Total pages in book: 192
Estimated words: 192810 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 964(@200wpm)___ 771(@250wpm)___ 643(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 192810 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 964(@200wpm)___ 771(@250wpm)___ 643(@300wpm)
“My parents. They didn’t even wait a day after learning we were mates before they reached out to try to get…whatever it is they think they’ll get. Thirteen years, I haven’t seen or heard from them. But they didn’t reach out to me. They contacted the Palace.”
“Are we surprised they’re giving indications of what we already know, they’re pieces of shit?” he asked, watching me carefully.
“No,” I huffed and then collapsed against him again. “It’s just sucky.”
“They’re suspects, Laura.”
My head shot up again. “What?”
“In whatever is going on with someone trying to harm you. It’s another reason I’m granting them an audience.”
“You think they’re behind drugging me?” Dear Lilith! It wasn’t just that. “And attacking me?”
“No. They aren’t high up on the suspect list. I’ve had a briefing on them as well. A detailed one. They both make decent money, but they aren’t in a position to hire goons to attack you. And the male we have in custody isn’t talking. But what we do know is, he’s not some average street tough. He’s a skilled mercenary. And they cost money.”
Holy Hecate.
“Really?” I asked.
“Yes,” he answered. “I’m simply telling you because you should know they’re being investigated.”
“What else should I know?”
He pulled me closer and sighed.
I felt that with him.
Our cozy night in, sex-fest and cuddle time was over.
Back to the real world.
“The investigators are operating on two theories. That one. The one where your parents dislike your creature so much, are embarrassed by her or whatever their fucked-up mindset about that is, they put a hit out on her. The reason that seems unlikely is, first, it’s thin because it’s deranged. They’re pieces of shit but have given no indication they’re twisted, homicidal pieces of shit. Also, the time that’s passed with no contact between you since you left their home. If this bothered them that much, it would be expected they’d do something in the last thirteen years. And last, it doesn’t explain why they shifted targets and aimed at me.”
“No, it doesn’t,” I agreed. “What’s the other theory?”
“That someone took pains to discover you were my mate. And they targeted you first, in order to dispose of her, so we would be less likely to find one another.”
Oh boy.
I couldn’t say I knew a whole bunch about this mate business, not ever having one before, and not having parents who explained it to me.
That said, it was exceptionally rare a shifter would lose their beast without losing their lives as well, as in, the human side died, and when that happened, the shifter died with them.
A shifter’s beast was always something strong, cunning, wily or swift. They healed quickly when wounded. And their senses were heightened. So heightened, they normally heightened the human side as well when they were dormant. Thus, they were hard to kill (why the scientists hypothesized we’d advanced from humans to shifters, because they’d appear to protect us when we were in danger). There were some who were weaker than others (like mine), and some were nearly impossible to kill (like Aleksei’s).
But they had evolved to keep their human alive by fighting, outwitting or escaping to stay alive.
On the other hand, part of the protection of a beast was that, if they died, the human part of them didn’t. In other words, if you killed a creature, in order to kill the being it inhabited, you then had to kill that being. As such, once a beast was dead, it would immediately transform back to its being.
However, again, this was very rare.
Therefore, I didn’t know what might happen when one ran across their mate without their beast alive within them. They didn’t write that scenario in romance novels.
Mates were mates, the human part of us, and the creature. But clearly, the creatures called to each other, like mine did, even being roused from a drugged state to do it.
I didn’t know what would have happened if I didn’t have her.
But I sensed I might have missed it altogether, since, when she went back to her unconscious state, I did just that.
“Is that possible?” I asked about identifying someone’s mate before they knew of their mate.
He nodded. “Yes. There are witches who have the power to pinpoint a being’s fate. They cost a good deal of money. There aren’t many of them, but they exist.”
“Okay. But why would someone do that?”
“Well, if that someone was Anna, she’d have the means and the motive to make certain I didn’t find the being who was meant to be mine since she considers me hers.”
“Oh my gods,” I breathed.
“However, their switching targets to me does not seem like something Anna would wish. That said, she was not happy I broke things off with her, so it’s highly doubtful, but it isn’t entirely out of the realm of possibility.”