Page 2 of Primal Mirror

Hers was…problematic. Erratic in the most abnormal way he’d ever sensed. He’d never usually use that term about a person—each person’s normal was their own, scent a very unique marker—but it was the only one that suited this specific situation.

Her scent fit none of the parameters for a sentient being. Had it been formed of light, he’d have said the rays were reflecting off a funhouse mirror that distorted everything. Muddy and sluggish and with too many pieces to it, it made his leopard snarl.

Those extraordinary eyes—such a striking translucent hue—held his for a split second before drifting away.

He didn’t mistake it for an act of submission.

Lost in her own world, this woman likely didn’t hold anyone’s eyes.

It would’ve been easy to peg her as neurologically atypical, but that didn’t sit right, either. Not when her scent was so wrong. He’d interacted with others through the years who wouldn’t meet his eyes in the same way, but their scents had read as natural nonetheless.

Never had he met anyone with such a fragmented and unsettled scent…almost as if she wasn’t a whole person at all, rather a collection of disparate pieces that clashed and broke against each other.

The hairs on his nape prickled.

Yet he didn’t do anything to stop her when she reached for his hand. He couldn’t, however, keep his leopard’s claws from pushing out of his skin or his eyes from shifting back to those of his cat. That cat’s initial fascination with her had turned into a confused protectiveness: it didn’t want to hurt her, seeing her as wounded, but it also didn’t want her too close.

She didn’t pause or stare at his clawed hands, continuing on her trajectory until her fingers grazed the face of his mobile comm unit. Small as an ordinary watch, the thing was pristine even more than ten years after its purchase…because Remi had never been able to make himself use it except for this one day every year.

Her birthday.

“I know you’ll never spend this kind of money on yourself,” his mother had said with a smile right before the end, when she’d insisted he take it. “You and your dragon’s hoard.”

All those years he’d been denying his instincts to nurture and protect a pack, determined he’d never be an alpha, he’d still hardly spent anything. He’d told himself he was saving for retirement…even when he’d believed with every fiber of his being that he’d fuck up his life well before then.

“Rem-Rem.” A whisper of a word from the woman with the muddy scent.

One that kicked him right in the gut.

“So tired.” She swayed left and right. “My wrist is so thin this is falling off. Wonder if my Rem-Rem will figure out I bought it for him in the first place.”

Remi fought not to lash out, not to react in a rage of grief. Because she couldn’t be reading his mind. Changeling shields were too powerful. She’d have had to launch a violent telepathic assault before she could have ever gotten to his memories—and such an assault would’ve probably destroyed his brain in the process.

Whatever this was, it wasn’t mind reading.

“It’s my mother’s,” he said, his voice harsh. “She left it to me.” She was also the only person in the entire world who’d called him Rem-Rem. But only when they were alone together. Because it was a little boy’s name, and “oh my Rem-Rem, what a man you’ve become”—words she’d spoken to him more than once, her eyes shining with love.

But the blue-eyed woman who knew his deepest memories was listening only to her own internal voice. “One last gift.” Her face softened. “My boy, I’m so proud of you.” Her lashes quivered, her eyes staring hard into nothing. “Cake. Brown cake. Small brown cakes.”

“Chocolate cupcakes.” His mother’s favorite; she’d baked them at least once a week.

Later, after she was too sick, he’d baked them for her.

“Pieces of color. Tiny pieces of color on the small brown cakes.” A blink that appeared to have been forced by her watering eyes. “It hurts.” She pressed a hand to her stomach. “Oh, it hurts.” Then she made soft sounds…that were an exact mimicry of his mother’s small heart monitor signaling an emergency alert.

Remi jerked away his hand.

She stumbled, swayed.

Feeling like shit, though his face was hot, his grief tangled with anger at the intrusion into the most painful part of his past, he gripped her upper arm to stabilize her. A jolt under him before her head shifted, her eerie, beautiful eyes meeting him head-on.

At that instant, there was no lack of clarity to her, no fuzziness to the edges of her.

And no muddiness in her scent.

It was complex, and bright, and intoxicating.

“She was happy the last time she wore that watch.” Clear words, the intent in them potent. “No pain, just comfort at being with you, at lying by the window in the sun, with the forest just outside.

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