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“What do you think I should do?” I ask Endo, continuing to pace and coming up with nothing.

“Not a clue man. Short of bonding yourself to someone else before she can announce it, looks like you’ll be finding out who your mate is at the equinox.”

I scoff. “Yeah right. Like I’m gonna find a female, let alone a full-blooded nymph, because you know she won’t accept anything less, to agree to form a permanent mate bond with me in a week, in Snowberry.”

Endo shrugs and eats another fry.Yeah, just wait till it’s your turn, you won’t be so disinterested then.

“I need to clear my mind. I’m gonna go for a walk and get some fresh air. Maybe the answer will come to me then.”

“Whatever you say bro. I’ll be here, but I won’t be cleaning up your dirty underwear. You’re gonna have to do that yourself,” Endo calls to me as I make my way to the back doors leading to the acres we own behind the house.

“Yeah, yeah. I’ll do it later,” I call back over my shoulder as I slip on my shoes.

“You better!”

Chapter 4: Kai

The cool forest air brushes against my bare chest, a reminder that the equinox is not far off. A day that I wasn’t looking forward to to begin with but now am dreading. If my mother has chosen a mate for me, once that announcement is made, it’s as good as done. I have to do something to keep her from forcing some uptight prissy female on me.

There’s always the option to run. I have money; I could just disappear. If she can’t hold her money over my head to control me, she has no leverage. Thought that money can only last for so long. It still won’t stop her from hunting me down, badgering me endlessly, and trying to force a mate on me until I break. She’s probably as thick headed as I am. She won’t stop until she gets her way.

A nymph mate bond has to be entered into willingly. Verbal vows spoken aloud and truthfully. If she were to force me to bond and I didn’t want to, my words would relay that, and the bond would fail. She knows this, we all do. Which means she would be on my ass until I submitted and went willingly.

“Ugh,” I groan out loud, kicking a pile of newly fallen leaves. I’ve ventured north into the woods behind the house, and the lack of modern society is staggeringly obvious.

It’s been a long time since I’ve been surrounded by nothing but nature. The only sounds are the breeze rustling the leaves and the quiet crack and scurry of animals in the distance. My nymph abilities allow me to connect with animals. I can sense them from a distance and can instinctually understand them when they “speak” to me. It’s not so much exact words, but a knowing of meaning. Sometimes specific words make their way through, especially with the more intelligent animals. Creatures like sprites and pixies who don’t speak any known human languages, I can understand more clearly. Full sentences and definitive words.

Now, I can sense the sprites that live in the most uninhabited areas of the forest and change direction, heading for them. Sprites can be comforting and cute. Maybe they can lift my spirits and help me figure out an answer to my growing problem.

Shoving my hands in my pockets I continue internally cataloging my options, little as they are. Accept my mother’s choice and mate a female I may hate and be the family’s puppet for the rest of my life, not a great choice. Find a suitable female to mate before my mother can announce her choice, which would irritate her but also assuage her at the same time. Then there’s the option to just say no, reject my mother’s chosen one and deal with the blowback. Which I figure will turn out the same as if I just left; never ending demands to do as she says, threats of disownment. If that doesn’t work there’s always guilt. My mother is great at getting her way. Even when I was younger, I couldn’t do anything but submit to her will. ThefreedomI currently possess is because I yielded to her controlling ways and manipulated my way into a position of unimportance.

Apparently that status is no longer valid, since getting me mated has now become the most important thing in her mind, for some god-awful reason. I don’t know what bug climbed up her ass and set her on this path of deeming it time for me to find a mate, but it’s cramping my style.

What I need is a way to get her off my back indefinitely. Suddenly, Endo’s offhanded suggestion of finding a replacement mate before my mother can force one on me isn’t sounding so bad. Iit would have to be a bogus relationship. There’s no way in hell I’m actually bonding myself to another indefinitely. But if I could find someone to lie about being my mate to get her off my back, I could at least buy some time to figure out a more long-term solution. Because lord knows as soon as she finds out I’m not mated she’ll be on me like flies on shit.

“Fuck. I should just knock up a human woman. Maybe then she’d disown me, and I could be free from all this bullshit.”

I’d need to syphon off money into my private account before that though, to ensure I can support myself for years to come without folding and giving in to her demands.

Wouldn’t that be nice though? To be free from the demands of my altruistic family and our centuries old tradition of only mating with other nymphs. There’s not a drop of human, fairy, shifter or other blood in my lineage. I’ve heard of distant relatives and ancestors having chosen non-nymph mates or spouses, but those individuals were disowned from the family, removed from family history, and none of their descendants are allowed at events. Not that any of them want to attend anyway.

It's disgusting really, how prejudiced my family is. Like me, I know there are relatives who don’t fully believe in the whole ‘pure-blooded protect the bloodline’nonsense. Others either allow their elders to choose for them or pick someone who fits the ridiculous list of requirements out of some weird sense of duty or guilt manipulation.

Personally, I love all types of people. Human, non-human, mix breeds, half-breeds. Preferably those who don’t fit my family’s messed up list of attributes.

I wonder if there are any humans in town who know about non-humans that I could convince to pretend to be my secret lover, now pregnant with our half-breed love child? That would shock my mother into a fit for sure. I would love to see that.

Up ahead I sense a rather animated and chatty sprite. Nymph hearing is superior to most, being our most important sense. Even this far away, where I can’t see the sprite, I can hear it. It sounds like it’s boasting about its most recent acquisitions.

There are sprites that sneak into town and “find” items they bring back to their nests and hollows. Their curious nature insisting they explore, even against their better judgement.

This one sounds like it’s listing off things and sharing its new treasures with another.

“Look, look at this one. Isn’t it nice? So soft and pretty. And this one, it makes the sunshine change colors.”

The sprites strange language translates in my head clearer than most I’ve heard before. It must have more contact with people than most to speak so similarly to us. Usually, their thoughts and sentences are more blunt, simple and direct. Not conversative.

“Oh yes, that one is very pretty. I don’t think Larken is going to be very happy you broke intoThe Closet Carouselagain, though. I’m going to have to go into town now and apologize, and pay for this fabric,” a soft feminine voice replies to the sprites chattering as if she knows exactly what it’s saying. Perhaps another nymph with animal magic?