Quinn didn't hesitate or question me. He followed along like a puppy. The dopey, sweet smile still lingered on his face. I wrenched myself away so I wouldn't look at it anymore.
Speaking of puppies, I still didn't know what Quinn shifted into. Right when I was about to ask, Quinn spoke up.
"Hey, so... I know it's rude of me to not match the form you're in, but this heat is killing me, and this way I can sweat it off," Quinn said sheepishly. "I don't mind shifting if you want me to, though."
I was so used to alphas at the Society being in human form while we omegas were stuck in finch form that I'd forgotten it was considered rude by the rest of shifter culture.
"I don't care," I said. "Do whatever you want."
"Okay. If you say so."
He grunted as he hauled himself up the steep incline. Sweat slicked the hair on his forehead, turning it damp. I noticed his eyelashes were as dark as his eyes, and quite long. He wasn't like the alphas at the Society who loved nothing more than showing off their muscles and flaunting their overt masculinity. Quinn was different. He had an almost androgynous look to him, which I found oddly appealing.
What? No. Nothing about an alpha is appealing.
"So, what is your animal form?" I asked to distract myself from these ridiculous thoughts.
Quinn hesitated, then said, "I'm a fox."
That explained the gorgeous red hair and lean muscles.
"Okay," I said.
He gave me a self-deprecating smirk. "Aren't you afraid I'm going to eat you?"
I knew he was joking since that was taboo among shifters, but beyond that, I noticed a hint of sadness in his tone.
"No," I said.
I did know plenty of brainwashed omegas whodidthink that, like Emory, but I wasn't about to tell that to Quinn. He didn't need all the details of my past. It was better to keep things simple. The less he knew about me, the better. But that didn't mean I wasn't allowed to be curious about him.
"You sound upset about being a fox shifter," I remarked.
"It's not that. I love being a fox." He let out a breathy little laugh. "Do you want to know the reason I'm trying to find Mistral? You'll think it's silly."
"Tell me."
Quinn looked at me like he was trying to gauge my reaction. Eventually, he averted his gaze and said, "My alpha father – well, I mean the one who didn't give birth to me–" He sighed. "Okay, it's kind of a long story and I'm not explaining it well, but one of my parents is a fox shifter. The other one is a raven shifter."
That surprised me. I didn't know such pairings existed. I thought shifters tended to choose mates of their own kind. With this new knowledge, I looked Quinn over again. Suddenly the darkness of his eyes glimmered in a different light. No wonder they reminded me of my own. Finches and ravens both had the same dark depths in their eyes.
"That's an interesting combination," I said. "Although I guess you must get that a lot."
He grinned. "Not really, considering my whole family's made up of mixed species shifter couples."
Did he mean his extended family or was he in a partnership already? And if it was the latter, why the hell did I care? It was none of my fucking business.
I saw a question poised on the tip of Quinn's tongue. I knew he was getting ready to ask me about my family. Not gonna happen. My plan was to limit the sharing of my own personal information as much as possible. An alpha I barely knew had no right to know about my life.
Before he could ask, I cut him off. "Do you have a large family?"
"You could say that. I've got seven cousins and I share a big communal cabin with six of them. The seventh one used to live with us too until he went and found his fated mate, had a kid and moved out to their own place."
A fated mate? What a hot load of crap. Fated mates were as likely to exist as the vampires in that alpha guard’s stupid book. I might've wanted to believe it when I was young and naive, but being that stupid never did me any good. After Santino ruined my life, I learned the hard way not to believe in shit that sounded too good to be true.
I didn't let the disbelief show on my face. "I see," I said. "By the way, you never finished telling me why you're going on this journey."
“Oh, right." Quinn craned his neck, staring up at the sky. "I don't mind if you laugh, because I'm going to make it happen."
