“Maybe a real-life, living being with flaws,” I suggest. Gods know, I have plenty.
I’m scared of storms, I talk back in the worst moments, and I always forget to clean my shower curtain up until it starts growing its own ecosystem, to list a few.
Griffith is flawed too.
He is controlling, insists on pretending he doesn’t like my dog, and had the audacity to make me fall for him and rethink my entire future.
Damn him.
Still, I find I don’t mind his shortcomings. Not when he has so much good to outweigh the annoying.
“Searching for perfection is the road to loneliness.” A feeling I know well.
I’ve been searching for my own version of perfection. A home that felt exactly right.
But that doesn’t exist. The closest is Folk Haven, which has flaws of its own, but I find I can live with them now for all the good that comes along with it.
Sev tilts his head my way, his eyes dark enough to seem like black holes I could get trapped in. I lean away, and he smiles with a wicked edge, though it soon fades into a forlorn, lost look.
“I know my mate will have flaws. But they will be perfect forme.” Sev throws back the rest of his drink and slams the glass down on a small table between us. “Their biggest flaw is that they are nothere.”
“How do your kind identify mates?”
It’s different for most mythics. I know wolves have a scent thing, sirens can sing to the ones they love without confusing them, and selkies tend to get rescued by their mates.
For mermaids, it’s all in the fangs.
“I am the only one of my kind in existence.” Sev straightens, as if he’s conveying proof of his superiority, but I swear I can hear a touch of bitterness in his voice.
A monster. Yeah, that’s hard to nail down. The mixture of two or more mythics breaks established rules. He might find mates like one of his bloodline or both.
Or neither.
Monsters might not have a mate at all.
“Maybe you should just focus on building a love connection with someone you find interesting. Fated mates are overrated.”
A truck speeds down the drive, coming to a screeching halt only a second before Griffith hurls himself out of the driver’s seat and toward me. In response, my canines lengthen, and I curl my lips over them to hide the reaction.
Sev scoffs, and from the corner of my eye, I see him roll his.
“Says the mermaid ready to fang her fated.”
If it were still the two of us, I’d get into a debate. Point out that whatever fang reaction I’m having, that’s not why I fell for Griffith. But the wolf in question is already out of his truck, across the yard, kneeling in front of me, his hands hovering, as if he wants to check me for injuries but worries about hurting me further.
This—this—is why I’m gone for him. Not because of some magical reaction pushed on me by the gods.
“Are you hurt?” Griffith asks. “What happened?”
I grimace. “The healing didn’t hold. When I was swimming, the wound reopened.” I part my borrowed robe enough to show the bloody silk beneath. “I washed up on Sev’s property.”
“And I, magnanimous soul that I am, rescued her.” Sev refilled his tumbler at some point and is sipping more whiskey.
“You made her sit outside,” Griffith snarls, “while she’s still wet.”
“I’m a hero.” Sev shrugs. “Not a saint.”
For some reason, I find the pompous monster funny. Probably the blood loss.
