Page 45 of Ruthlessly Mated (Shared Mates #2)

T ailor

I walk into the house one afternoon and realize that something has forever changed.

I can’t say what it is that tips me off.

Is it a different scent? Maybe? A mood, perhaps.

The seasons are changing. Winter is coming to an end and spring is causing flowers to bloom and the days to become longer, and spirits to rise.

The port is well on the way to being rebuilt.

Some of the smugglers are already coming through, but using tents and temporary structures now that the docks are back in place.

Coastwood is seeing an increase in business again, which is making the locals happy.

I have been down looking at new fabrics for the upholstery I have planned.

I find Conroy sitting in the kitchen with an empty plate full of crumbs in front of him. He has a strange expression on his face, as if something entirely unexpected has befuddled him. It transforms his features in a way I have never seen before.

“What’s going on?”

He turns his head to me slowly.

“She bit me.”

“You mean she shifted and bit you? Accidentally? She got riled up in her animal self?”

“No. I mean she just bit me. For no reason. Really hard. And then she took a cake upstairs and she’s eating it in bed.”

He looks befuddled, as if he doesn’t know what to do about any of it. That’s the strange part. Conroy has never been shy about handling Kita. He’s arguably the most aggressive of us all when it comes to laying down the law. So finding him here, staring at an empty cake plate is very odd.

“Why didn’t you just discipline her?”

“You go in that room and tell me if you want to discipline her.”

I go up to see Kita. I am expecting her to look sheepish after the behavior, plus she knows that she is not allowed to disrespect us. I made that very clear not all that long ago. Conroy might be backing down for some reason that makes no sense, but I don’t intend to.

She is sitting cross-legged in bed with a very large bowl of cake smashed together in several chunks. She has extra syrup drizzled over the top, and ice cream on the side. It is enough dessert for an entire pack.

She snarls as I enter, a deep animal sound that makes something inside me quiver.

I suddenly know why Conroy looked like he did. Something’s changed.

“What do you want?” She asks the question with a harsh timbre to her tone, and the general demeanor of a beast who just took down her first prey and does not intend to share any of it.

I had intended to raise a brow and lecture her about good behavior and tell her that if she wanted to bite, she’d soon find herself muzzled—maybe even do it myself with my cock, give her something to fill her mouth with.

But the energy in the room suggests I’d be more likely to lose my member than have it pleasured.

Something has shifted inside Kita. Something that makes her seem twice as fierce as she has ever been before.

“Do you want something to drink?”

“Oh,” she says. “No. Thank you.”

“Alright, call out if you need.”

I shut the door and go back downstairs to join Conroy at the kitchen table.

“What happened to her, or with her?”

“Nothing that I know of. I was down at the docks today, came back, found her in the kitchen making a cake, and then when I asked what it was in aid of she snapped, told me she didn’t have to justify her actions, and when I told her she better watch how she talked to me, she smashed the whole cake into a bowl and bit me. ”

“Okay.”

Damon walks in at that moment with a curious expression on his face. He sits down with us and looks at our faces.

“What’s wrong?”

“Nothing. Probably.”

“Where’s Kita?”

“Upstairs.”

He nods, and goes upstairs. We can hear his feet on the stairs, and then on the landing, and then he opens the door.

“ Wargle bargle dink donk furk! ” Something muffled comes from the upstairs room. Words, probably, but they’re more like machine gun fire.

We hear footsteps on the stairs, and then Damon comes back into the kitchen looking concerned.

“I think she’s possessed.”

He’s never spoken to us this much in his life.

Conroy and I exchange looks. It sounds silly, but I can sense us both somewhat agreeing with him.

“We should go and talk to the doctor.”

“She’s a doctor, not a witch doctor,” Conroy says.

“I know, but she’s the only doc we have, and she has enough experience with our kind to keep us alive, and I don’t know who else we can talk to about this and get anything other than break-up-with-her advice.”

“Break up with her?” Conroy snorts.

“That’s the default advice for everything from a partner who won’t do dishes to one who kills your whole family.”

“From who?”

“From singles and divorcees.”

“What the hell are you talking about?”

“We should see the doctor,” I repeat.

This time, he agrees.

That same afternoon, the three of us are taking up all the space in the waiting room. When Mandy comes bustling in, her eyes run across all of us. “None of you seem to have any bullet holes in you, which is a good thing. Which one of you wants to go first?”

“We’re not here for us,” I say.

“You’re not?” she says. “Usually patients come here because they need treatment.”

“We think there’s something wrong with Kita.”

“Oh? Has she been nauseous?” She takes a shot in the dark and misses entirely. Strange. I imagine if a doctor had to guess the reason for someone’s visit it would take them a very long time. Highly inefficient.

“Uhm. No.”

“Okay,” she says, seeming surprised. “What is wrong with her?”

“We think she might be possessed.”

Her lips quirk in an odd way, and her eyes seem to sparkle.

“Possessed?”

“Yes.”

“Well, fortunately, possession is not a medical condition, so I think we can rule that out.”

Conroy starts. “She’s been behaving very…” We look at one another.

“Temperamentally,” I explain. “She doesn’t seem like herself.”

“In what way?”

“She has the temperament of a rabid badger,” Tailor says.

“She’s drawing blood,” I add. “And she’s eating a lot. Quite a lot.”

The doctor nods. “Any weakness? Dizziness?”

“The opposite. I’ve never seen her so strong.”

“Alright, well, she sounds healthy and what you’re saying her is quite normal given her situation.”

“What situation?”

The doctor looks surprised for a moment, then clamps her mouth shut, her lips forming a thin line oddly reminiscent of a vault. Whatever she was going to say will never be said.

“If you have any real concerns about your partner, bring her in for a checkup. In fact, bring her in,” she says. “But possession is not a medically diagnosable condition, though behavioral changes are sometimes linked to hormonal shifts.”

“I don’t know if she will come in.”

“Tell her I would like to see her tomorrow for some monitoring,” she says.

“She won’t like it.”

“Just tell her. Now, boys, I have other patients to see. Don’t worry, a little moodiness is normal.”

Conroy

“She’s not telling us something,” Damon says after we are shooed out of the clinic.

“No. She’s not.”

“She can’t. She has to keep medical things confidential,” Tailor says.

“She has to keep them confidential, but there’s nothing Kita needs to keep from us. We should know everything about her.”

“I don’t know about that,” Tailor says. “She’s allowed privacy.”

I look at Damon. Damon looks back at me and gives a light shrug.

“Why don’t we just tell her that the doctor wants to see her and let her go see the doctor.

If there’s something wrong, we will find out then,” Tailor says.

He’s being the voice of reason again. He loves to do that.

Loves to be the one who makes sense. He handled all the money at the old port, and the logistics.

I managed leadership issues. Damon handled surveillance and underhand activities.

With Kita, things have settled into a similar pattern, but I am not as happy to just leave the outcome to him when it comes to her. I want to know what is happening. Every detail. I want to know what’s going on with Kita. I want to know it now.

I am realizing that Tailor was wrong and the doctor was right. We need to talk to our mate. We need to go home.

Kita is waiting for us when we arrive. She is standing at the front door, arms folded over her chest, and an expression of true irritation on her pretty features.

“Where did you all go?” She asks the question in demanding tones.

“We were in town,” Tailor says.

She looks at all of us, visibly annoyed. “Well, you didn’t tell me, did you? I’m not allowed to go anywhere without telling you anything, but you get to all just disappear without saying a word. I didn’t know what had happened. For all I knew, a vampire had come and eaten you all.”

“You were asleep. We didn’t want to wake you. You’ve been very tired lately.”

She flinches away from Tailor’s soothing hand and practically growls at him.

“Don’t touch me,” she hisses. “I didn’t know where any of you were.

I thought we weren’t allowed to do that.

I’m not allowed to just go out, you’d all chase me down and beat me if I did that, and you did it as if it didn’t matter. Such a fucking double standard.”

She pushes past all of us and goes stamping out the door.

“Kita! The doctor wants to see you.” I call out.

Kita whips around, her eyes narrowed, her face pale and pinched with annoyance. “Why?”

“We don’t know. She just asked us to let you know on our way past.”

We are now lying to our mate, and she might be lying to us, at least by omission. Something is going on.

“Is something happening that we should be aware of, Kita?”

“What do you mean?” She is immediately defensive.

“You’ve been acting more… Well, worse, lately.”

I feel Damon slide into the shadows. I don’t see it, I just know he’s gone. Tailor backs me up. Or hides behind me. One of the two. Kita transforms, not into her wolf self, but into some other kind of feminine entity I don’t quite recognize.

“I’ve been acting worse? I’ve been your little captive for weeks now.

I haven’t gone anywhere. I haven’t done anything.

I haven’t tried to kill any vampires. I haven’t stolen any rare and dangerous artifacts.

I’ve spent my days wasting my life, just like you wanted, being a fuck receptacle for all of you and feeling my brain liquefy and slide out of my ears. ”

Her tone is incredibly harsh, vicious with feral rage. Her eyes are narrowed and there is something… different about her. She smells different. She looks different. She looks like the female incarnation of rage.

“Are you bored? Is that it?”

“ Bored? ” She spits the word as loud as possible.

“I am more than bored. I am ruined. That’s what I am.

I am a pointless creature who only exists to produce more creatures.

I am a vessel. That’s it. That’s all you think of me as.

That’s all any of you care about. Breeding me.

You make it sound hot, but it’s actually the same as neutering me. ”

“We haven’t actually been mating lately, Kita. You haven’t been in the mood.”

“Oh, that matters, does it?”

“Of course it matters,” I say. “I care about you, no matter what. We all do. I know the breeding is a lot, and I know you have mixed feelings about it, but we’re not here to hurt you. We love you.”

“Oh. You do.”

“Yes, Kita. You know that.”

I am trying to maintain my temper. I don’t know what the hell is going on with her, but I know she is pushing me deliberately.

“Do you want me to beat you? Is that it? Do you need to be punished?”

“No! And if you try, I’ll fucking kill you.”

She says that sentence with so much ferocity I find myself believing her. Something is very wrong with our mate. She is not herself.

Her eyes fill with tears and she storms off into the forest, angry and irritable and full of… something I can’t quite identify. I don’t know what’s wrong with me. My instincts would usually be to whip her ass for disrespect, but something is staying my hand.

I see Damon following her, sliding through the shadows, ensuring she is not alone.

Tailor steps forward next to me.

“There’s something going on with her. Maybe it’s something to do with women. Maybe it’s some kind of female emotional… something.”

“Maybe it’s exactly what she said. We’ve locked her down. We’ve taken her freedom. Her life as she knew it is over, but there’s nothing to replace it yet. And she didn’t choose it. This has all been forced on her.”

Tailor puts his hand on my shoulder. “You’re being very caring,” he says. “I’m impressed. I know you must have wanted to whip her ass. I did.”

“She doesn’t smell the same. Did you notice that?”

“I was too busy being thoroughly annoyed to notice, but I will take your word for it,” Tailor says.