Page 22 of The Worst Mate Ever

Brady

I sat in the library again as I searched through book after book of the ancients, trying to decipher the prophecy playing in my head on repeat. But as hard as I searched, I couldn’t find mention of a single being associated with the blood moon, though I should have known better. It wasn’t as though there weren’t hundreds of beings through history who sought power under a blood-moon.

I let out a sigh as I flipped the page to the next one. The image of the witch that Minerva had visited coming forth. The information there wasn’t too surprising. After discussing with my mother, it had seemed there was an incident in Montana involving the witch, and just as Minerva had mentioned in the last vision, she was dead. A forgotten goddess of an ancient world now gone from this one.

However, Mom believed it was necessary to reach out to the coven and pay them a visit to find out everything that the ancient witch had said. She and Dad were due to leave in the morning and had already sent a message informing the Moon Witches that they would be visiting. It was also a chance to meet with another fated mate pair that was made from a shifter and witch. From what I heard, they have a hybrid child themselves and Mom wishes to personally extend an invitation to them to send their children to our school.

I flipped the page again and looked at the second open book I had; the page opened to the other prophecy I had discovered the other night.

“Shadows,” I muttered to myself as I wrote the word on my notepad. Both prophecies had mentioned the shadows. I had assumed it was because they were in hiding, biding their time until they revealed their next move. But what if I was wrong? What if the mention of shadows was something more?

I quickly flipped through the pages of the first book to find the ancient vampires’ sections. Often shadows are associated with the night dwelling creatures. Maybe I would have better luck finding my answers there.

Different languages filled the pages, with a new translation under each line as the languages evolved and changed over time. The pages recorded the vampires and the last time they had been sighted before disappearing. The authors didn’t know what became of the vampires after a certain point. However, none of them seemed to resonate with the prophecy. That, or The Fates, was not yet ready to reveal to me the truth of what lies in the shadows just yet.

As I continued to flip through the pages of the book, the soft sound of the library door opening vaguely registered in my mind. I only felt pulled from my reading as the scent of coconut and sea salt washed over me and my gaze turned from the words of the page to the startled bright blue eyes of my mate.

She gasped as she looked around the library, seeming confused and surprised by my presence, as if she had expected to find someone else here. I smirked in her direction as I leaned back and propped my elbow against the back of my chair.

“Well now,” I said. “If I didn’t know any better, I’d say you were following me. Twice now you’ve managed to trap me in this library. You know, if you want to talk to me, all you have to do is ask. I always have time for you.”

Her shocked expression quickly melted to annoyance as she scoffed and rolled her eyes. “Yeah, because you’re all I ever think about and the motive for everything that I do.” She mocked.

“Aren’t I?” I smiled as her face burned a bright red. “You certainly are for me.”

“You’re a pig,” she growled. She made a move as though she was about to turn and leave, but she paused as her gaze landed on the book in front of me. “Why are you looking at him?”

I looked back at the page and frowned at the vampire featured there. The moment Madie stepped closer and leaned over me, her captivating scent filled my senses, driving me to the brink of madness. I leaned back to watch her gaze moving along the page, her lips moving as she traced over the words there.

“Have you seen him before? How do you know him is the better question? That’s an ancient vampire. One who hasn’t been seen since the medieval times.”

“Well, your book here needs to be updated because he was in San Diego just over a year ago. It was when Liberty and your dad came to visit with advice on our missing packs.” She reached across me and took a pen from the table and began to write the date.

I read over what she had written in, ending the page with a mention of his death at the hands of Alpha Nyte, the first known Alpha King in centuries.

“I guess I can cross him off my list then,” I sighed. Madie followed my hand to the notepad and tilted her head to the side.

“Shadows?” She pursed her lips. “The only thing with him shadowy was all the dark magic and mist surrounding him. Nyte had mentioned it was suffocating with the vampire surrounding them both in a cyclone of his own cloud. But there was nothing shadowy about him. Not unless you mean figuratively.”

“I’m not sure how it’s meant to be taken,” I admitted. I looked back at Madie, a seat now pulled up to the desk beside me as she began to flip through the book in front of me.

“How do you have a book with these ancients just written down like this? I thought there was little to no documentation on them.” She questioned me. “If only Paige had this book earlier, it would have been so helpful. But I suppose she had it under control, handling it exactly as it was intended to be handled. Not like any of these books had the witch she fought in it.”

“A witch?” I asked. “An ancient witch?”

Madie shook her head. “No, she was about ten years older than us. Nothing ancient about her aside from the dark magic she let consume her. I’m not certain about all the details, but what Paige had explained to me is that the witch was a victim just as much as the rest of us. The vampire seduced her and fed her with dark magic until she fully believed that he was who she belonged with above all others. Even her own mate.”

I leaned back in my seat and listened to her, curious now about the witch. “How did he feed her with dark magic?”

“I’m not exactly sure on that end. Paige would know more. She saw the truth in a vision, but the witch was the mate to Alpha Markus of the Oceanside pack. Her first dark spell had been to erase the memories of the pack to keep them from knowing she was their Luna. The spell didn’t fully work on Alpha Markus, however, and it had slowly driven him crazy. He started to believe that Paige was his mate, and he kidnapped her with the intention of making her his Luna.”

“That is interesting,” I mused aloud as I rubbed my chin. “You know, until recently, it had been unheard of for a shifter and a witch to be fated mates. It wasn’t until my grandparents’ time that witches and shifters even attempted a friendly relationship. So, the fact that the vampire targeted a witch who was mated to a shifter, it seems a little too coincidental.”

Madie’s brows furrowed as she looked at me. “What do you mean? What’s the big deal about shifter and witch pairings?”

“The big deal is that they lead to hybrids. And while my sister and I may not be completely balanced in our two halves, we are still stronger than an ordinary shifter or witch. Each witch and shifter pairing so far has been fruitful. Even my sister, as the first hybrid female, has had a baby with a promising affinity for magic. It’s almost like The Fates are pushing us together to build some kind of army.”

I watched her eyes widen as she looked back to my notepad; the word shadows held her attention once more as she swallowed hard.

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