Mate (Bride, #2) (10)
“I meant what I said, killer. This mate thing is about fucking. The part of me that matters isn’t interested in you. Like me, or don’t,” he says kindly. “I really couldn’t care less.”
CHAPTER 3
She expects little and is not easily offended. It makes pushing her away frustratingly hard.
Present day
KOEN ALEXANDER, THE FERAL ALPHA OF THE MOST DANGEROUS pack on the continent, undisputed ruler in a wild territory known for its exceptional bloodthirst, listens to Human classical music while driving.
I did not see that coming.
And yet here he is. Post Vampyre slaughtering, blissfully unaffected as he chauffeurs me back to the Southwest pack. Lightly tapping his long fingers against the steering wheel to keep rhythm like a connoisseur. Would it be insulting to openly manifest my shock? Do I care about offending Koen?
Yes. And yes, since I’ll be alone with him in this car for the next few hours. At the mercy he may not have.
“Is this Bach?” I ask, with no real clue what Bach sounds like. In my previous life, back when I was a Human financial reporter whose idea of a mightily stressful time included judging the ripeness of watermelons or having to sneeze while driving, I gravitated toward pop.
“Why didn’t you shift?” Koen asks instead of answering. His eyes never leave the road ahead.
“Sorry?”
“Why didn’t you shift to wolf form to run from Bob?”
“Right. Who is Bob anyway?”
The look he gives me lasts a quarter of a second but perfectly relays what Koen thinks about people who answer his questions with more questions. How lovely, to learn that his patience and willingness to filter himself have not increased in the weeks since he shuttled me to the cabin. I fidget with the sleeves of the extra-large hoodie he lent me, and for the tenth time since I got in the car, I tell myself to forget the way he stared at my naked chest in the woods.
It was a ruse. To distract the Vampyre. To save my life. He was never going to harm me, and I have zero reasons to be afraid of him.
Well, I have one: he’s objectively terrifying.
“I can’t shift when the moon is this small,” I tell him.
It’s the way it works with Weres: when the moon is fat and round in the sky, we can barely resist its call and need all our self-control to avoid shifting to wolf form. The feeling of something awakening inside me, clawing to be let out once a month, always during the same lunar phase—
that’s what first clued me in that maybe I wasn’t all that Human, after all.
Conversely, when the moon is weak, only highly powerful and dominant Weres can shift. I’m neither, and my ineptitude should be plenty believable to Koen.
If only.
“And yet,” he muses in his deep voice, “back when I first met you, you could shift at will.”
“Not when the moon was like this.”
“When it was smaller, if I recall correctly. And I do.”
I force myself not to tense. Weres pick up on physiological changes like sentient lie detectors, and I nurse too many secrets to have someone as perceptive as Koen on my back. “Maybe you have me mixed up with someone else.”
He shoots me another dissecting, eviscerating look. “Does your sudden inability to shift have anything to do with the reason you decided to disappear on a two-month holiday in the middle of the forest?”
Yes, it does, and no, it’s none of his business. “The reason I decided to disappear, if that’s even a word you can use for someone whose whereabouts were never not accounted for, is that the things I had to deal with in the past year include, in chronological but not traumatogenic order”— I lift my hand and begin counting with my fingers— “the slow realization that I’m not fully Human; the even slower realization that I’m much wolfier than I ever believed; my abduction and subsequent imprisonment at the hands of the Vampyres; baby’s first mass murder— in which I partook as the murderer; and, at long last, coming out to the rest of the planet as the first Human-Were hybrid.” I thrust my splayed hand in Koen’s face like it’s the world’s most fucked-up bingo card and bat my eyes at him. “I think my need for rest and relaxation was justified.”
“Not to kill your buzz, but I doubt you get to claim a Mass Murderer commemorative coin if it was in self-defense.”
He’s probably right. And I don’t feel bad about the (two? Three? Seven?
It’s all a blur.) Vampyres I killed to protect Misery. “Still. Rearranging my self-image from law-abiding citizen to opportunistic slaughterer did require some inward work. Ego-concept adjustments. Self-reflection. Bawling. That kind of stuff.” I gather my knees to my chest, pull the hoodie over my scratched-up shins, and ask, “How did you know, by the way?”
“Know what?”
“That someone was going to come for me at the cabin.”
“Lowe called me earlier today. Two Vampyres, Bob and some other jizzmuffin, tried to hack the Southwest and triggered some intrusion detection systems. Alex, their IT guy, realized that they were looking for your location.” A beat. “And Ana’s.”
I cover my mouth with my hand. Ana and I have one thing in common: we’re Human-Were hybrids. But while I went public with my real nature, hers is on a strict need-to- know basis.
Because Ana is seven years old.