she circled the large area, only stopping when she noted different types of feybeasts and added tally counts for them as well. Otherwise, her charcoal pen moved while her eyes remained up and looking around.

  About a quarter of the way around, she stopped and hid in a bush. There was one chameleon cat here, alone. Far enough from the nest to be gotten, so long as no cats came this way in the next three minutes.

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  Scanning the treebed, she nodded to herself, then put away the charcoal pen, tied the handkerchief around her face, pulled out a slingshot and a little cloth pouch she’d filled with powder before bed last night, and lined up a shot.

  One last gaze around, and she hit the cat. It startled at the nearby impact, still caught up in the powdery fog as it sneezed a few times, then leaned forward in curiosity and sneezed twice more. Then it stumbled and fell to the ground.

  Squirt counted to ten, scanning the treebed quickly for others while she palmed her skinning knife, then darted forward.

  Same as she’d done for her own cloak, she did the incisions on the difficult spots, then gripped the fur, sliced quickly and accurately, ripping it off the beast and cutting it off just before it poofed into a feystone. Squirt carefully folded the skin, her eyes wary on the woods around her, rolled it up, and hefted the feystone into her pouch. Darting back to cover, she then lashed the rolled-up fur over her back and continued her loop.

  And did it twice more before she finished.

  Then she began making her way back south, farther east than she had traveled up and stopping at several points to gather more mushrooms, collect blazing ants, or just kill more feybeasts as she came across them.

  The other three never interfered, never did more than let her know they were there as she continued. Only unlike before, there was an intensity to the redcap Qzi that made Squirt nervous. As they approached the clearing, the intensity only increased. When she cleared the trees and caught Tobias and the pest’s eyes, she visibly relaxed.

  Only for two hands to land on her shoulders and roughly pull her attention to a kneeling, gleaming eyed redcap as he said, “Mate me.”

  It wasn’t phrased as a question.

  His eyes practically sparkled as he said, “Gods, a woman as ruthless as myself and almost better with a blade—”

  Worse.

  She believed him.

  Gods, the fey actually was offering to mate her.

  Mate bonds weren’t technically permanent. They could be ended with mutual consent at any time. Lives of fey were long, after all, and fey changed.

  It did, of course, require mutual consent to break, was about as binding a magic as one could perform, and something told her that if she ever said yes to a man like him, she’d never be free of him.

  Scowling at his bliss filled face, her annoyance grew as his expression turned almost erotic in response.

  Great. A fetishist.

  Since he’d never asked a question, she was not required give him an answer. With that in mind she pulled back from his hold with a glare, before stomping off to an empty part of the clearing. Plopping herself down on the ground, she pulled the skins off her back, then took one and her tanning tools to start preparing it.

  Her brows twitched when she gained a sudden, yet annoyingly polite, audience. So long as they didn’t interrupt her work, social etiquette didn’t allow her the chance to object safely. And while Ala’ole had gone from distrustful to silent guardian, in the same time period the peppy shifter had started eyeing her when she thought no one was looking.

  She had a guess, of course. The woman clearly had the hots for Tobias, and unlike Telos she’d made it obvious. Tobias, meanwhile, didn’t pay her any attention while showering Squirt in attention and care that could be misconstrued as romantic.

  She proved herself to one only to alienate the other.

  About an hour into her work, there was a boisterous laugh drawing everyone’s attention. The pest uncle beamed and said excitedly, “Gerald! Brock! It’s so good to eye you!” as he flew off with his damn perfect wings.

  Laughter and slapping of bodies could be heard, but Squirt just kept her eyes down and focused on the skin at hand. She still had another one to go after this, and she’d only just started ironing this one with her homemade tanning iron.

  The group parted as Instructor Hawke grinned, squatting before her. Then curiously looked down at the item in her hand.

  She scowled harder.

  The blond bearded shifter from the training yard squatted just behind him, looking over his shoulder to watch Squirt work. “What is that?”

  Damnit. Unable to keep the irritation from her tone, she answered, “A tanning iron, sir.”

  “Hm. I’ve never heard of one.”

  Her expression flattened and she braced herself for a damn repeat of the previous day.

  He rubbed his beard in thought. “One you invented, I presume?”

  Her gaze snapped up and her jaw dropped.

  The man gave her a wild grin. “Bartos has always had a keen eye for talent. If he says you’re a brilliant inventor, that’s all I need to know to believe it.” He nodded back to the iron. “Tell me about it, if you please.”

  Her eyes grew overbright, and she quickly dropped them down, her expression tight. Clearing her throat, she pulled the iron off the skin, holding it up. Her ears turned red and her voice remained strung tight as she said, “It… combines autumn, day, and time magic to dry out the skin. It takes time, and you have to be careful to make sure the tan is even, but it can tan one of these hides in a little less than an hour.”

  He nodded thoughtfully. “And can anyone use it?”

  She shook her head. “It’s… modified.” She showed the tube on the back and the switch that it shared with the air blade she had used to cut up the tree a few days ago. “It takes small red feystones. Any size works. This hook keeps the lever in place and prevents it from turning on. With it off, you flip the lever and then hold it about an inch over the hide, feeding it stones as needed.”

  He dropped his head and laughed. “Gods.”

  Instructor Hawke smirked, his mustache twitching as he did, looking entirely too smug for something he had no right to be smug over.

  Squirt regarded him with suspicion before her eyes returned to the blond shifter’s.

  He grinned at her. “Don’t worry about it. I took this exact problem to a magis before who told me the feat was as impossible as it was impractical. Always knew that old fart was an asinine fuckface, and now I feel even better about punching his face in.”

  Squirt’s eyes flickered to the man’s biceps. They were bigger than her head.

  Yeah, he could absolutely punch someone’s face in.

  Her expression carefully neutral, she waited for propriety’s sake.

  The man’s laugh slowly faded to thoughtful contemplation on her, and Instructor Hawke elbowed him hard, making the shifter grunt and bend over with a groan.

  Instructor Hawke grunted and stood. “Well, lass. Give someone else that task and let’s get some practice in.”

  She scowled and snapped, “Not a chance. Do you know how much these idiots have ruined? I’m not trusting a damn one of them to tan these things evenly.” Hooking the lever to keep the thing off, she stored it in her pouch and folded the remaining two skins in half, moving them to the shade. The other, she flipped skin side up as she left it out on the porch banister.

  Finished, she headed to the creek to wash off the worst of the gore.

  Only when she was relatively clean did she meet Instructor Hawke in the grass of the clearing, pulling out her blade as she did so.

  He grinned. “Alright. Let’s see if you’ve been practicing.”