Page 62 of Burdened Bonds

“It doesn’t matter now,” the man says, the fight deflating from his voice and his head dropping forward, his chin resting on his chest. “They’re going to kill us all.”

“I can’t die,” I whisper, more to myself than him.

“We all have to die, Moreau.”

“I have a fated mate.”

The man chuckles, lifting his head to peer at me. “Sure you do. We all have people we love.”

He peers towards the door.

I shake my head, pain shooting up my neck and searing into my skull. “I don’t know about love,” I mutter. Do I love her? Am I – a monster, a beast – even capable of love? “I do know she is my fated mate.”

“You? A were? Why would fate give you a mate?”

“I don’t know. But I’m not the only one.”

The man’s face crinkles in confusion. “You know of other weres with fated mates? I’ve never heard of that.”

“No, not weres. My girl, my mate, she has others. Four in total. Four fated mates.” I wonder why the hell I’m telling him this. He could be a spy for Christopher Kennedy, a clever way to extract information from me.

I close my eyes. Idiot. Stupid idiot.

I hear the man laugh, a laugh that descends into a coughing fit. The sounds making my ribs hurt.

“You’re mad,” he whispers eventually, “mad.”

“Yeah,” I answer. “Perhaps I am.”

Why would fate want me as a mate for her? A useless mutt. A curseded. Chained to a wall, defeated and broken. No use to her. No use to her at all.

“Jacob. You didn’t ask,” the man says, “but my name is Jacob.”

I open my eyes and meet his and I realize there is theclue, the giveaway, deep in his eyes, I can see his beast lurking there, right below the surface. “Don’t tell them,” he says. “Don’t tell them about the girl.”

“Don’t tell who?” I ask.

But his eyes are drifting shut and soon he’s lifeless again.

26

Azlan

Something’s changedsince I was last here. Something about this suburb is different. I can smell it in the air. I can see it in the empty streets and the twitching curtains. I can feel it in my bones. Fear. People are afraid.

Perhaps that isn’t surprising. The republic just came under a deadly attack. One that nearly saw our country fall into enemy hands.

But I don’t think it’s the threat from the West these people are afraid of.

“How safe do we think it is here?” I ask Winnie as she pulls the car up into the driveway of her grandma’s little bungalow.

“Here?” Winnie giggles. “My mom used to send me and my sisters here in the summer holidays. Trust me, nothing ever happens here. It’s the dullest, most boring place in theworld. In fact, Nonny is the most interesting thing about this place.”

I peer at those twitching curtains and I’m not so sure. We are fugitives of the republic now, wanted by the Lord Protector. I wonder if anywhere is really safe.

Winnie’s grandma appears to share my reservations because she’s hurrying out the front door and down the pathway and when she spots Stone and me lurking in the car, instructs Winnie to park up in the garage. Winnie does as she’s told and once we’re safely inside, we climb out of the car and follow Winnie’s grandma through an internal door into the house. Birds tweet from a room off a hallway and an old cat curls itself around my ankles as we’re led to the kitchen at the back of the house.

Once inside, Winnie’s grandma inspects us with suspicion. She’s an older woman with short, spiky hair and big oversized glasses that magnify her shrewd eyes.