“And what do you want? Why did Victor allow you in here?”
His head tilted, and he grinned. Fear sluiced through me anew as the sight of his teeth, each one pointed and as sharp as Victor’s canines.
Even werewolves had normal teeth when they weren’t in their animal forms.
What in Hecara’s name was he?
“Freshen up, and then we’ll begin.”
He pointed to the bathroom, and I got up and ran, closing the door quickly and locking it behind me, my heart racing.
The mirror was still gone, but I could only assume what a mess I must have looked like. I was still wearing the odd combination of clothes Ronan had gotten me from the hospital, and touching my hair revealed what a knotted mess it had become.
I wasn’t necessarily eager to wash up to look nice, especially for Victor and… whatever that man was, but if I was getting all the time I needed before having to see them again, I was going to take it.
After finally peeing, I took a long, hot shower, washing and deep conditioning my curls. Then I shaved everywhere—not that I wanted to be hairless, but the longer I was gone, the better—and used a pumice stone to scrub off every bit of dry skin I could find.
When I stepped out, I put on lotion, tweezed my eyebrows, and carefully dried my hair with the diffuser, a process that added nearly thirty minutes to the forty I’d already spent “refreshing” myself.
Once there was officially nothing else to do, I wrapped myself in a towel, taking a peek back into the bedroom. Finding it empty, I tiptoed out, steeling myself to wear another one of Victor’s stupid negligees, when surprisingly, I found a cotton robe waiting for me on the bed. It didn’t come with any undergarments, but at least it wasn’t see-through and came to my knees instead of halfway down my ass.
I put it on and then made my way to the living room, where the man was waiting alone with two steaming mugs of tea. He was simply sitting on the couch, hands folded on his lap, staring at the wall. When I was just a few feet away, he turned towards me, the sight of his sharp, predatory smile chilling me once more.
“Feel better?” he asked, without any hint of annoyance for all the time I’d taken.
“Um, yes.”
He patted the space beside him. “Join me. We have much to discuss.”
I swallowed nervously, snaking my way around and sitting a little farther away than he might have intended, and he tittered again.
“After everything you’ve been through, I can imagine it’s hard to trust others.”
My eyes darted towards the mugs. The scent was unfamiliar and sharp, but I realized then that it was the only thing I could smell, and I frowned as I looked back up. The man appeared to be a beta, but I really couldn’t get an accurate read on him without olfactory hints. Even his magical aura was off, unlike any Magik I’d ever met.
What exactly was he?
“And how would you know what I’ve been through?”
He took his mug and gestured for me to take mine, but I didn’t move.
Unfazed, he took a sip, sighing contentedly. “What do you know about the gods and mates?” he asked instead of answering me.
I drew back for a second, a little startled. “Excuse me?”
“Mates. Do you know why the gods assigned you mates?”
I clocked his use of “you,” but tucked it away for the time being as I considered his question. The origin of mates was more myth than anything, but had been briefly discussed in my health and wellness classes in high school, alongside the onset of periods, heats, ruts, and pubic hair.
“Finding a mate is rare,” my gym teacher had explained. “But it’s said meeting one brings about an instantaneous feeling of sexual urgency.”
He’d then demonstrated the correct way to put a condom on a banana.
“Legend says that when the gods created the Magiks in their images and founded cities for us to live in, our differences drove us inevitably to wars over the unclaimed land in between, with Magiks trying to assert their superiority, strength, and dominance over one another.”
He nodded and took another sip, so I continued.
“In order to help us relate to each other better, they each created classes within their own Magiks—alpha, beta, and omega. A witch and a merfolk might not get along at first, but it was thought they could find common ground over a shared designation.”
