Page 10 of Mate

His seconds like her, they have from the very start.

Traitors.

Present day

I WAKE UP FLOATING SEVERAL FEET ABOVE THE GROUND— AND promptly decide to go back to sleep.

This is nice. I am, for once, not cold. My bed smells pleasant and woodsy, not at all like rancid nightmare sweat. The pillow is the perfect consistency. Everything about the situation is cozy and restful, and I see no reason to interrupt it— until a worried voice pierces through my cocoon of joy.

“Please, tell me that she’s sleeping and not unconscious.”

My eyes flutter open, and two realizations hit me: the person speaking is Amanda, Koen’s closest second.

And I’m very much not in bed.

Koen is carrying me inside a cabin that doesn’t look too different from the one in which I’d spent the last weeks, one arm hooked under my bent knees, the other cradling me to his chest. My head nestles in the side of his throat, where the scratch of his beard tickles my cheek.

The events of last night wash over me in rolling waves.

Look at me, living to see another day.

“What time is it?” I ask.

“Almost dawn.”

We must be a few hours away from my cabin, then. “Are we in the Southwest?” That’s where he’s going to take me, right? Back to Misery and Lowe.

“Still Northwest. We stopped at one of our safe houses.”

Lazily, I paw at Koen’s shoulder and stretch in his arms. “I can walk.”

“Me too. Wanna start a club?”

“Can I be president?”

“Treasurer at most.”

“No deal.” I yawn into the spot at the base of his neck, which causes his grip to falter first and then tighten. “Seriously, you can let go of me.”

He does, but only because we’ve reached our destination. He deposits me on a worn-out but clean sectional and then proceeds to look down at me with a frown.

“You okay?” he asks, gruff. “Anything feel . . . loose inside?”

“Loose? Like what?”

“I don’t fucking know. An artery?”

I decide to ignore the question, and ask, “Do you know what a man bun is?”

“A what?”

“Hmm. Must not have made it to the Weres. I was just wondering whether the lumbersexual vibes were on purpose?”

He scowls. Leans down. Cups my nape with one hand, while the fingers of the other slide through my hair, now matted with sweat, mud, and Bob’s blood. His grip is gentle. Soothing.

“What are you doing?”

“Feeling for a bump.”

“Why?”

“Might explain the sudden onset of aphasia.”

I snort out a laugh. “Come on, Koen. Tell me you at least yell ‘timber’ every once in a while.”

The only thing he’s ready to tell me is that he’ll have me institutionalized. It’s for the best, then, that Amanda sinks down next to me and wraps me in a hug.

“Look at you. Not even a little bit dead.” She grins. By the time she pulls away, Koen is gone. “Despite your high-stakes, violent existence.”

I snort again, looking at her round face, flawless dark skin, full lips. She’s around Koen’s age, even though she could pass for a high schooler. That’s where the similarities end: she’s kind and humorous, and I don’t believe I’ve ever heard her call someone a “rotten cockwomble.”

“I missed you,” she tells me. She and I met only recently, but we got close very quickly.

Koen wouldn’t allow me to move into the cabin without periodic supervision and tasked her with coming to check on me once a week or so.

I don’t really consider myself in the market for new friendships, not at this stage of my .

. . life , let’s call it, but there are only so many games of I Spy one can play (seventeen, to be precise) before starting to miss meaningful conversation.

By the second visit, we were dumping on each other like coal trimmers on the Titanic .

Pretty cathartic— if mostly abridged and highly redacted on my part. “You don’t look too well.”

I smile. “Yeah. So I hear.”

“Sorry some asshole Vampyre interfered with your search for, uh, inner peace.”

I am profoundly embarrassed that my cover story for needing to stay at the cabin required me to utter words like harmony and serenity with a straight face.

Sometimes, you just do what you have to.

“It’s okay. It’s been very . . . restorative,” I lie bald-facedly.

Weres can usually pick up fibs, but they struggle to make sense of me.

Being a hybrid has its pros. Well . . . pro. Singular.

“Thank God Koen was in your area to meet with huddle leaders.” Amanda takes my hand. “I was shitting myself when Lowe told us about the Vampyre tracking you.”

“I was not,” Jorma says, stepping inside the room.

He’s another of Koen’s seconds— a stern, statuesque man with white- blond curls and icy-blue eyes.

Jorma loves rules, unnecessary clerical work, waiting in line, and— hazarding a guess, here— bland foods covered in protein powder.

His childhood dream was probably to become a hall monitor.

I’ve seen him smile only once, and it was a terrifying process, like he’d learned how to move his facial muscles from a book.

I hope it never happens again. “Serena has bested several Vampyres in a fight before.” He nods at me in approval. “No reason to worry about her.”

I should be grateful for what’s obviously as close to a compliment as Jorma gets, but his misplaced faith just makes me want to shrink into the couch. “Yeah. Thanks,” I croak.

The last second in the cabin is Saul— who, unlike Jorma, has never filled out a form in his life, communicates mostly through grins and winks, and is the biggest, loudest flirt I’ve ever met.

“Honey,” he says instead of Hello . He takes me in with a pained expression.

“The hoodie-chic, blood-spattered, final-girl outfit suits you. The hair, not so much.”

I pout. “But my stylist said it was so me .”

“You deserve a refund.” He bends to kiss my cheek. “You look rough. Need a hug? Chamomile tea? A coloring book with some pencils? All of the above?”

Every time Saul comes up in conversation, someone feels the need to mention how incredibly handsome he is, but I don’t see it. Maybe it’s because I know that he’s Amanda’s ex. Maybe he just doesn’t do it for me. I guess I’m more into . . .

“She’s fine,” Koen orders, returning to the room with something in his hand. “Stop fussing.”

It’s an odd thing to say, considering that it’s followed by him kneeling in front of me and taking the heel of one of my feet in his palm.

He runs a damp washcloth all over the little abrasions the forest floor left on my skin, the ones that are already starting to heal.

The warmth feels so indecently good, I swallow a moan.

“You’re fine. Aren’t you, killer?” he asks, holding my eyes.

I nod, a little breathless.

“You need a bed and some rest,” Saul continues, undeterred.

“And a hot meal,” Amanda adds. “Should I— ”

“She’s an adult Were who doesn’t require coddling,” Koen interrupts. Once again, a bit jarring to hear, especially as he rolls thick, soft socks up my shins. They reach just below my knees. I might just go to my deathbed wearing them.

“Doesn’t mean we can’t worry about her,” Amanda points out.

“Last week Colin came back from a sweep with his arm nearly hanging off, and you all laughed in his face.”

“As is appropriate when one loses a fight against a bear,” Jorma says, straight-faced.

Saul seems to agree. “I’d forgotten that you’d declared it against the law to be excellent to each other, Koen.”

“Make sure you write it down, then.”

“Once again, if we had an HR department, they would be so busy dealing with . . .” Saul’s phone pings. He trails off to read a message, and when he looks up, he’s all business. “Alpha, Lowe is ready to talk.”

Koen nods. I expect him to walk out to take the call, but Amanda fiddles with a cable, and a moment later a flat screen I hadn’t noticed slowly whirs to life.

Several people appear, all of them known to me from my time in the Southwest. There’s Lowe, of course. The redheaded second whose name has clearly rotted out of my mind. Alex, the IT guy who taught me how to play Grand Theft Auto . And . . .

“Look who ran out of toilet paper and decided to rejoin civilization,” Misery says with a wide smile. Her pale elfin face is as close as I’ll ever get to having a home. I guess it’s fitting, then, how foreign she looks of late.

She stopped bothering with contacts or filing her canines, which fills me with joy.

For the first time in her life, she’s happy, protected, and invested in the world around her.

Are you jealous of her relationship with Lowe?

Amanda once asked me, and I get why she’d think that.

Growing up, it used to be Misery and me— just the two of us, hand in hand against the world.

Now it’s Misery and Lowe and the cute child she’s somehow step-mommying despite having no business being left alone with someone whose fontanelles have barely closed.

And yes, me too. Somewhere out yonder. In the periphery.

But I told Amanda that I wasn’t, and it’s the truth.

I don’t think I’m capable of jealousy. It’s a feeling that requires the assumption that something is due, and I never developed that.

Years in an orphanage, then more years as the Collateral’s baby doll, will beat the possessiveness out of anyone.

Still, change requires adjustment— and secrets require distance.

When I realized that I needed to step away, I mixed truth and lies, said I was overstimulated, and asked for an isolated place to acclimatize to my Were senses.

Misery and Lowe didn’t love the idea of me leaving the Southwest, but they believed the tale I spun.

Want to know who didn’t believe it? Koen. Why some guy I’d met two months earlier was better than my lifelong friend at reading through my bullshit is something I have no intention of pondering.

“Just kidding about the toilet paper,” Misery adds. “I know you people just shift into wolves and lick your own butts.”