Page 23 of Witchbane

“Stop, Mom. It’s my fox that is the problem. Not cancer or anything,” I snapped at her. “It’s magical shit that you obviously don’t want any part of.”

“Sebastian…”

“No,” I shut her down. Sometimes reaching that emotional breaking point was enough to make even me turn off the nice. I was tired, and didn’t want to soothe her worries when I had a mountain of my own to climb. “You don’t get a say. You gave me up because I changed. What I am scares you. I’m not even sure why you’re here at all. To make me feel bad for existing again? Because seriously, that’s what you do. I didn’t choose to be born. I didn’t ask to be a fox. And you gave me up. Which means you don’t get a say in who I love.”

She looked like I’d slapped her, but I was done. I needed to be home with the pack and Liam wrapped around me to brood and plan, or at least cry and eat cake. I got into the passenger seat of the car, not caring if she was coming home with us or not. Liam got in the driver’s side, put the key in the ignition, then reached for my hand.

Touching him should have brought me complete peace. Except I could still feel the kitsune. A boiling pit of energy, I realized, stuck churning.

“We’ll figure it out,” Liam promised. He was a man of promises. Worked hard to make them happen too, but I didn’t think he had a lot of control over this.

“I’m sorry,” I said.

“For what?”

“Being me?” I didn’t really have another reason. This, in a nutshell, was my life, filled with bad breaks and twisted roads. He hadn’t really known all that when he signed on, and now he was stuck.

“I love you,” Liam said.

“Shitstorm and all,” I joked.

“Shitstorm and all,” he agreed. “Let the poop rain down.”

“Gross.”

The door behind me opened and closed. I heard my mother put on her seat belt, but she was otherwise silent. Liam steered us toward home, turning up the radio a little and keeping hold of my hand.

I actually fell asleep in the car. Didn’t remember closing my eyes. But it happened that fast, me leaning over, Liam’s hand clenched in mine. Sleep and then a sudden curse and I felt the car jerk to the side and then slam to a stop.

I blinked disoriented eyes for a minute, wondering what had happened, but Liam was sitting in the driver’s seat, both of his hands gripping the steering wheel and staring out at the road in front of us. I glanced up and had to do a double take.

There was a portal in the road. A swirling glimpse to a frozen world not unlike the palace I’d visited. Here the trees were almost nonexistent and flat, the snow covered land went on as far as we could see.

Fuck!

I sat up straight, snapping awake. The portal flickered and vanished. I did a slow pan to Liam, certain there was horror on my face. “I only dozed for a few minutes…”

“What was that?” my mother demanded.

Liam was breathing hard, likely his fast reaction had been the only thing that had kept us from driving directly into Underhill. “I think you should stay awake until we get home,” he told me quietly.

I reached up to grab the “oh-shit” handle on the top edge of the doorframe and nodded. “Awake, alert, and in control.” The last was a stretch, but Liam steered us back toward home. “Don’t worry, Mother,thatwas another reason I’m not normal. As soon as we get home, we can find someone to give you a ride back to the airport. I’m sure your real family misses you.”

“You are my real family, Sebastian.”

“Yeah? I opened up a portal to a world filled with deadly monsters in my sleep. You sure you want to hang around that?”

“Seb,” Liam whispered.

I was tired of being hurt. Never being enough, always someone’s problem for being me. I was fucking tired.

“I love you,” Liam said.

And just like that he was a balm to the stinging pain of my mother’s presence. He never looked at me and thought freak, monster, animal.

“Mine,” he said, catching my thoughts as he often did when we were this close.

“I love you too,” I told him. Hard to believe the short amount of time it had taken for me to not only accept that we were mates bound by fate, but to fall madly in love with him. “The forest god said he chose you for me.”