Page 11

Harper

“You’re our fated mate.”

“What?” I looked from one to the other of them, expecting at least one guy to burst out laughing. Instead, Tor watched me closely as Kieran waited for a response. Mack at least would crack up, breaking character, but he was still rocking that epic resting bitch face. “Me?”

My brain started to race, trying to put two and two together, but just coming up with a great big zero each time.

“Like look across a crowded room and know that girl is the only one for you?” I said.

“Something like that,” Kieran replied.

“Like magical soul bond, one true love, brought together by destiny, kind of fated mate?”

“You seem to know quite a lot about it,” Tor said.

I grabbed my beer and drank, not stopping until the glass was empty. Nope, that didn’t dispel the feeling of unreality. My fingers reached for Tor’s beer without thinking.

“She seems to be taking this well,” Mack said drily.

I drank that down as well, gasping as I fought to catch my breath.

“No, no…” I shook my head, but what else could it be?

Men didn’t do the dishes or mop the floor for anyone, let alone a girl they didn’t know.

“No, because I know how this goes.” All three of them leaned forward, elbows on the table, and that had me leaning back.

“Girl meets shifters. Girl lets down her guard for a second, and then bam! She’s falling for them.

Then one of you dies or leaves, or ends up being secretly evil, and then I end up crying in a Kmart car park, eating chocolate almonds out of my bra. ”

“Harper—” Kieran said.

I cut him off by shoving myself to my feet.

Get out, that’s what my heart dictated, beating twice as fast as it pumped adrenaline through my veins to help get me moving.

Ring Daria and get her to pick me up. We’d order a pizza and then we’d debrief, right before…

I watched the barman line up a row of shot glasses, pouring tequila into each one. That, I wanted that.

“Shot,” I gasped as I collided with the bar. The older man frowned slightly when he saw me, but when I dropped some money onto the bar, he poured another, pushing the glass my way. The tequila burned all the way down, but when he went to take my money, a big hand slid a black Mastercard forward.

“The shots and whatever else the lady wants,” Kieran said.

Apparently money talked, and bullshit walked.

The barman took the card, then asked me what I wanted.

Helpless, I put in an order of a rum and Coke, no, make that a double.

The barman rang our order up on Kieran’s card, leaving me to nurse the ice cold glass.

I was feeling somewhat the same. Cold, but also clammy, my forehead feeling sticky when I wiped the sweat away.

“Maybe we should go and sit down,” Tor suggested, nodding to the table we left behind. “Talk this through.”

“Oh…” I said, raising my drink. “Now you want to talk. I’m not sure I’m OK with general chitchat to see if we’re aligned after you dropped the whole mate thing on me.

” A sip of the rum and it all started spilling out.

“You don’t know anything about me. How I take my coffee.

If I like scrambled eggs or fried. If I’m a vegan or not. ”

“You ate meat yesterday,” Tor said, “so I assume not a vegan.”

“You know what I mean. How the hell can you say we’re fated to be together when you don’t even know me?”

“Because I want to.” Kieran stepped closer and damn, he was huge. I looked up, up, up at him, unable to take the entirety of him in with one glimpse. “That’s how I…” He looked at the others. “We know.”

“Not me,” Mack said with a sigh, pulling one of the shot glasses over and downing the tequila with a wince.

“Then how’d you get into Harper’s dream?” Kieran asked.

“Um… what?” I looked at each guy in turn, but they just stared each other down.

“You can’t dream walk without a mate bond,” the bear shifter insisted.

“You don’t know that.” Mack’s wolf seemed close to the surface, his teeth bared in a snarl. “You don’t know shit about wolf shifters.”

“Whoa, whoa, whoa.” I stepped in between the two of them, the alcohol making it so I hardly felt the hostility radiating off both of them. “Back up for a second. That was…” I looked around, suddenly embarrassed by this conversation. “That was real?” I whispered.

“Bloody hell…” Tor rubbed at his face.

“The sounds of your sighs,” Kieran said, his eyes boring into mine. “The way you felt… Your body rising up off the bed?—”

“OK, got it,” I said, then drank the rest of my drink, setting the glass on the bar.

“So original plan. We’re going to grab something to eat and you…

” I pointed at him, then Mack and Tor. “All of you are going to fill me in on everything I’m missing, including what will happen when I go to bed tonight.

Will there be…?” I shook my head, sucking in a breath, then letting it out in a whoosh. “Will there be an encore?”

“If you want there to be.”

Kieran’s grin had me shaking my head, then I grabbed a couple of menus off the bar and walked over to the nearest empty table.

Half an hour later, we all had chicken parmis in front of us, and the only sound was that of cutlery cutting into slabs of meat.

“So tell me about this whole fated mate thing.” I said, waving my knife in the air. “Seems like furry propaganda to me.”

Mack snorted, then swallowed furiously, trying not to choke.

“Not propaganda,” Kieran said, shooting me a sidelong look. “Instinct.”

“So it’s like ‘this is my woman.’” I beat my fists against my chest, gorilla style. “I must mop her floors and clean her toilet for her.”

“More like ‘this is the woman I want to spend the rest of my life with,’” Tor replied, those kitty green eyes watching my every move. “If she lets me. Then I will spend every day?—”

“We,” Kieran corrected.

“Making sure she doesn’t have to lift a finger, not unless she wants to.”

Suddenly I was really focussed on my chicken, cutting up smaller and smaller pieces.

“So you guys won’t spend hours blaming all your problems on some ex girlfriend.

” As I blinked, I could see them, the arseholes of dates past. “Won’t tell me you have an open marriage, even though you’ve never discussed the idea with your wife.

” Then I saw the muppet I was on a date with last. “Won’t tell me ‘your sister’ is asleep on your couch and that’s why we can’t go back to your place.

” I forced myself to smile. “I’m not sure I believe you. ”

“There’s no ex girlfriends to talk about.” Tor’s cheeks flamed red at that, but he forged on. “No wives, ex or otherwise.”

“No other women,” Kieran said in a firm tone.

“None…” Now I was the one blushing, trying to reconcile myself with what happened in my dream with their supposed inexperience. Last night was a far cry from my fumbling first time in the back of my teenager boyfriend’s car. “Not ever?”

“What would be the point?” Mack seemed permanently pissed off, but now his gaze felt like it was burning my skin.

“Some shifters sleep around, but not many. It’s about as satisfactory as jerking off, and that takes a whole lot less effort.

A shifter is supposed to wait for his fated mate, until she’s ready to accept the bond.

That’s the only time he feels any kind of…

” His words made it sound like a good thing, but his tone, his expression told another story.

“Whatever.” He rose to his feet. “I need to take a piss.”

Without any response from us, Mack strode off towards the bathrooms.

“So he seems happy about that idea.” I shook my head, almost able to feel the way Mack’s cock ground into me last night. “A lot less happy than he was last night.”

“Mack, his father—” Tor started to say, but Kieran shook his head.

“Mack’s father, what?” I asked. “Mack’s father did what?”

“Mack’s father didn’t treat his mate right,” Tor said, shooting Kieran a dark look.

Of course he didn’t.

“That doesn’t happen very often. Never in the bear community.” Kieran seemed intent on putting a good spin on this, but I just shook my head slowly, taking another sip of my rum and Coke. “The elders would step in and protect the woman before he raised a hand against her.”

“There aren't a lot of tiger shifters in Australia,” Tor explained. “But my mother would beat my arse if I was anything other than respectful of any woman, let alone my mate. Then my dad, my sisters, my aunties…”

But not Mack. His grumpy attitude made sense now. He was like a cat, all fluffed up and making himself seem bigger to scare me away.

The guy was doing too much.

They didn’t get it. Fate had done them a dirty, making them think I was their fated mate.

I was not the girl you settled down with.

I was the girl you settled for, until something better came along.

The women in my family, we had underwear older than most of our relationships.

Pa left Nanna with three young kids. Mum had a revolving door of boyfriends before she met Peter, and me…

? The idea of something long term gave me fucking hives.

I wanted to go to Mack, tell him to chill out, because I wasn’t going to move in and play house. He could stay grumpy. My hand went to my bag, ready to grab my phone and ring a cab, when a waitress appeared.

“All finished?”

She didn’t look at me for a second, leaning over to take Tor and Kieran’s plates.

“Let me get that.”

Kieran stood up, collecting all of our plates and scraping what was left of our food onto the one plate as Tor stacked the rest, but they weren’t my focus, she was.

The waitress watched them move, more specifically all those thick forearm muscles, and I couldn’t even blame her.

The guys were freaking fit. Even if they were human, they would’ve been able to bench press me over their heads.

But they weren’t.

She watched them like someone was scooping out a bowl of her favourite ice cream, because I’m pretty sure she wanted to lick the veins that stood out proudly along their arms. Her fingers twitched, wanting to touch, and I smiled.

I knew what the guys felt like, the press of their naked bodies, the feel of their lips, their cunning fingers.

With some animal-like focus, they both noted that they had my attention, turning my way and ignoring the waitress as she thanked them and removed all the plates.

This would never to work. They might not have much experience, but I did.

I remembered being younger, more hopeful, sure that my life would be different, right up until the point it wasn’t.

I’d had my heart broken so many times it’d become tough and leathery, made up more of scar tissue than anything else.

And with that came a kind of freedom.

If you have no expectations, you are never disappointed. If you just play things by ear, sticking around while things were fun, you could always bail when that stopped. Why wait around for Mr Right to make an appearance, when you could have fun with Mr. Right Now?

Several Mr. Right Nows.

“So what’re we doing?”

As if summoned by my thoughts, Mack appeared. His hands gripped the back of his chair, his knuckles turning white.

“I figured we could continue this conversation somewhere a little more private,” I said, watching the guys’ pupils expand. “What do you think?”

Tor and Kieran were pushing their chairs in within seconds.

“Are you ready to go?”

Kieran offered me his hand, and for a split second, I felt a little guilty.

He thought this was the start of something beautiful, because he didn’t know that this just wasn’t possible.

If Mack’s dad was his mother’s fated mate and he still managed to mistreat her, what hope did I have?

Trouble is, as I stared at that hand, I remembered exactly what it did to me last night.

“Sure.” I slid my hand in his. “Let’s get out of here.”