Page 19 of Remington’s Mate

Brandon said, “Keep your eyes open—and treat that woman like gold. If we get Jace Monroe’s daughter hurt or killed, we’re fucking toast.”

That was no lie, Remy thought as he ended the call. You didn’t fuck with an alpha wolf’s family and live to tell about it, no matter how much he owed your parents.

There were close ties between the Silverlake pack and the Bad Blood Crew going way back—in fact, there was blood debt on both sides. Before the Bad Bloods were even a crew, the Silverlake Negotiator, Jesse Travis, had liberated Flynn and the rest from a shifter trafficking ring.

Later on, the Bad Bloods had risked their own lives to save Travis and some of Jace Monroe’s closest friends from being assassinated by the old Nashville wolf pack.

After that, Travis had negotiated the purchase of the Bad Blood territory and the seed money for their crew as restitution from Nashville.

All the Bad Blood kids had grown up visiting back and forth with the Silverlake wolves. They still did—although Remy didn’t remember seeing Jaeda for the last few years, if not longer.

She’d said she was ‘hiding.’ From what? Or who? And what were the odds of them running into each other on this case?

Thinking about it gave Remy chills up his arms.

Maybe it’s fate, said his leopard.

He hoped not. Fate sucks, he answered.

The girl smells delicious, his leopard said. I would let her pet me, if she wanted.

Well, yeah. Who wouldn’t? All those curves.

I wouldn’t, his owl said, making the noise he made just before he hacked up a pellet of mouse bones and fur.

This was one time that Remy disagreed with the owl. But he was right about one thing: screwing around with the mostly-defenseless, non-shifter daughter of one of the Bad Blood Crew’s most valuable allies?

There wasn’t enough fate in the world to make that anything but a huge fucking mistake.

To stop thinking about Jaeda, Remy found himself pulling the talisman out of his pocket. Not to use it. Just feeling it in his hand made him feel calmer, less antsy. Like his animals were somehow less likely to go out of control.

He flipped the coin over and over, watching it glitter in the sun coming in the window. It landed crown side up in his palm every time. It was weird like that. Sometimes it was all crowns, sometimes all dragons. Sometimes it exactly alternated between the two, or repeated other patterns.

The one thing it didn’t do was conform to the law of averages.

Fate.

Shit.

Remy caught the talisman one more time and closed his hand around it. Who the hell controlled fate, anyway? Who decided who got true mates, and who didn’t? And when?

Nobody knew.

The coin grew warm in his hand. He could feel the spirit world pulling at him, the real world dissolving around the edges. He knew he should resist, but he didn’t.

This time Remy was already inside his leopard’s skin. He tried to Change, or to step out of the leopard into his human form, but he couldn’t.

They were on the hunt for the she-leopard. They could scent her, but she smelled strange.

He’d asked his leopard once if he visited the she-leopard when Remy wasn’t there, and he’d said, I can only find her when you are here.

Which made no sense.

When they reached the she-leopard, he knew why her scent was strange. She was in the form of a wolf, sitting at the edge of the forest watching a wolf pack play on a hillside. Her coat was a light, light gray, like mist, with no dark markings.

When he reached her, he sat down next to her, watching the wolves. She felt sad and wistful, like she did when he told her about the human world.

Finally he said, We could go play with them.