Page 21

Tor

“You brought me to meet your mother…!” Harper hissed.

No, no, I did not.

“Mum, I thought you had that thing on tonight,” I said, shooting her a meaningful look, but my mother was not to be dissuaded.

“A pipe burst in the community hall,” she replied, but her focus had shifted to Harper.

“But now I see this is the work of the gods. Torren…” Mum sighed as she stared up at Harper.

“She’s beautiful.” That earned me a sidelong look from my mother.

“Too beautiful for the likes of you.” Finally, she held her hand out.

“I’m Anya, by the way. If you wait for that son of mine to make introductions, it’ll never happen. ”

“Harper,” my mate replied, taking her hand. “Lovely to meet you, Anya.”

“Come inside!” Mum started for the door, gesturing for us to follow. “We’ve got the big table set up in the courtyard.”

My heart sank.

“We don’t have to go inside.” I stepped between the restaurant and Harper.

“I thought my family were out at a function. We can go somewhere else.” I blinked, realising what awaited us.

The big table was the one used for large events.

That meant every damn tiger shifter in the city was here. “Actually, we should go.”

“Torren!” Mum’s tone was sharp and full of command. “Stop dithering around outside. Your aunties and uncles would love to meet your mate.”

“You’re really freaking out.” Harper’s smile was both reassuring and terrifying in turns. “What’s gonna happen if we go inside, Tor?”

“You’re going to get mobbed by an ambush of tiger shifters,” I said.

“That’s what they call a group of tiger shifters?” she asked. “An ambush?”

“It’ll be an ambush alright.” I blinked, able to see the ghosts of family events past flittering before my eyes. “There’ll be embarrassing stories.” It was like tigers had a photographic memory, recording every stupid thing I’d ever done for posterity. “I’m sure photos will come out at some point.”

“Of you as a little tiger kitten?” Her eyebrows shot up right before she dodged around me, heading towards the door. “Oh, this I gotta see.”

Mack was gonna kick my arse. He’d been clear that we needed to put the work in and woo Harper, and I thought I had it covered.

Growing up in the apartment above the restaurant, me and my sisters worked in the kitchen or on the floor after school.

It meant I knew every dish, every drink on the menu, making me think I could be that confident guy, ordering for Harper.

Instead, we walked into this.

“Torren!”

What felt like hundreds of familiar faces looked up as we walked into the courtyard, but it was actually about thirty.

“You all know this one,” Mum said with a flap of her hand. “But this is Harper. She’s someone very special to my boy.”

“It’s not too late.” I turned Harper around to face me. “We haven’t sat down yet. If we get out now, I can have us at a nearby McDonalds’ car park, scarfing down Big Macs in minutes.”

“And where would be the fun in that?” she said, before stepping up to the table. “Hi, everyone.”

This was it, the moment when hope died. No woman could survive the tender mercies of my family.

“I’m Mira,” my eldest sister said, gesturing to the chair next to her. “Tor’s sister. So how did the two of you meet?”

All I wanted was some good food and conversation with my mate.

I hadn’t had much of a chance to chat with her the first night we met, and the second…

I shifted in my seat, remembering how that went.

Pretty sure there’d be no repeats, because this was the moment Harper found out how much of an idiot I was.

“So why was Tor on the roof of the restaurant in the first place?” Harper asked, mid anecdote.

“He wasn’t aiming for the roof,” Mira said. “This big brave tiger thought he’d be cool and climb a tree and ‘lay in wait for prey.’”

“Of course, once he was up there, he couldn’t get down,” my other sister, Dina said. “I went to go get Mum and Dad.”

“Always were a snitch,” I muttered.

“And the big, bad tiger decided that leaping onto the roof and making his way down to the balcony would be a better option,” Mira continued. “He made it, mostly…”

“You never told me he nearly fell!” Mum said, before looking at me. “Darling, what were you thinking?”

“Not much, obviously,” I replied, taking a long sip of my beer.

“Our son is very brave,” Dad said, leaning forward and sliding an arm around Mum’s chair. “Takes after his dad. Doesn’t always make the smartest decisions…” My father looked around the table. “Not sure where he gets that from.”

“You,” my maternal grandmother said with a sniff before turning to us.

“Tiger shifter men are big, strong.” Her smile sent shivers up my spine.

“Virile.” I studied the label of my beer closely.

“But also very stupid, such as joining an ambush with a bear and a wolf.” She let out a hiss of breath. “Who has heard of such a thing?”

“It will become more common now that shifters are out to the world,” one of the aunties said. “I was talking to one of the mothers of a lion shifter and she was most upset to hear that her son was forming a pride with some fox shifters…”

I didn’t dare look up. Tonight was a bust. The food was amazing as always, but I didn’t get a chance to choose dishes for Harper based on what she liked.

Bowls heaped high were placed along the entire table so people helped themselves.

I was hoping for something small, intimate, where we could really get to know each other, and instead— I looked up as I felt a hand slide into mine.

Harper smiled at me as she rubbed my knuckles with her thumb.

Every swipe sent delicious shivers down my spine, and with them came hope.

“Families are kinda brutal, huh?” she said. “If you ever meet my grandmother, you’ll get similar stories about my childhood antics.”

“With photos?” I asked, straightening up. “I’d love to see old photos of you when you were a little girl.”

She went to reply, but Mira got in first.

“Photos?” Before I could protest, my sister was pushing her chair back. “Do you want to see photos of Torren?”

“Are there any in tiger form?” Harper asked, grinning at me. “Tor would’ve been the cutest kitten.”

“Let’s go upstairs and take a look!”

Both Dina and Mira led the way, but when I went to follow, my parents stopped me.

“Torren.” My father stared at me steadily, his eyes becoming more and more green as the tiger pushed forward. “Your mate, she is yet unmarked.”

“And probably is going to stay that way after tonight,” I said with a sigh.

“The path of true love is rarely smooth,” my grandmother said with a shake of her head.

“If it was, I would never have lost your grandfather.” When I was still young, he’d died of cancer.

Apparently, a tiger’s constitution didn’t stop you from getting lung cancer when you smoked a pack a day.

“But this girl…” She looked up at the steps, even though my sisters and my mate had disappeared into the apartment.

“She is the one the fates have decided belongs to you. The bond will fall into place, if you prove yourself worthy.”

“By looking at baby photos of me.” I shook my head. “I guess it helps that I was a pretty photogenic kid.”

“The most beautiful,” Mum said, reaching over and patting my hand. “Now go, before your sisters break out the home videos.”

Walking upstairs was a laborious process.

It was like an axe was hanging over my head the entire time.

I didn’t want to see Harper’s expression when she saw my gap-toothed smile in third grade or that really bad mullet hair cut I’d insisted on when I turned twelve.

Imagine my surprise when I didn’t find the three of them clustered in the lounge room around the old photo albums.

“She’s down the hall,” Mira said, nodding to where my old bedroom was. “You looked like you needed a bit of alone time.”

“No way.” I stared at each one of my sisters. “You’re actually helping me out here?”

“In return for not being a dick when I bring my fated mate home,” Dina said, her hands going to her hips. “That lion shifter Mum was talking about?”

“Abel?” I asked, and she nodded slowly.

“Things are changing a lot and the older generations aren’t coping real well. That’s why we need to stick together, got it?”

“You got it.” I took a step away from them, inexorably drawn towards my bedroom doorway. “Now I’ve gotta?—”

“Keep it in your pants,” Mira said with a frown. “Mum, Dad, Gran, any of them could walk up any second.”

I snorted.

“You got it, now…”

I waved them away before walking down the hall, only to find Harper standing in my old room, looking at the photos on the wall.

“Hey,” I said.

“Hey.” She turned and smiled at me. “You were a pretty cute kid.” Her finger touched a photo of me when I was seven, marking the scabs on my knees. “One that got into a lot of scrapes, it looks.”

“You’ve got no idea.” I stepped closer. “Tearing holes in my clothes, tripping over things.” I shrugged.

“Then there was the week when I refused to wear clothes, because tigers don’t.

” That had her laughing, and maybe that was even better than being smooth and cool.

“I tried to get into a fight with the next door cat to show who was dominant.”

“Oh my god, I would’ve loved to have seen that,” she snorted. “So, was this the schtick you used in high school? Get girls up to your room and talk about your misdeeds.”

That had me taking a step closer.

“There were no other girls, Harper.”

“What, you’re telling me this guy?” She tapped a photo of me trying to look really cool when I was halfway through high school. “Couldn’t get a date?”

“I’m telling you that sometimes girls flirted or told their friend to tell another friend that they liked me,” I explained, “but every time I had to tell them the same thing.” We were close enough to touch now, so I could see the thin line of gold around each one of her pupils.

“That I was waiting for the right girl.”

“So…” Harper was so close to seeing it. She shook her head, as if trying to dislodge the thought.

“You’re telling me that if we were in the same high school?

” She squinted at the photo, making out the year it was taken.

“And you were a couple of grades ahead of me, you’d have seen me across a crowded school yard… ”

As she described the scenario, I saw it.

It would’ve made it a whole lot easier to get me to school if I knew I’d see Harper every day.

I would’ve wound my way through the other students to get to her, not giving any of them a second glance.

I’d have followed her to all her classes, carried her books like it was some American teen drama, then?—

“I would’ve done this.”

I was trying to move slower, but how the hell did I do that when my heart was beating so fast?

My hands went to her jaw, cupping it gently as I tilted her head up so her eyes met mine.

I stroked a thumb down her cheek, trying to memorise the shape, right before I darted forward.

A little kiss, a tiny one, like we were timid teens, not people who’d spent half the night together.

It was sweeter, though, because this time I paid attention to the way her breath sucked in before she shifted, pressing her mouth into mine.

Taking over, claiming my mouth with hers.

The kiss deepened, grew more and more heated, right before someone called my name.

“Torren!” Just like guilty teenagers, we jerked apart. “Come and have some dessert,” my mother called from down the hall.

“What do you think?” I asked. “You feel like dessert or want to get out of here?”

I prayed for the latter, something Harper seemed to sense if her grin was anything to go by.

“You want me to miss out on dessert? Delicious, amazing, handmade dessert?”

“Guess not.” I steered her towards the door. “Whatever my mate wants, she gets.”