Page 11 of Bone Collector’s Mate

Chapter Nine

Noir

“Hello,” I choked out, trying to keep my eyes on his. He was naked after the shift, as most people were. Naked wasn’t a big deal. I walked around in the forest without a shirt most of the summer and some of the spring and fall. Who cared about a T-shirt when my head was like a cow skull with full demonic horns? Not most people. They were too busy running for their lives.

“Hello. I-I’m Rook.” His voice was velvet along my skull. My horns buzzed with a fever I didn’t know I was capable of.

Shit. When had I released my human head?

I was… Why wasn’t this man afraid? Why wasn’t he running or trying to fight me. Some shifters, especially bears, tried to fight me as though I was there to gather up their cubs and kill them.

The bones of children were the worst to craft from. Their pain was palpable and often reverberated in the unfinished bone structure of their tiny arms and legs.

Making a chime from the bones of a child took care and time and tears that my skull head shouldn’t be able to shed since it was made of dryness and calcium. But it did. Over the life they should’ve had. Other breaths cut short. Dreams unrealized. Pain inflicted on someone so innocent.

I never would’ve killed anyone, for the record. The death I dealt with was enough for seventeen lifetimes.

“Why aren’t you scared of me?” The question tumbled out of my mouth before I thought twice. I almost ran from him, saving us both the trouble, but the man took a step toward me.

I let my gaze wander, only for a second. The omega was fit, lean, and yet, I could tell he ate well. Muscles had to be fed, after all.

He was spectacular. A hunger swirled in my body, one that I’d assumed went dormant years ago.

Replaced by loneliness and time and decay.

“I could never be afraid of my mate.”

My body buzzed at the word. Bone collectors didn’t have mates. We didn’t have lovers or husbands or partners or children or families or… “Mate?” I asked, intrigued.

Whisper Grove hadn’t been anything I expected and maybe, in the borders of this town, more was waiting for me.

I leaned forward, awaiting his words.

He smiled but made no move to cover his nakedness. “Yes. Mate. I’m a wolf shifter. Obviously. I can scent when my fated mate…you are my fated mate.”

“Fated mate?” My stupor over this encounter had made me stupid.

“Yes. The one person the Goddess made for me. To be my partner. My lover. My mate. Stronger than human marriage. I…”

“But I’m a bone collector. I don’t have a mate. I don’t have a partner. I have me. I have this skull. These horns. I’m a monster.”

“So what? What makes a monster is his character. I don’t even know what a bone collector is, but I know my mate when I scent him. Can’t you smell it? Can’t you scent me? I don’t even know your name.”

“Noir.” I spoke it out loud, though I refrained from using it as much as possible. If people weren’t put off enough by my stature and appearance, my name was the nail in the coffin. “My name is Noir. And you are the father of Benji?”

My instincts told me he was. I wasn’t ruled by scents like an animal shifter, but he and Benji had the same undercurrent of scent. Like the forest right before a storm. Thunder and lightning from the clouds but before the first drop of rain hit.

“I am. Hey, you brought Benji home. I can’t thank you enough. And found his glasses.” Another step toward me. I watched every ripple of muscle as he did. I swallowed. My mouth had gone completely dry.

“Why did you let him go so far? There are bad people out there. Not me but bad people. I’ve seen their…” Bones. I could feel the meanness in them. The throb of dirty deeds, especially in their skulls and hands. The sternum held the most of it.

“It won’t happen again. I promise. I was making biscuits, and he was in the yard, and when I went out for him, he was gone. I screamed for him. Yelled and was on the search for him when you brought him back.” He looked down. “I’m not a bad father.”

“I never said you were. But he is precious. I wouldn’t want anything bad to happen to him. I know you wouldn’t either.”

“Whisper Grove is safe.”

Truest words ever spoken.