Page 1 of Soul Bites

Prologue

Leopold

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When Leopold ‘Pollie’ was 21

The bell above the door of Bad Wolf Cakes 2.0 chimed. I glanced up from the book I was reading. It was long and rather dry, but it was filled with the magic of my ancestors. Well, one half of my ancestors anyway. My carrier’s side. Magic wasn’t boring, but the author made enough footnotes that the book seemed to need shoes halfway through. I was tucked in a back corner booth with my familiar, Pox. He’d been with me since I was sixteen and found him yipping his tiny little head off while I was walking the path through the woods. His mama was nowhere in sight. I brought him home with every intention of rewilding him but as he grew up it was clear that he wasn’t going to return to his roots. It was another four years before I realized he was my familiar. What can I say? Maybe I am slow on the uptake.

My carrier’s voice reached my ears, and I glanced up from my book. He stood in line next to Liam. They were leaned in all close to each other and whispering really fast. I poked Pox on the rump and nodded in their direction. The little black fox got a mischievous glint in his eyes and wound his way under the table to go eavesdrop for me.

“Are you sure about what you saw?” my carrier asked Liam.

“Vex, I’m positive,” Liam said.

“Are you sure this isn’t just about him going to restart the village?” my carrier asked.

“No. It’s not him. The kid who is going to live there full time is an alpha. I’m almost positive of that. It’s not Pollie. I’d recognize Pollie anywhere. That vision might’ve been a long time ago, but it wasn’t Pollie.”

“But this one was?” my carrier asked, sounding confused as the bear in front of him, one of Nemesis and Cedar’s sons, ordered three dozen of the pink topped cupcakes.

“Definitely. He’s going to meet his true-mate, Vex,” Liam hissed, looking around.

Inside his inner sanctum, my fox’s ears perked up. He stood up on his hindlegs, and I had to push him back down. If he forced my shift now, Dad and Liam would see me, and I’d never find out what Liam saw! The furry guy yipped rapidly into my thoughts and I had to shush him to hear what Dad and Liam said next.

“When?” Dad whispered back to him. They hadn’t spotted me back here behind my big book yet and Pox was good at hiding. He was sneaky. He’d always been sneaky. He’d snuck back into the house three times when I tried to rewild him.

My heart hammered inside my chest. My true-mate at the village? Was my alpha another fox? A wild born shifter? Those were rare!

“I know and I don’t know,” Liam said in that way he had that could make a lost sock sound mysterious.

“What does that mean, though?”

“Halloween,” Liam shrugged. “Halloween but I don’t know which Halloween.”

“So what do we tell Pollie?” Dad asked.

“Nothing. We tell him nothing, because I don’t know when and the last thing you want is him running off there every Halloween. Believe me. He will. I know you grew up surrounded by foxes with just your grandpa but kids run off so much. You’ve heard the stuff that me, Leo, and Starry got into. Pollie might not be a little kid anymore, but sometimes I think people in their twenties are still kids. I’m old. Sure, but it’s that age where you can do whatever you want, but that’s the problem, isn’t it? You can do whatever you want but you only have like a handful of years where you made any choices for yourself that mattered.”

“It feels wrong not to tell him, Liam,” Dad said. “Like, it’s his true-mate.”

“And I had a vision. Most of my visions have already come to pass. It’ll happen whether we tell him or not. Believe me on this one. Sometimes it hurts more to know part of the story before it happens. I knew Bobby was mine for so long before I could be with him. Hell, I think I knew before I was old enough to have a true-mate response. It was hard. Let Pollie live and study and figure himself out first. I only told you because I promised you and Leo that I’d tell you about any visions that included the village.”

“Thanks for that, Liam,” Dad sighed. “I won’t tell him, but I just can’t imagine why he’d be there on Halloween if he’s not the one who will live there.”

“Me neither, but fate has its ways,” he said.

They stopped talking about the vision and ordered their whipped coffees. Pox wound his way back under the tables and leaped up into the booth next to me. He looked up expectantly at me and I pulled a freeze-dried chicken heart from my pocket and gave it to him.

“Thank you, Pox,” I whispered to him over our little witch and familiar link.

My mate was going to meet me in the village of my ancestors. There was something poetic about that. Why couldn’t that stupid line have been longer? Then I could’ve found out more about my mate. Like was it dark or daylight? Did he live there already like some stow away in a magical village? What did he look like? Who did he shift into?

“Are we going to visit the real foxes again?” Pox asked over our link.

“I think we have to. Halloween is in three days.”

“I like it there. I have other foxes to speak with. It’s a better place to be.”