“Are fated mates a thing for shifters?”
He gives me a sly look before smiling, leaning an elbow on the table and resting his chin on his fist. “Depends on who you ask. Since we tend to only turn our mates, the sire bond sure makes it feel that way.”
“But that isn’t in place until you turn them,” I argue, and his grin only grows.
“You’re right. But there’s got to be a reason with our aversion to humans that we’re still drawn to them enough to risk trying to manage relationships. We only turn them when we’re sure, but it isn’t like female shifters are rare, and the thought of venturing into a city will make anyone cringe. Yet still, we end up braving them and meeting the loves of our lives, knowing that trying to turn them might result in their death, but taking a leap of faith anyway, and it almost always works out. You ask me, there has to be a reason, like instinctually we can sense the change will take. It’d just be ten times easier if we could tell by their scent that they were destined to be our mate and leave no room for doubt on the topic to sway the nonbelievers.”
Licking my lips, I take my shot before sliding the glass across the table, the room starting to sway around me. “Take turns asking me some stuff, I need a break before I end up getting blackout drunk.”
They exchange a devilish grin before all slamming back a shot in tandem. Stryker takes the lead, steepling his fingers in front of him like a low-grade villain. “Favorite color.”
“Purple.” His responding, self-satisfied smirk has me rolling my eyes.
Bane rests his back against the foot of the recliner behind him. “City you were living in before we so valiantly came to your rescue?”
“Kingstyn.” My gaze automatically swivels towards Mason since they’re going around the circle.
He taps a finger to his lips, deliberating. “What did you want to be when you grew up?”
Tongue in cheek, knowing they’re going to laugh at me, I contemplate taking a drink so that I can pass. “The next tooth fairy. Took me until about thirteen to accept that it wouldn’t happen.”
He snorts. “And then?”
Shifting position as my leg starts to fall asleep, I’m unable to hide my smile and start laughing at the irony. “Zookeeper. Ended up on the wrong side of the cage, though, as it turns out.”
Chuckles surround me as I turn to Bane. “What do you guys do? Somebody’s got to pay the bills around here.”
Bane cracks his neck. “Super uninteresting, but we pretty much rely on the stock market and investments. I sunk most of my inheritance into it and float off of a combination of monthly stipends to cover the bills and pick up random odd jobs for extras so that we don’t pull out too much unnecessarily.”
“Parents?”
He gives me a sad shrug. “I don’t even remember them.” Pursing his lips, he reluctantly adds, “Car crash when I was a toddler. Grandfather raised me, and he passed away a few years back.”
My stomach twists with his declaration, the words not sitting right, likely because they hit too close to home and yet he’s so nonchalant about it. “I’m sorry.”
He waves it off like it’s no big deal. “Don’t be. What about you? Parents or siblings? Because we can work on figuring out your miraculous escape from your abductor so you don’t need to fake your death. Probably should anyway, if only to make things easier so you can keep your driver’s license, credit cards, and all of that headache.”
Folding my arms on the table, I rest my chin on top of them, riding a heavy buzz. “Only child, and left home about six months before my eighteenth birthday. Lived in my car until I was old enough someone would rent to me. Fast forward a few years, met Blake, moved in way sooner than I should’ve, and now here we are.”
Stryker takes a swig straight out of the bottle. “Why’d you leave home early?”
Holding his gaze, I steal Bane’s shot and take it despite already being well into ‘hellacious hangover’ territory. My head might threaten to split in half when I wake up in the morning, but this is one story I’m not prepared to dive into yet; too much baggage to unpack in a single night when the entire point of this was trying to ignore the hard things for a little while.
His eyes harden, but he doesn’t push the subject, remaining silent.
“Why isn’t there a door to your room?”
Lifting the bottle to his lips, he takes a huge swig without so much as flinching. Sitting up, I press the tip of my tongue into my incisor, conceding. “Fair.”
Reclining, I rest the back of my head on the edge of the couch cushion. The ceiling fan sends a wave of nausea through me and I clamp my eyes shut tight, waiting for the room to stop spinning. It doesn’t take long before I start to drift off, struggling to stay awake. I can’t bring myself to get up though, too drunk and choosing to pretend that I’m comfortable on whatever surface is the closest simply so I don’t have to move.
“Come on, let’s get you to bed.” Stryker slides a hand under my legs, the other wrapping around my back as he lifts me up off of the ground.
With a groan, I shamelessly press my cheek against the cool skin of his collar. “I hope you have a gallon of water and some pain killers handy for breakfast.”
My stomach roils as he climbs the stairs. “Shifter healing has its perks; you’ll sleep off the worst of it.”
Traces of pine and rain surround me as I sink into Bane’s bed, soothing some of my nausea as I roll onto my side, burying my face in his pillow. As Stryker’s footsteps start to grow faint, I try to catch him before he leaves.
