He must’ve already been on the way out of the house, because he exits a moment later, throwing off worry. “What are you doing to Ronald?” he cries out.
I roll my eyes and huff. “This asshole attacked me. Control your husband, Hubert, or I will, and you won’t like how I do it,” I warn him, then point to the broken leg that Ron is still screaming about. “That leg is broken. Your husband is sick. Take him to the healer and figure out what’s wrong with him.”
Hubert gasps, pulling Ron’s anger out of the atmosphere and calming the man down. My uncle picks his husband up and carries him away, cooing at him about how worried he is. I’m also worried. Ron really should be a lot tougher than that, and there’s only a few sicknesses that can weaken a mare like that. One of them comes with a heaping dose of elevated energy, a lot like the murderous rage that took Ron over.
Shit.
I pull my phone out and scroll to the man my grandfather went to for advice when he needed help. The phone rings once, and I’m greeted with the voice of an old friend. “Gael, my dear boy. What did that old codger do to you?”
“Hello, Felix,” I sigh, sinking into the comfort he always provides.
Present Day
Phineas
“What do you mean when you say “my sacred place?” Gael asks as Sin finishes serving us both the food he’s made for us.
I’ve already shoved a huge bite into my mouth, and my sister snorts at me and answers the question. “Shifters sometimes have fated mates, which is what Phin says you both are to him. It’s hard to believe, because there’s no history of anyone having more than one fated mate that I’m aware of. Most of the time, we don’t have fated mates at all. Instead we all search for a home with a person who matches the energy of our spirits, which we call our sacred place. It’s how we cope with the loss of finding our fated mates. It used to be that every shifter could expect to find their fates, but in the last eight hundred years, it’s becoming increasingly rare, to the point that we gave up as a culture. Perhaps three or four couples per century find their fates, and I think Phin is the only person to find his fate in our generation. But it’s more likely to find your sacred place if your clan leader is willing to allow you to do that.”
“So, it’s like how humans marry for love,” Gael explains to Sin.
I finish my first lettuce wrap and explain a little more because my mates should know the situation I’ve come from. “Arden Mathan was my grandfather, and he took it upon himself to pair the people in our clan into breeding couples. My sister and her mate were arranged together by Arden. He tried to arrange a mate for me, but he can’t force us to mate, and I rejected the women he tried to couple me with.” I shrug, trying not to remember the consequences of those rejections.
My attempt goes unnoticed when my sister reaches out and squeezes my shoulder. “Our grandfather beat him often because of Phin’s inability to mate with a woman. I don’t think we understood that he wished to be the receptive mate until we saw his mate mark.”
I try not to be embarrassed by my needs, but I flush bright red when she lays it out like that.
Geal and Sin both immediately touch me, both of them possessive and comforting, and I breathe through the embarrassment.
“I don’t understand,” Sin says. “What does that bite mean to you?” he demands.
“It means you claimed him,” Felicity responds clearly. “It means that he’s submissive to you, that you are the one he will look to as his authority. It is the structure of the shifters that the claimant bites the claimed, and in the hierarchy of the clan, the claimant ranks one step higher than their claimed.”
Sin and Gael aren’t going to understand this the way she’s explaining it. “In the past, the claimant was the dominant partner. Shifters have always had social hierarchy, and the mate mark is what helped couples establish who was dominant. It always happened naturally, and couples didn’t usually need to worry too much about who would bite whom, because it would sort itself out in the moment.”
My sister growls in frustration, looking away from all of us to get her anger back under control.
I sigh and finish my explanation. “But since we were having fewer and fewer fated mates, Arden instituted a new rule that the receptive partner was the one to take the mate mark, which meant that in every heterosexual couple, the woman would take the mark. Non-het couples were very reluctant to mate at all because it meant defining their roles publicly, and maybe limiting their roles too. Vers people wouldn’t be allowed to be vers under Arden’s command. Our oaths forced obedience, so if a vers person mated and took the mark, they would never be allowed by Arden’s command to ever top again.”
“Instead of letting each couple work out their ranking on their own, Arden forced women to lower themselves below the mate that he arranged for us,” Felicity snaps, accidentally bending her fork in the heat of her frustration.
“Well, that’s over now, and I say that any mate mark forced on a person is null and void,” Gael announces.
The world completely shifts. Not physically. It’s the thing I was stuck on but couldn't articulate earlier. Gael just changed the rules of the clan because he is the new clan leader. It’s him.
“Oh,” my sister gasps, pulling her shirt aside and pressing her hand to the spot where her mate mark had scarred ages ago.
“It’s gone,” I whisper, amazed.
My sister touches the smooth skin, and a smile breaks out across her hardened features. She’s been so angry for so long, it’s a wonder to see her smile free from the burden of her misery. “You just freed us.” Her voice is full of the same awe I feel every time I’m in Gael’s company and I’m reminded that he’s my fated mate.
Gael’s smile is a promise of a lifetime of joy. “I’m so glad to hear that.”
Chapter 18
Present Day
Sin
