***
“How did you know I was faking it?” she asked him as they lounged between the cars of a freight train.
Ferro had his arm hooked through the steel bar forming a ladder rung leading to the roof of the car. “Never before have you raised your voice at me,” he said. “I knew the moment you did that you were up to something. So I played along.”
It wasn’t exactly luxury travel, but they didn’t have that sort of time anymore. Shifter on shifter combat wasn’t unheard of in human society, but it was very much frowned upon in many places. The residents of Genesis Valley had come to live with it, knowing they lived among many of the shifter world’s worst. But out in the rest of the world, they had to go through a lot of paperwork once dead bodies started turning up. Now that the pair had returned to something resembling civilization, they couldn’t stick around once bodies started piling up.
The police would figure out they were shifters soon enough, and after putting in the bare minimum of time, they would stop caring. It didn’t speak well to the relationship between humans and shifters at large, but that was the way it was. For now, it worked in their favor, and Ana was okay with exploiting it.
“The real question is how did they know?”
Ferro grimaced and looked away, his eyes unfocused as he stared out over the landscape. He was stubborn and hated to admit when he was wrong just like anyone else, but she felt a stirring of pride as he worked his jaw and spoke. “Either they captured him and he spilled the beans, or he was playing us all along,” he said at last, referring to the junior member of the Order they had let go at their last encounter.
Ana nodded. “We never told him how we were going to deal with them though.”
His eyes snapped over to her. “That is a good point. How would they have known exactly where to find us?” he asked, though the question wasn’t directed at her.
“Someone had to have been watching the exit,” she said at last.
Ferro nodded. “If that is the case though, they saw us get on this train.”
She moved her leg so that it could rest on top of his. Every time she was in contact with him, she felt lifted up.
“Ferro, I need to tell you something.”
His eyes focused on her intently, and Ana knew he had picked up on the change in her tone.
“Anything,” he assured her.
“We’ve spent a lot of time together over the past two weeks,” she began, then shook her head. “Gah, that sounds so formal.”
He smiled gently, not saying a word, giving her time to figure it out herself.
“Oh, screw this,” she said. “I’m no good at this, so here it is: I’m in love with you.”
Ferro’s only reaction was to blink.
She looked at him sideways as the silence grew. “Not exactly the response I was hoping for…” she said, trailing off.
“What? Sorry,” he said, shaking his head. “I just did not expect to hear those words from your mouth any time soon. I have been wanting to say them for some time now, but I did not want to scare you off.”
He stood up and carefully straddled the distance between the two cars, lowering his head so that it was close to hers.
“I love you too, Aneksi,” he said softly, using the birth name her Egyptian parents had bestowed upon her so many years before. She rarely used it now, and Ferro had never called her that. Yet somehow, despite the negative memories associated with the name, the way he said it and the way it rolled off his tongue made her blush with happiness.
She kissed him. Hard.
“I wish it hadn’t taken us so long to find each other,” she said with a laugh.
Ferro nodded, moving back to a more secure position. “Agreed. But I am just grateful that we did. Now we can spend the rest of our lives together.”
She felt both her heart and her stomach flutter at that. It was a war between her old self and her new self. Ana’s old personality wanted to run for the hills at the concept of settling down and spending her life in one spot.
But she would get to do so with him, and that just made everything worthwhile, killing any concerns she may have had.
“Ferro,” she said, meeting that eerily beautiful silver-gray gaze of his.
“Yes, my love?”
“These Order dicks are starting to piss me off.” Her voice was harder than steel.
“I agree.”
“I think it’s time we flipped things on their head even more.”
He arched an eyebrow at her.
“I say we storm the damn Blood King’s Castle,” she growled.
Ferro’s eyes glowed with silver as his lip curled back in a snarl.
It was time to end this.