“Do you need help?”
“I’ve got it.” Stairs take me a second, but I can do them no problem. It’s steep declines that suck.
When I get inside, all my roommates are huddled on the sofa. They’ve been snooping.
“What did the alpha want?” Kennedy asks.
“Are you exiled?” Annie worries the hem of her shirt.
“Why would I be exiled?”
“For attacking Haisley.”
“There is literally a fight every night during dinner.” Killian usually picks the competitors, but brawls break out often enough that my point holds.
“But you claimed him as your—” Annie glances around the rooms as if someone might overhear. “Mate.”
“Yeah.”
All three females are staring at me, Mari’s blue eyes swimming with concern, Annie trembling, Kennedy’s arms crossed, cranky as always. Kennedy is twenty-three, but she never grew out of the phase where she thinks everything and everyone is bullshit—always—in every way. If I had to pick, she’s my favorite.
My young roomies want an explanation.
I sigh.
I flop down in the armchair. “I made a mistake, okay?”
“So he’s not your mate?” Mari asks.
I shrug. I don’t want to lie to them. Not if I don’t have to.
“You can’t reject your mate,” Annie says.
“I guess you can.”
Annie’s face contorts in horror. A lot of her anxiety manifests around the mate thing. She’s terrified that she’ll never find him, or she’ll mate with a male thirty years younger or something.
I used to be tormented by the same late-night thoughts. Maybe my mate died as a pup. Maybe he’s a male from the Last Pack, and I’ll never meet him because he’s living in a den somewhere as a wolf twenty-four seven. Maybe Fate miscounted and had one female left over when she paired everyone up.
Maybe there’s something wrong with me that makes me fundamentally unlovable.
There’s so much to be afraid of that’s totally beyond your control. But I was lucky. I discovered the farmer’s market. There’s no time to worry about males when you need to harvest enough honey to fill the orders for the Pumpkin Festival.
That’s not going to be much comfort to Annie. She’s got to find her own farmer’s market, so to speak.
For now, her fear of dying alone is stinking up the place.
“Your mate isn’t going to reject you.” I muster the most reassuring smile I can.
We all know there’s no way of knowing, but—shifters are superstitious. Say it and it will be so. And I’m older. Strange as it is, they look up to me.
“Oh, Una. I’m so sorry.” Mari’s lip wobbles.
“I’m not. Who wants to be mated to Killian Kelly?”
Kennedy shudders. “I’m not sure if he smells like the gym, or if the gym smells like him.”
“He yells a lot,” Annie adds.
“And all the females always talk about his dick.” Mari wrinkles her nose, disapproving.
My wolf snarls. She can pipe down. It’s the truth. Killian’s a manwhore. It’s nothing to us.
“I heard his wolf had his first kill when he was only nine years old,” Mari says.
“That’s impossible.” Males don’t shift until puberty, just like females. I didn’t appreciate until now how much physical stamina it takes to move from one form to the other. There’s no way a pup could do it.
“Killian Kelly can flip-shift,” Mari argues. “And that’s impossible.”
It should be. Your brain can’t even process what it’s seeing when he does it. He’ll be fighting, and one instant he’s a man, the next a wolf, and then a man again. All the while, he’s striking, kicking, leaping. Common wisdom holds that the wolf is always stronger, but a man can swing and throw and strangle. Handle a knife. Shoot a gun.
When Killian flip-shifts, he’s supernatural.
That used to frighten me when I was little. Then it only made me nervous. Wary. But something’s changed. I’m not intimidated anymore. At least not now that he isn’t right in front of me.
I guess Abertha plucked out my fear with the bond.
It feels good. Liberating.
“That’s enough about Killian Kelly,” I declare. “We need to talk mushrooms.”
Mari groans. Kennedy reaches for her video game controller.
I raise my shoulder and look at Annie. She shrugs in return.
I’m not fearless enough that I’m going to ignore an alpha command, and I’m grounded, so Annie’s going to have to make the delivery after all. This rejected mate debacle is not costing me three hundred bucks in addition to all my dignity. Not this week.