My lips twisted. “True. Okay, breakfast, then cupcakes.”
All my mates chuckled, while Kalt remained unmoved. He clearly didn’t like the idea of going back to the North Pole.
“We have to start the trials today, little queen,” Cyrus said. “But once we’re done, we can take you wherever you want to go.”
“Why today?” I asked before taking a sip of the decadent liquid. It was so, so, so good. I seriously love you, I told Exos.
I love you, too, baby.
“Because we all agreed that it was best to test our endurance and nurturing after a week of pleasuring you. It increases the stakes and makes it more realistic,” Cyrus explained.
“Yes, because we need to make sure we can balance fucking you and raising a child,” Titus added, his trademark bluntness coming out to play. “So the next phase is to nurture a breakable object, stay awake for thirty hours, and then cook a nutritious meal.”
Cyrus nodded. “We’ll be evaluated on all three tests and have that added to our scores from this week.”
“What kind of breakable objects?” I wondered out loud, picking up a piece of bacon to nibble on between my sips of hot chocolate. Weird, yes. But it tasted amazing.
“It’s yet to be assigned,” Titus replied. “And we’re supposed to have an observer for that part, too.”
“True.” Cyrus looked at Kalt. “So you’ll be judging that as well.”
“He can’t be your observer,” Exos interjected. “He’s too biased.”
“You’re right. He’ll say I failed,” Cyrus replied. “He can observe Titus.”
Kalt grunted. “You realize I know nothing about caring for an object?”
“All you need to do is take notes and say how the object was treated,” Vox murmured. “If Titus lights it on fire, add the observation to the notes.”
Titus scoffed at that. “I’m not going to light it on fire.”
“We’ll see, won’t we?” Vox replied, his lips curling.
My fire mate just rolled his eyes before saying, “Lance can be another judge.”
“River, too,” Exos suggested. “He’s at the Academy, so it makes sense.”
“We can also get Ophelia and Mortus to help,” Cyrus said. “That gives us five observers for the nurturing trial. They can also confirm we didn’t fall asleep for thirty hours. And afterward, everyone will join us for dinner.”
“It’s settled, then,” Exos agreed, clasping his hands together. “So let’s eat, then we’ll head back and find our items.”
I smiled around my mug of hot chocolate.
This was going to be amusing as hell.
Good luck, boys, I thought at them all, then lost myself to breakfast.
Because bacon was almost as good as sex.
“WHAT IS THAT?” I asked, eyeing the translucent sphere in Cyrus’s hand. It resembled a glass orb with ice crystals etched along the outside.
“It’s an ice relic from the Winter Fae realm,” Cyrus replied, using his water magic to keep it frozen. “I asked Kalt to bring me one.”
“It’s beautiful,” Claire said, her element stroking the item tenderly. “What did you find, Titus?”
I cleared my throat, suddenly nervous. Why did Cyrus have to go show me up with a relic from another realm? Dick. Not all of us had access to foreign objects. At least mine was elemental related. I gently unrolled my pouch to present my fragile item for Claire.
“It’s a Firebird egg,” I said. “An infertile one, so it’s technically edible.” I hadn’t wanted to risk a life in this trial. Perhaps that was counterproductive to the nurturing part of the test, but Firebirds were beautiful and rare and very protective of their unborn young.