Cursed Mate (Feral Shifters 3)

Malix

I openmy eyes to blinding morning light.

Squinting against the assault, I lift my head from the pillow and reach out to search for Amora and Kian. Both of them are long gone, given how cool the sheets are on the other side of the bed. The curtains are open, but only halfway, so that golden light pours through right over the bed. Amora doesn’t do shit halfway, so it’s obvious Kian did it to fuck with me because I didn’t get up when they did.

Dick.

Dropping my head back to the pillow, I close my eyes and take a deep breath of their combined scents. The whole room smells like them. Smells like sex.

My cock twitches at the memory of Amora on top of me, under me. Surrounding me.

I reach down and rub my hardening cock with a satisfied grin. Having Amora is never short of phenomenal, but fuck. I’ve never experienced anything quite like last night. Sharing her with Kian heightened every sensation, like I could feel twice the pleasure ricocheting through her body.

It’s no damn wonder I slept like the fucking dead.

I find my sweatpants on the floor, only to realize they’re the ones Kian was wearing when he joined us last night.

Dammit. Motherfucker stole my pants. I slip them over my hips, my junk still pressing semi-hard against the gray cotton as I tie the knot double tight.

I’m sure when I find the two of them downstairs, they’re both going to pretend nothing happened last night. They’re one hundred percent alike in that way—two ostriches, heads buried in the damn sand, refusing to face reality when they don’t want to. They’ll come together and then retreat back to their own corners like opponents in a boxing ring, always ready for the next fight. They’ll dance around this shit until something happens to force them to recognize they’re stuck with each other.

I give up on finding my shirt in the pile of pillows on the floor and leave the bedroom. The hallway is silent and empty, but I can hear the sound of clinking dishes in the kitchen. Sure enough, when I walk in, there’s no cuddling to be found. Hell, they aren’t even fucking looking at each other. The two of them are on opposite sides of the room, cooking their own meals with their backs to one another.

Jesus. I don’t know why they keep kidding themselves.

Their feelings for each other are as obvious as the damn sun in the sky. As obvious as my feelings for her, and hers for me and Frost.

This thing between us is too big to be broken by a measly damn potion. We should’ve known that from the start.

Kian, who’s standing over a pot on the stove, shoots me a glance over his shoulder. “About time you hauled your useless ass out of bed.”

I give him my best shit-eating grin and make a beeline toward Amora. “Hey, when a guy’s as fucking amazing in the sack as I am, he needs his beauty sleep.”

Amora snorts, but I loop an arm around her waist, my fingertips sliding beneath the hem of her little shorts so I can palm her bare skin. Yanking her against my body, I let her feel just how happy I am to see her while I kiss her thoroughly.

She tastes like coffee and sugar with that decadent undertone of citrusy sweetness. It takes all my willpower not to rip her clothes off, bend her over the counter, and have my way with her. After what happened between us last night, maybe I shouldn’t still feel as ravenous as I do, but what can I say? She brings out the beast in me.

By the time I pull away, she’s breathing hard and her green eyes are the size of dinner plates, heat burning in their depths.

“Morning, kitty,” I tease her in a low voice. Then, as the toaster ends its warming cycle and pops up, I snag a Pop-Tart. I wink at her, bite into the warm, gooey pastry, and stride over to the table.

Dropping into a chair, I shoot a grin at Kian. “I made breakfast for you yesterday. It’s my turn to be waited on.”

Amora still hasn’t moved from where I left her. She seems stunned by my casual display of affection, and I kind of like it.

There’s plenty more where that came from.

“You changed shirts,” I say, my eyebrows drawing together as I cock my head at her.

She blinks. “Uh. Yeah. The other one was dirty.”

Her shirt wasn’t dirty before I peeled it off her body last night, but I don’t ask questions. Unlike Kian, I’m okay with my girl keeping secrets. Especially since I’m not stupid, and I know if her shirt got dirty, she did something she wasn’t supposed to.

Like go downstairs to visit Frost.

I’m about ten minutes away from being hangry, so I inhale the Pop-Tart while Amora opens up another packet and heats up two more. Kian stirs something in a pan as he finishes cooking whatever concoction he’s got on the stove. I lick my fingers clean and get up to go pour some coffee from the pot, but Amora meets me when I’m halfway across the kitchen.

“For you,” she says, holding out the mug in her hand.

I accept it with another kiss, more chaste than our earlier one. “Thanks, kitty.”

Her cheeks flush, and the hint of pink beneath her spring grass eyes makes her look even more beautiful. Like an old porcelain doll, the kind my mother had as a kid.

I don’t even know where those dolls ended up, honestly. Quinton took everything from our mothers, including their belongings.

And their lives.

I return to my chair, and a moment later Amora sits beside me, offering me another Pop-Tart. Then Kian strides over and sets a bowl in front of me—some kind of meat and beans combo that looks entirely too much like horse shit.

Unfortunately, I’m a carnivore, and I’m fucking starving, so I dig in despite the unappetizing look. It’s not half bad, honestly. I just don’t want to know how long that meat’s been in this house or how deep he had to dig to find it behind the dozens of cans of beans and vegetables.

We eat quietly for a little while, but the silence is too loaded to let it go on for long. Yesterday was a shitshow, start to finish, except for those couple hours after dark. From what Quinton did to Frost, to Kian's confrontation with Amora, to mind-blowing sex with both of them, a lot has happened in a short time. And every minute of it seems to weigh heavily over the table.

I swig some of the stale coffee, then wince at how bitter it is. Setting my mug down, I glance between the two of them. “All right. We need to discuss our next steps. But we need to do it nicely,” I add as Kian takes a breath and looks like he’s about to lay into Amora.

Amora doesn’t seem to notice. She picks off a corner of her Pop-Tart as she says, “We could leave the country. Take Frost and head to South America or something.”

“He’d find us,” Kian says gruffly.

None of us need clarification on who he means. Quinton has always kept close tabs on us, from the first moment he ever sent us on a quest to find a weak spot in the barrier between the shadow realm and earth. There isn’t a chance in hell he’d just let us travel south without sending reinforcements to bring us back.

Or kill us.

“Not to mention,” I add, “transporting Frost is going to pose a logistics problem.”

Kian nods, reaching for his mug. “He’ll have to be unconscious no matter what we choose to do.”

Amora looks agonized at the thought. “How many times can we knock him out before it has a negative effect on him? On his mind?”

Kian grunts. “Maybe there are some sedatives stashed away somewhere in the house.”

“Ibuprofen doesn’t even help us with a headache,” I point out. “Our metabolism isn’t going to let something like valium do its job. If that shit’s even around here.”

“Fair,” Kian says, his dark brows furrowed. “The alternative is physically knocking him out. But Amora’s right—that’s not a great option, and it risks hurting him even worse. The shadows are doing enough damage. He’s already fucked in the head. ”