Make Me: The World of Knott

"Done what in a century?" I asked as he pulled back, revealing not the room back at the blood auction, but a cave.

"Exploding birds! We are in a cave? How did we get to a cave?" Yes, I was shrieking, but it was deserved. We were in a cave.

"I brought you here," Elliot said it like it was normal, except I knew exactly what he was talking about. And what exactly he meant.

"Wait. You carried me in your wind body like a buttplug?" Okay, it didn't sound nearly as cool when I said it out loud.

"Uh." Even Elliot had been stunned into silence. "Let's not phrase it that way."

"Aw, thanks for letting me be your buttplug," I attempted to tease him as I tried to stand, but all of that exploding energy moved right to my head and I fell back down. If Elliot hadn't moved like the wind I might have smacked my head against the uneven stone ground. "What the hell happened, and why do I feel like I'm about to break into a million pieces."

"It's a side effect of the transport," Elliot said as he laid my head on the ground. Jagged rocks pressed into my skin, but I didn't care, I rolled into it. It was so cold and nice. "That and you just exploded my room."

"It's my room and I-- Wait. I didn't explode my room." So much for soothing away my electric buzzing with cold stone, I was up and staring at the Sylph. He wasn't smiling, and he wasn't teasing me.

Oh shit. This was bad.

"You did. Seems your first mating during a heat did more than give your mates powers."

"Oh god." The light had been so bright, and the boom. I could have sworn the ceiling fell in. Hot toads on a butt plug! "The ceiling! The others! You have to go get them!"

"Excuse me? I can't--"

"Yes you can!" I cut him off. "You brought me here, to this cave thing. You need to get them. You need to save Garret!"

I expected him to take off, vanish in a gust of wind. But he just pressed his lips pulling into a tight line, any color in his face vanishing.

"I don't think Garret wants me to save him."

"Seeing as I've seen Garret a whole two times, I don't know anything about him other than what his cock feels like. And it's nice. I am sure you think so too. Hell, I know you do, and I know you love him, I've seen the way you look when I mention him. Or when you've looked at him. Or the way he's looked at you. You need to go save them."

"I can't."

"Oh, shut up," I snapped, not caring what else he was going to say there. "You can. They are my mates. Either you go, or I am going to fight my way back there." The scowl in his face deepened into deep lines that almost made him look like an old man. Almost.

"I'm not going to allow you to do that." He was serious. Poor boy actually thought he had a chance there. I may be some weak Omega, but I had been separate from my mates and apparently I had magic now.

"I'm kind of over people controlling me or allowing me or whatever it is. They are my mates, and I want them. Now, you go get them, or I will."

We stared each other down, Elliot clearly thinking he was going to win. There wasn't any way in the damn hell I was going to let that happen. My neck was marked with Garret and Parris's brands. I had barely gotten to know them, but after the last few hours with all our sheet tangling, I wanted to. I needed to. Somehow that had cemented what they were to me. They were my Alpha's, and I was going to get them anyway I knew how.

"Make him your butt plug," I spoke softly, but neither of us laughed.

“Don’t say that, Jaide.”

“Then stop fighting me, Elliot.”

Elliot just made a sound like an angry bird and vanished, leaving me alone in the cave.

The second he was gone, the chill of the wind that whipped through the cave took his place, it swirled through the opening at the end, pulled in from the bright blue sky and the fluffy white clouds that were drifting by. Not from above, but right before me.

I bit my tongue before I screamed, my heart dropping to the ground. Or it would have if the ground wasn't a thousand feet below up. Or so I would assume.

I crawled to the edge of the cave opening carefully, gripping the stone like all of it was just going to slip out beneath me. I couldn't bring myself to look over the side, but I didn't need to, even from a yard or so away I could see how high up I was, and how far down everything was.

Trees seemed to stretch forever, a looming forest thicker and taller than any I had seen. I hadn't travelled very far in Sypani, but the forests there were grey and brown and half dead all the time. Here they were green so bright they might as well have been painted that way. They stretched to the sky around a brilliantly blue river that cut through them, the water racing right to the high white towers of a city that was built into the trees. Bridges moved between buildings, the grey stone moving in line with the trees as though they were dancing with them. It was elegant, beautiful. There was something magical about it that was pulling me right to it.

Something that was familiar.

Home. Even though I had never been here, I knew where I was.

Xerai.

Elliot had brought me to Xerai.