Page 19 of Collared Mate

“Don’t worry about it. Sass is trying to make a point. She adores you.”

“No.” He shakes his head. “She should find someone else. I’m not her fated mate and we both know it.”

“Fated mates aren’t a thing, bro,” I say, taking another slow, long toke. “They’re a fairytale.”

He snorts and looks at me. “They’re a biological reality for our kind, and you know it. The bonds are so strong they transcend space and time and some even say, death.”

“That’s poetry. Not science.”

“Science is an advanced form of poetry,” he says.

He’s had way too much to smoke, but at least he’s not giving me shit about fucking someone in the garden during his important soiree. Maybe tomorrow he’ll be mad again, but for tonight I can sense his surrender.

There’s still a lot of clattering going on in the kitchen, though it sounds more distant now. It’s almost like the week has put a pair of invisible earplugs on me.

I take a third toke, then hand the joint back to Rick. He takes it, but he doesn’t smoke it. He lets his hand drift down beside the chair, fingertips and joint very nearly touching the carpet.

“Careful,” I say. “You’ll burn the house down, and then where will all our family secrets be?”

He laughs and draws it back up to his lips, then throws the remainder into the fire while exhaling a long stream of faintly blue smoke into the room.

“Our family’s secrets are strewn halfway across the world,” he says. “There’s too many for anyone to ever really understand. But yeah, I’ll try not to burn the fucking house down.”

“Good,” I say. “I’m going to go up and go to bed.”

He nods, giving me one red-rimmed, glassy-eyed glance before I leave.

“Don’t get into any more trouble,” he says.

“Any more than what?”

“You know,” he replies, his eyes narrowing a fraction. “It’s a lot of cleanup.”

My blood runs cold. So he does know about the murders.

“I don’t blame you for being pissed at lesser dudes who don’t deserve to even look at you,” he says. “And I know Christian wasn’t great as a mate. At least he mostly left you alone.”

“I thought I was going to spend the rest of my life stuck with someone who wouldn’t even fucking touch me,” I say.

“Well, you didn’t.”

“Right. Stop trying to mate me off with random men who own boats.”

“He has a shipping company, not a boat.”

“And now he’s got your girlfriend.”

Rick half-grins and shrugs. “Yeah. Well. I guess we’ve all got problems, don’t we.”

“I’m going to bed,” I say.

“Night, sis.”

“Night, bro.”

* * *

I’m surprised Rick let that all go so easily, but I guess he’s been having a hard night too. I’m even more surprised he didn’t smell Henry on me. Maybe it’s been long enough that he has forgotten his once best friend’s scent.