Cursed Mate (Feral Shifters 3)

Amora

Felicity remainsin human form as she leads us through the blistering sunlight. I don’t blame her—I don’t like ruining my clothes if I don’t have to, either. Her wolves, however, remain on four legs and surround us… a little too closely. They pin us in, giving us no chance to run even if we had the inclination to do so.

But where would we run to? The landscape is beautiful here, rocky and slightly wooded, but we don’t know the terrain like they do. We’d have a hard time escaping and covering our tracks, especially with an entire pack breathing down our necks.

I walk hand in hand with Frost, while Malix brushes up against my other side. I’m still wary, still worrying over Frost’s safety, which, surrounded by a bunch of unfamiliar wolves, feels as tenuous as his link to sanity.

As if he can sense my thoughts, Malix brushes against me again and meets my gaze. He gives me a little half-smile that goes a long way toward easing my mind. On his other side, even Kian doesn’t appear to be overly worried—although it’s hard for me to get a handle on his actual emotions in this moment, since his expression is so stony.

Even though Felicity left our possible truce open-ended for now, none of my three men seem to be brooding on the situation. They’ve all known her for a long time, so it stands to reason that they can read her moods better than I can. That train of thought makes a new question pop into my head.

If Quinton was once almost like a surrogate father to the three of them, was his mate like a mother to them?

It never really occurred to me that coming here and seeing her might dredge up memories for them. All three of the guys lost their biological mothers to the damage Quinton did to them in his quest to create shadow shifters. When Felicity left, they lost her, too.

Although, as with most toxic relationships, Quinton probably did a great job of turning them against her.

“Hey, alpha,” Malix says, doing that thing where he breaks the silence because he can’t stand being quiet. “You still watch soap operas?”

Felicity’s chuckle carries back to us over her wolves. “Do you still piss sitting down?”

Kian chokes on a laugh that he tries to hide behind one hand, and even Frost cracks a smile. It’s such a beautiful sight that I almost stop in my tracks just to stare at it.

Thank god for Malix’s ridiculous need for humor and conversation.

“Low blow, alpha,” Malix says in a mock wounded voice. “I was eight then. Shit. You don’t know me.”

As he and Felicity continue to banter back and forth, relief fills me. We’re safe. For now, anyway. Frost has proven he’s not a danger, even though all three of us were ready to defend him to the death.

I tighten my fingers around Frost’s, thinking of that moment when Kian’s unspoken challenge hung in the air, while we waited for Felicity to decide on her next course of action. It could have gone another way—a very bloody way—and the four of us were braced for such an outcome.

We were firmly a team in that moment, I realize.

I was on their side one hundred percent, and I knew without a doubt they were on mine. At some point during our time together, I’ve become one of them. Honorary shadow shifter, fully a part of their little pack. The men who were once my sworn enemies are now men I’d die to protect.

Fucking hell. That’s a rabbit hole I could fall down.

I could spend hours getting lost in thoughts of what that means and trying to untangle how I feel about it. We had a bond, then it broke. I felt it break. But now it’s as if that bond has returned, or has been replaced by something else entirely.

And I don’t know what that means. I keep almost calling the men my mates—I did call Frost that, for lack of a better word when explaining things to Felicity. But are they? What are we to each other, besides inextricably wrapped up in each other’s lives? In each other’s hearts and minds.

Right now isn’t a great time for an existential crisis. Even with Malix cracking jokes with Felicity and Kian walking confidently by his side, we aren’t out of the woods yet. So I push all of my emotional turmoil and uncertainty aside before I can get too lost in my own head.

If Felicity is lying to us or planning to trick us, I want to be ready to fight back.

Don’t let your guard down, I remind myself. Don’t get too comfortable.

After about ten minutes on foot, we circle around a large, hilly rock formation and enter the Silver Crest pack village. The formations form a horseshoe shape around the small village, casting shadows and giving the pack a little more protection from the wind and sun than they would have otherwise had.

The place is quaint, a mish-mash of houses that remind me so much of my own pack back home in Montana that a niggling pang takes up root in my chest. They’re unassuming, a bit rustic and run-down, but well built. Corrugated metal roofs glint atop small cabins, while little sidewalks lead away from the dirt road to colorfully painted front doors. A few kids play in the yards, and adults pause on their porches to watch curiously as our group passes by.

Surprisingly, nobody looks too concerned to see four strangers marching through their town with the alpha.

Felicity leads us through, greeting members of her pack as she walks. She takes us down a main road until we leave behind the side-by-side homes, and then we cut right toward a long, low building built up against the edge of the rock formation. Narrow windows are cut into the facing wall, all of them open to the weather.

We step inside the building one by one, and I blink a few times as my eyes adjust. Several women sit at a long table just inside the space, bent over large bowls as they break green beans and shell peas. They spare us a glance but then return to their low conversation, ignoring us as we head for a door in the back next to a dark, quiet kitchen counter.

Most of Felicity’s wolves shift back to human form and remain behind in the cafeteria area, a couple of them peeling off into the kitchen toward a trio of industrial fridges. Cormac and two of the larger shifters follow us through the door into a modest office. Felicity’s three men take up positions around the room’s perimeter, while the three feral shifters and I crowd in front of her small desk.

She perches on the edge of her chair, and it squeaks beneath her as she leans down to open a drawer out of sight. As she silently shuffles around inside, I keep hold of Frost’s hand and meet Malix’s eyes with a raised brow.

I’m… uncomfortable here, in Felicity’s personal space. Probably because this is clearly her private office where she spends her time and does her work, so being here makes me feel like an invader, somehow. I don’t know how to stand, where to put my hands so I don’t look threatening, or how to remain loose and relaxed to show her I’m not a threat. My impulse is to remain on alert in case shit slides sideways, but that could be misconstrued as aggressive.

I don’t want to fuck this up. Not just because she’s capable of helping us against Quinton, but because she might be able to help Frost.

I’m the only one of my companions who’s overtly bothered by the situation. Kian, Malix, and even Frost all seem relaxed, watching Felicity with interest as she digs around in her desk. Only the top of her head is visible, a shock of streaked blonde hair peeking over the top of the desk. I can hear the telltale jangling of keys and locks tumbling, as if she’s opening several different lockboxes, one after another.

Finally, she emerges with a small black vessel that appears to be cut from some kind of natural ebony stone. She sets it on the surface of the desk and tosses a key ring aside before she settles back against her chair.

“Recognize it?” she asks Kian.

He nods once. “Yes, alpha.”