High-fucking-five, Fates. Ten outta ten, you glorious forces of nature. Thrilled to find out I’m clearly your favorite.
I slip my hand in his. “Kiara.”
His fingers flex against my hand for a beat before he reluctantly lets go. “I need to finish dealing with that mess, if there’s even anything left of the man when Arson’s done playing with him.”
“You two are friends, then?” Makes sense. Arson’s a psychotic shadow demon madly in love with my best friend, and like attracts like. What little I know about Vic, he’s a killer for hire and can mist between locations in a similar fashion. Of course they run in the same circles.
“He’s my son.”
My heart skips a beat. Last thing I expected was for my mate to already have a kid, but hey, life happens. Most people don’t wait around for the long shot of finding their fated mates. I never really imagined having kids after what happened to my parents and seeing the burden it put on my brother to raise me, but Arson’s fully grown. At this point, I just need to worry about birthday presents and bail money.
“Well, you did a great job raising him, he’s delightfully unhinged in all the best ways. Poor Ever, though; I’m going to make a million step-mom jokes.” I snort, realizing, “I’m pretty sure I’m younger than her, too. Oh, this is going to be so much fun.”
Vic goes rigid, paling a bit, but before I can ask why, he says, “I’ll be back shortly.” Silver mist wraps him in a shroud, and when it clears seconds later, there’s no sign of him.
Poor guy. I can only imagine how stressful raisingthatloose cannon was. I know Arson can handle himself, but I don’t blame him for worrying about his son when Ever’s ex is clearly off the rails, and not in the fun way.
While I wait, I may as well check out my new home. Sure, we haven’t had the official conversation to hash that stuff out yet, but it’s not like we can move into my nonexistent place-
“Oh god.” I freeze as it hits me. He has a son; what if he’s still with Arson’s mom? Does he have bondmates? Is some poor woman going to come home and find me in her mate’s bedroom?
No wonder he looked like he saw a ghost. Reality caught up with him.
Panicking now, I search the room for any clues. It’d still break my heart, but at least I could prepare myself a little before Vic returns to let me down gently. As I snoop, I try to talk myself off the ledge. “He brought me home. He said nobody but the three of us have ever stepped foot in this room. That means something.”
Whether it means he’s single or a cheating bastard, only time will tell.
The walls are mottled grey stones, like something out of a castle, but that’s where the similarities end. No fireplace, no windows. The only way in or out is a heavy door made of dark wood and iron, with a metal bar barricading it from the inside. The bed is queen sized, so that’s a good sign at least; it’s not a pack bedroom. I know some bondgroups have individual rooms and their center rotates between them, so it isn't a surefire stamp of approval, but it’s promising. The only picture in the room is sitting on top of a matching, dark wooden dresser, and it’s of him and a child-sized Arson. A bookshelf loaded with a wide variety of genres, but I’m not surprised to see several having to do with plants, alchemy, and rare creatures.
I’ve read a few of them, and while mine was for studying how totreatpoisonings and obscure health issues, it also describes the effects and signs of different venoms and accidental ingestion of poisonous plants. If you wanted to kill someone and make it look like an accident, they have all the information you need to pull it off, and while Havoc looks like the kind of man that doesn’t mind getting his hands dirty, if you’re a killer forhire, I imagine sometimes a client wants discretion taking out a target.
The bottom shelf, though, makes me grin.What to Expect: the Toddler Years, A Mother’s Guide to Mystic Menaces: How to Ground a Supernatural Child with More Power than Patience, Shadow Demons and How to Survive Them.If nothing else, Havoc Knight is the kind of man that doesn’t run when things get hard, and that says a lot about his character.
The attached bathroom only has one bottle of 3-in-1 bodywash/shampoo/conditioner in it, and if that isn’t proof that only a man showers in there, I don’t know what is. The single toothbrush on the sink seals the deal, and I walk back into his bedroom feeling like a huge weight has been lifted off my shoulders. No mate.
Well, besides me.
Hope gradually returns and I start letting myself picture it; a life with Havoc by my side. He mentioned ‘his men,’ so he’s not a bounty hunter like I originally thought, but has other people under his command. Assassins, maybe? Would also explain why he’s so adamant about none of them stepping foot in his room; it’s got to be hard to let your guard down enough to sleep in his line of work.
I raise an eyebrow and glance up at the ceiling, even though I doubt the Fates listen to the ramblings of mortals. “Real hilarious. An assassin and a healer? You did that on purpose just for shits and giggles, didn’t you?”
Obviously I don’t get a reply, but I learned a long time ago that the world feels a little less lonely when you pretend that there’s some force out there watching over you, even if it’s only to get off on our suffering.
Whatever. I’m sure not every job goes off without a hitch, so my abilities will come in handy eventually, defective as they may be. Let’s just hope his men are good at what they do.
A silver mist in my periphery has me whirling around right as Havoc reappears, and I discreetly wipe my sweaty palms on my leggings. He scans me from head to toe and lets out a soft, relieved exhale, almost as if he expected something terrible to happen to me in the ten minutes he’s been gone. My stomach flutters; a girl could get addicted to that kind of attention.
“Welcome home.” I suddenly remember and jolt. “Oh, crap, I dropped my bag before you brought me here. Can we run back and get it real quick before we figure out where we go from here?”
His jaw tics. “No.”
I pause, caught off guard by his sudden abruptness. “Umm, any particular reason? I hate to say it, but it’s literally everything I have to my name. If you need to rest for a while first, no judgement, not much we can do about that. Maybe Ever will think to grab it and we can get it from her lat-”
“You don’t need your bag because you can’t stay here.”
Hurt spears my chest. “What do you mean? Why not?”Did I read the situation completely wrong? Maybe hedoesalready have a mate?“I’m not crazy, right? You saw that mark appear on your wrist, same as I did. We’re fated mate-”
“Not so loud,” he hisses, glancing over his shoulder to the door to his room, and my heart plummets to my stomach.
