I breathe deep and let the scent of lavender and sandalwood calm me.
“I don’t want to be here anymore.” My heart tugs. No shifter wants to be alone. It’s not how we’re made. Still, it’s the truth. This place is tainted.
I can’t go back to the commons. I can’t look Haisley and her mother in the eye. Act like shame isn’t corroding me from the inside out. It doesn’t matter that Haisley’s mean and stuck up—she’s pack. I didn’t have the right to go after her. Not when she didn’t know she was touching another female’s mate.
And I guess, she wasn’t. Now.
Abertha sets a steaming cup of tea and a big bottle of sports drink in front of me. “Hydrate while your tea cools.”
Then, she shuffles back to the kitchen and comes back with a plate of muffins, placing them between us and easing herself into a chair. “You don’t have a choice. This is home.”
“I could ask for a trade.”
Abertha doesn’t bother to reply. She knows that’s a non-starter. No pack would trade an unmated female for me, not with my bum leg and doubt about my status, and we both know it.
“How do I do this?” I glance out a thick-paned window. The garden is peaceful, overflowing with green and bright bursts of red and orange and blue. It’s beautiful. Hours and hours of hard work and sweat, but it yields good fruit.
Why doesn’t my life work that way?
Abertha gives me a wry smile. “The same way you do anything. One foot in front of the other. One day at a time.”
My shoulders slump. I’m so tired. “He’s my mate.”
“He was.”
“I just don’t get it. How can he reject me? Mates are fated. Am I wrong? Is this moon madness?”
A primal fear chills my blood. It might take decades, but eventually, moon madness is a death sentence. Either it eats your brain to Swiss cheese until you forget how to breathe, or you’re exiled, or the pack puts you down because you’ve become a rabid animal.
Abertha nudges the muffins toward me. I shake my head. I can’t eat.
“It’s not moon madness. And mates are—complicated.”
I’ve noticed. The story is you sense your mate, you can’t resist each other, you fall in love, and you have babies. But there are a lot of—aberrations.
“So Killian and I aren’t mates?”
“No. You definitely are.”
“I don’t get it.”
Abertha lets out a long, gusty sigh.
“Is this one of those things like the man and the wolf where everything I’ve been taught as a pup is wrong?” The more I hang out with Abertha, the more long sighs I hear, and the more life gets confusing.
“Yup.”
“So what? There’s no such thing as mates?”
“Obviously, there are. Don’t doubt your own experience, Una. I thought I’d drilled at least that into your head.”
She drills a lot. Sometimes it’s hard to separate the wheat from the chaff.
“There are mates,” she goes on. “It’s kind of like—” She looks around the room, and her gaze settles on the tea and sports drink in front of me. I haven’t touched either, yet.
“So you’ve just run a marathon—that’s heat, right?—and there is a beverage perfectly formulated to meet your biological needs.” She points at the sports drink. “Ta da. Your mate. Nothing else will hydrate you. And, usually, a parched, um, runner will really, really dig the drink that quenches their thirst. What’s not to love, right?”
“Sports drink tastes like ass.”
She snaps and points at me. “Exactly. So when the sports drink doesn’t appeal beyond the physical, some people will hold their nose and guzzle it and suffer for life. Some people drink until they’re hydrated and then switch it up. Decide they prefer tea.”
“Like Dierdre and Jimmy.”
“Yup.”
“And Liam and Rowan.”
“Uh-huh.”
“And Haisley and Dermot.”
“I see you take my point.”
“So why does everyone say mates are fated?”
“Well, I mean, in a sense, they are. In a biology as destiny sense. It’s almost impossible to have a pup with anyone else.”
Almost impossible, but there are stories about it happening. In other packs. A long time ago. I always thought the stories existed as an excuse for insecure assholes to accuse their mates of sleeping around.
“But the Fates are also—complicated.”
“Are they like sports drinks?”
“No lip from you, little missy,” but Abertha smiles as she says it. Some of the worry that’s been haunting her face since she found me in the thicket disappears. “But yes. They are like sports drinks. And tea.”
Abertha relaxing helps me let go a little. Breathe a little deeper. I take a sip from my cup. It’s sweetened with honey. Just how I like it.
“First off, it’s not Fate, it’s Fates. Plural. And they aren’t necessarily working together. You’ve got the sports drink Fate who is all about the results. Hydration by whatever means necessary. Pups, pups, pups. That’s all she cares about. But then there’s the tea Fates.”
“Tea Fates?”
Abertha is warming to her analogy. Her gray eyes start to dance like they do when she’s enjoying herself. “Uh-huh. Tea Fates are about the journey. Pups are great, but they’re interested in the bigger things—love and destiny and balance and justice. Destroying all sentient life and returning the world to its natural state. That kind of thing.”
“Sounds like a mess.”
“Oh, yes. It is. Look around. Obviously, the powers that be have to be working at cross purposes, right?”
“So why do we all believe that mates are fated?”
“’Cause they are.”
“And when they’re not? Like Jimmy and Dierdre?”
“They still are. The story’s just more—complicated. But people don’t want to think about that too much. Strains their little pea-sized noggins.”
“My little pea-sized noggin is strained.”
“I bet. Drink something.” She smiles wickedly. “Your choice.” She taps the plate of muffins. “And eat.”
“So Killian and I are fated mates?”
“Yes.”
“But he doesn’t think we are?”
“Appears so.”
“And we’re not anymore. You severed the bond.”
“I did sever the bond.”
“So I’m good with the Fates. None of them have any interest in me now, right?”
“Wouldn’t say that.”
“Abertha.”
Abertha shrugs. She’s got a mouthful of baked goods.
Mates or not—fated or not—it doesn’t really matter. I can’t bear the thought of going back to camp.
“Can I stay here?”
Abertha takes a moment swallowing. “I don’t do roommates.” She pats my hand to take the sting away. “I don’t like people eating my food.”
“And yet you’re pushing these muffins pretty hard.”
“They’re three days old. If we don’t eat them, they’ll go to waste.”
“Wouldn’t want that.”
“No, we wouldn’t.” Abertha grabs another one and carefully peels the paper cup. “Don’t worry. Killian will be sorry before all is said and done.”
“I don’t want him to be sorry. I just want to never see him again. Or if he was eaten by bears. That’d be okay.”
“No bears around here. Just wolves and rats.”
Abertha stands and crosses the kitchen to the fridge. A wave of exhaustion crests over me.