Filed to story: The Wolf Prince’s Fated Love
“I don’t know who you’re talking about, but Gael certainly wants nothing else to do with me.”
“Right, right. So we’re going full ignorance campaign? Got it. I’ll tell Bri.”
Leigh snorted, hiding her grin behind the rim of the water glass and taking another sip.
“There’s nothing ignorant about acknowledging a one-night stand for what it was.”
“So, the ginger ale? That was nothing?” I leaned back against the counter, crossing my arms over my chest.
“A concerned pack mate. He probably was worried I’d vomit on him at the rate I was going.”
“Right. I don’t have the most sexual experience of the three of us, as you well know-” Dirge growled at my side, but I nudged him with my knee to get him to shut up. “But even I know that one-night stands don’t bring you things when you’re sick, hover, and worry about your safety.”
“Okay, now you’re going full ignorance. The man despises me! Okay? Des-pi-ses. We shared a hot night between the sheets, and then the next morning, I-” She stopped midstream and slammed the water glass down so hard on the counter, I worried it would crack. “One can of soda doesn’t equal caring. Just… never mind. I need a shower and a bed. Stat.”
I watched in shock as Leigh stormed out of the kitchen, just as Brielle was coming in.
“Umm, everything okay in here?” Brielle asked, concern tilting her eyebrows down, making the little frown line appear between them.
“I have no idea. She’s really sensitive about the Gael topic.”
Bri popped her hip out and leaned against the island, mirroring my pose. “He’s standing guard on the porch. You never did fill me in on the details, but should we follow her first?”
I sighed and mindlessly tangled my fingertips in Dirge’s fur. He’d become my touchstone so quickly, it was scary.
But also right.
“I don’t really know the details. They spent the night together after your bonding ceremony. She was dancing with another pack mate, he got jealous, a fight turned into making out, and then they left. I woke up with her at my bedside after the whole…” I waved at my side, where the bullet wound had been. “She won’t talk about it, claims it was a one-time thing, and that he was good. That’s all she was willing to say. But I get the feeling something happened, good or bad, between them. I just can’t put my finger on it.”
I worried my bottom lip between my teeth, debating whether or not to take this moment alone to tell her the rest of my suspicions.
Brielle crossed her arms over her chest. “Out with it, Shay.” She used her best doctor voice on me, and then, more softly, “This might be our only chance to talk for a while.”
I blew out a hesitant breath.
“She can’t be pregnant, right? From a fling with someone who’s not her mate?”
Brielle’s eyebrows nearly flew off her face, they jumped up so quickly.
“I’m sorry, why would we think that, exactly?”
I shrugged, already regretting mentioning it. “I don’t know, just little things. She had a fever the night of your bonding ceremony. By the time I came to, she seemed perfectly fine. But if you’d seen her on that dance floor… she wasn’t herself. And then she went off and had a one-night stand with Gael, who she usually can’t stand. Not like her at all. She’s a serial monogamist, and you know as well as I do that even briefly messing with two guys on the dance floor is weird for her.”
Brielle sighed and rubbed her forehead a few times before shrugging.
“I mean, anything is possible. But based on my studies, it’s far more likely that she went through a false heat. You can think of it almost like a practice heat. All the emotional”-she used her hands to make a roller-coaster motion-“with none of the results. True heats don’t start until you’re closer to a hundred, a hundred fifty if you haven’t found your fated mate. We’re a long-lived species, and while we reach maturity relatively quickly like humans, we lack the rush to procreate before our fertility dries up.”
Relief washed over me. “Okay, that makes a lot of sense. I won’t bring it up to her again, since it’s upsetting. And, honestly, for the best. Whatever is between them, if she doesn’t want it to continue, I don’t want it for her.”
Brielle smiled at that, then cast a worried glance over my shoulder toward the front door. “How long do we say it takes for him to appease Alpha Caesar’s feelings before I worry they’ve been kidnapped or drugged?”
I chuckled, then crossed the space between us to give her a quick hug. “Longer than the fifteen minutes it’s been. Kane’s a big deal now, so he’s going to have to have long, boring political conversations. Kiss babies, shake hands. That sort of thing.”
She laughed, some of the tension leaving her. “That’s true, very true.” But she stared down at her shoes, not looking back at me.
“Is that all that’s worrying you? You’re not having more symptoms, are you?”
Her head whipped up. “No, no! Please don’t worry about that. I’ve been much better since Kane and I completed our bonding and the, umm, physical relationship also seems to keep the worst of it at bay.”
Now it was my turn to be surprised. Mate bonds were a powerful thing-the most powerful thing in the shifter world, really-but his touch curing a witch’s curse, even temporarily, was next level. “That’s kind of cool. But… if it’s not that…?”
She sighed. “I keep racking my brain for why my family would have a witch curse. It would explain why no medical treatments-or the endless tests I’ve been running for years-ever turned up results. It’s just that nobody before my mom ever died young or of a sickness. And thinking back, my parents were so accepting of it all. Now that I feel the terror of it hanging over my own shoulder, knowing if I don’t fix it, I will for sure die and take Kane with me… It doesn’t make sense. None of it makes sense. And I wish I could go back and shake them, make them try harder to stop it, but they’re not here, and, and?-“
“You didn’t know then what you know now?” I offered, feeling her frustration.
“Yeah, exactly. It’s too little, too late.”
“It’s not too late for you, though. That’s the most important thing. If your parents were resigned, well, that is weird. But it’s possible they thought it was truly just a freak illness.” I shrugged, unable to think of any other reason they wouldn’t have hunted up an answer. “Besides, witches aren’t so common that they would have suspected a curse.”
Brielle’s head snapped up, her eyes widening. “Holy shit.”
“What is it?” I stood straighter, my wolf pushing close to the surface at her sudden shift in mood. She considered Bri under our protection and had since the first time she admitted to me that she couldn’t hold a shift herself.
“My mom’s best friend was a witch. I don’t really know what kind or if she was in a coven… Honestly, I hadn’t thought of her in forever. Karissma lived far away, but she was shipping my mom potions, trying to prolong her life there at the end.”
“You think her friend cursed her?” Horror filled me at the thought.
“No, of course not. Karissma was a real hard-ass, but she loved my mom. Mom used to say she was the closest she had to a sister, and I grew up calling her Aunt Kari. But, if Karissma was treating her, maybe she knew what kind of curse it was, and how it got there.”
“That would be huge, Bri. Where does she live?”
“Well, she was always moving, when I was a kid. She’d blow into town a time or two every year, but then she was off again. We lost touch after my parents died. I pushed her away the first time she tried to visit after that.”