Chapter Three
Abi should have just gone into the club after biting Colin. He’d haunted the place for months before he’d met Colin there for the first time. Its familiarity was comforting in some ways. And he needed to drown his emotions. He needed moonshine. In particular, he wanted the good stuff. The stuff made for shifters. The kind that came from the mountains and wasn’t legal. He could marinate in it until he stopped thinking about Colin and all the others who came and went before him.
There was only one place in the city to get moonshine like that. Randy’s bar was a dive on the edge of the south side. There was usually a good mix of seedy characters and the blue-collar workers who liked the drink enough to risk getting mugged or worse. If memory served, the stuff tasted as if its main purpose was to clean the bacteria out of an open wound and maybe take the rust off metal.
I’ll be home soon.After he sent the thought into the ether for Peter to find, he put up a wall, shutting him out.
He’d never had an internal connection with any of the guys who claimed fated mate status. His body never reacted to them either. Not that he knew how a skinwalker was supposed to react. He’d never met another like himself. His parents, if he even had any, had left him at ahospital shortly after birth. Either not reacting made him defective, or it was a sign they weren’t his mate at all. Not that he’d ever find out.
Never again. It didn’t matter what pretty face came at him with fangs and funky eyes. He would not, under any circumstances, ever fall for another guy again.
He’d stopped letting his mates bite him after the first few guys left marks that never scarred. They disappeared as any wound would as soon as he shifted. That should have bought him a clue all by itself that something hadn’t been right.
He wouldn’t have ever gotten that far with Colin, thank the gods.
Everybody he came into contact with believed they’d found their mate upon meeting him. Peter had been the only one who hadn’t. Even some of the family had thought so. All it took was time for the feeling to wear off. Two weeks was the maximum time any of them had lasted. Two. Damn. Weeks.
How pathetic was that?
Colin had stopped feeling the mating pull about the time all the others had. He’d stuck around the longest. The cheating bastard could have had a conversation with Abi, broken things off properly before fucking around with someone else.
Abi could feel Peter trying to scale the wall. He was like a little worm trying to find the smallest crack in Abi’s armor. As soon as he did, he’d break through the barrier and give Abi a piece of his mind.
He meant well. He cared. He was the only father Abi had ever had. He was a constant presence in Abi’s life. No abandonment issues withPeter or the rest of the family. He had someone who loved and cared for him. Abi was part of something bigger than himself. That it was a family of misfit paranormals meant Abi fit right in. He helped make the wheel go round, which was all he’d ever wanted.
Abi sighed and let the guilt eat at him for shutting Peter out. He was still on the fence about whether he wanted to tell Peter where he was.
He parked his car in the back of the lot, away from the bikes lined up on the street in front of the bar. He avoided street parking because he hated parallel parking. Living in the city his whole life left him good at it, at least. It didn’t mean it didn’t give him a panic attack every time he had to do it. And he didn’t want to give the people who lived in this neighborhood the wrong impression. They were just jaded enough to think the Sylvain Mafia being in their neighborhood meant something bad was about to go down. He didn’t want to cause them undue stress when all Abi wanted was to pickle himself in alcohol for a few hours. Hell, if he drank fast enough, it wouldn’t even take that long.
Abi sighed and rested his head on the steering wheel, closing his eyes. He let the wall crumble.I’m at Randy’s Bar, on the corner of Lorren and Fifth. Send a car over in two hours.
Peter wasn’t happy. Abi could sense his frustration. He was worried. That he didn’t respond meant either Peter or someone else in the family would come and get him. The only thing slowing them down was Randy’s Bar being all the way across town. Traffic wouldn’t be much of a problem because of the lateness of the hour. It would still take a good thirty minutes to get there, which was all the time Peter would give Abi.
He should probably just go home. There was alcohol there. He could drink himself into a stupor in the library, but something about that seemed more pathetic. Drinking alone in a quiet room seemed more pathetic than drinking alone on a barstool. The bartender would be there. So not alone. Just lonely.
Come home. Now.
Abi rolled his eyes.I’m already here.
Abi was going inside. He was going to order the strongest shifter shine they sold, and he was going to let it give him a buzz. It wouldn’t take much. One or two drinks and he was close enough to where he wanted to be to satisfy his desire to forget. After which he’d go home. He let Peter into his thoughts.Drunk. Then home. In that order.
Abi got out of his car, pocketing his keys before entering the building through the back door.
He entered a long hall. The walls were black with concrete floors, sticky with spilled alcohol and the gods knew what else. A man in a leather vest came out of what Abi assumed was the bathroom. He had long, stringy hair covering half his face. When he glanced at Abi, his eyes were canine, and he had fangs.
“Mate,” he growled and stalked toward Abi.
His scent suppressant must have worn off. “You are incorrect, sir.”
When the wolf shifter grew close enough, he grabbed Abi without asking, which was his second mistake.
He’d grown used to other paranormals sniffing him right before they made a claim. He rolled his eyes.
Abi kneed the guy. Not as hard as he could have, but it was hard enough to get the wolf to back off.
The shifter cupped his balls and fell to the sticky floor.
Abi bent down, smirking at him. “No one touches me without asking.”
