“Kai Seathorne, the crown prince of the merpeople, is her mate?”
I blinked in surprise. It wasn’t common knowledge who Kai was, so I had no clue how the bear had found out. He must have contacts I was unaware of.Interesting.
“This means she has a bond with the most powerful males of all four species.”
“Yep, and if the vampires were still around, there would likely be a fifth mate too, which means something bigger is at play here. Fate has brought us all together for a reason. I’m not sure why, but I think we need to put our differences aside and look at the bigger picture.”
Although I usually preferred to work alone, something told me the increase in demon activity was linked to the witch. I’d killed another demon last night, which made four demon sightings within a few miles of campus in the last week alone.
If the demons were after the witch and given all the demon sightings only began when she arrived on campus, I suspected they were, she was in danger.
“We need to talk about demons,” I told the bear once he’d finished having a meltdown about the merman being the witch’s fourth mate. Honestly, I wasn’t sure why he had an issue with sharing the witch, but he better get over it real quick. Jealousy wasn’t an attractive trait in a male.
Caring is sharing was my motto.
The bear shifter groaned. “Fuck. I need a drink before we talk about shit like that.”
“Got any moonshine?”
He nodded, and I grinned.
“Lead the way, care bear!”
“If you fucking call me care bear again, I will rip your fucking head off, mate or no mate.”
“Try it, care bear. I dare you,” I taunted. It was now obvious to me that sharing a mate with an angry bear might be more entertaining than I’d first realized. The shifter had anger management issues, which made him exceptionally easy to antagonize.
Fun times lay ahead. Fun formeanyway.
I snickered to myself as I followed the bear through the dense, dark forest.
The poor fuck had no clue what sharing a mate with an incubus entailed. And he was about to find out the hard way.
36
Raven
The minute Zane left, I tore open the envelope he’d dropped on my bed. Inside, I found a single sheet of cream paper covered in Willow’s familiar scrawl. The paper even smelled of her: jasmine and violets.
For a moment, I closed my eyes and let the memories wash over me. Shelling peas in the large farmhouse kitchen while Willow sang along to the radio. Reading books together, and when I was older, watching stolen DVDs when Adam disappeared on his trips away from the farm.
Willow had been like an older sister to me. She guided me through my first period, gave me the sex talk when I turned fifteen, and was there for me when I needed a shoulder to cry on.
It still hurt that the security mage had stolen me away from the market without giving me a chance to say goodbye.
And because of the wards in place here, it was impossible to contact the outside world without permission from the admin office.
I’d tried asking for permission a few days after arriving, but the witch in the admin office sent my form back with a big fat ‘declined’ stamped across it in red ink.
Glynda had told me later nobody could contact their families for the first semester. It was supposed to encourage us to settle in more easily. I called bullshit on that, but she’d shrugged and said I would get the chance to see my family at winter solstice.
Since Kenji hadn’t come back, I crawled under covers and scanned the letter.
Willow said she missed me and hoped I was well, followed by general gossip about the witches we lived with. Nothing about Adam, and nothing at all personal. She signed off by saying she looked forward to seeing me in December.
I frowned. Why bother writing to me if there was nothing worth saying?
She must have known I’d be dying for proper news. The brevity and impersonal nature of the letter made no sense. Willow was an emotional witch. She cried when reading sappy books. A robot could have written this letter.
