Page 20 of Unforgivable Fate

“What’re you doing here?” She glared at Griffin rather than telling her brother how stupid he was to let a stranger, a stranger with a blood connection to a man that had killed their family and that they had killed in return, just hang out with him in a kitchen full of knives and other possible weapons.

“Nova.” Leo frowned at her rudeness but Griffin only smiled when he saw her.

“No, it’s okay. She’s clearly worried about you being alone with me.” Griffin stood up to his full height, forgetting the map he’d been pointing to and meeting Nova’s gaze. “But obviously if I was here to harm your brother, I’d have done it by now.”

“It’s true.” Leo added. “He’s been here nearly an hour. He’s had plenty of chances to make a move. Instead, he’s been helping me just like he said he would.”

Nova motioned between the two of them, who looked far too familiar for her liking, “And Darius is okay with this?”

“Darius is out for his morning run of the perimeter but he knew Griffin was coming by.” Leo shrugged.

Nova ground her teeth together. She wanted to point out that if both Leo and Darius knew that Griffin was going to be here this morning then they could have warned her but she didn’t bother. They’d obviously thought that she wouldn’t come if she’d known and since they were right, she couldn’t very well deny it.

She may have decided that running away from her problems hadn’t been the best way to deal with the mating bond but she hadn’t changed her mind about trusting Griffin Clary overnight either. He seemed nice enough but she’d seen a Clary play nice before and she wasn’t going to be tricked again. She might not be denying the mate bond on principle alone but she also wasn’t ready to jump in head first and allow the chips to fall where they may.

Cautious and slow was how she planned to play it. After all, they had a couple of weeks until the full moon. She could get to know her supposed mate better between now and then and make a decision based on everything she uncovered about him.

She would just have to deal with the mating heat until she trusted him, or realized that she couldn’t. It wasn’t so bad. Not really. Sure her wolf was constantly pacing beneath her skin and she felt like she had some sort of internal radar that was always searching for him, but she could ignore a few aches and pains. She’d dealt with worse and wanting to jump the man’s bones wasn’t an instinct she was willing to give into, not even if he looked good enough to lick.

When she admitted he was handsome yesterday, it felt like too much. It had felt like a betrayal of her parents, her family, even herself. She’d thought she could remove her own feelings from the matter, because it was a simple, basic fact of the way he looked.

Today, there was no keeping her feelings out of it though and she cursed the mating heat for causing her pulse to quicken and her stomach to flutter just from being near him.

It shouldn’t be legal for a man like him to wear a plain white tee. It just shouldn’t. It was too easy, too effortless, and yet it made women stupid. That thin white material against his dark skin begged for a second look and once you looked it was impossible not to notice the way the sleeves stretched to accommodate his biceps. It hugged his broad chest like it felt lucky to be there and at that moment Nova hated herself for being a little bit jealous of a stupid piece of cotton cloth.

“Turns out he’s done a lot of traveling so he’s helping me map out packs I didn’t even know existed.” Leo was talking again, turning his attention back to the map.

Nova forced her eyes up from the hint of a tattoo that peeked through the thin fabric of Griffin’s t-shirt and caught him watching her. There was humor in his golden brown eyes but also something else. Heat and possessiveness, a need that told her she wasn’t the only one feeling the effect of the bond.

She looked away from him and moved to the other side of the table, effectively putting Leo between them. It was safer that way. She might be committed to taking this whole thing one slow step at a time but her wolf had no such compunction. She was practically vibrating beneath Nova’s skin, just waiting for Nova to let down her guard so she could break free and take what she wanted.

“All of these marks are wolf packs?” Nova forced a deep breath, trying to calm her racing heart, but it didn’t help since she pulled in more of that intoxicating woodsy scent of her mate.

“No, that’s the thing.” Leo was grinning like a kid who had just been handed a bag of candy. “He came across other types of shifters too. Like this one here…” Leo pointed, “This one is a pack of big cat shifters, cougars and mountain lions and bobcats, all living together peacefully.” He excitedly pointed to another, “And this one is a group of raccoon shifters! Raccoons! I didn’t even know that was a thing!” Leo laughed, “And this one is a clan of bear shifters, which is good to know after our little run in a few years back. Isn’t this amazing?”

Nova looked for her overly excited brother to Griffin and then back again, “He’s fucking with you.”

Leo jerked his head up, “What?”

“There’s no such thing as raccoon shifters. That is ridiculous.”

“That’s what I thought too!” Leo grinned, pointing to Griffin, “Tell her. Tell her how you told me.”

“It’s true.” Griffin was smiling too as if he’d expected her skepticism. “Raccoon shifters exist. They’re small, and I’m not talking about the kind of animals they turn into. It’s a small pack and they’ve mostly been hunted out over the ages so they don’t interact much with outsiders. I stumbled onto them by accident.”

“And they just let a wolf into their midst and told you all about their history?” Nova scoffed.

“My wolf was out hunting and I came across one of them. Chased it down and the bastard tried to claw my eyes out. My wolf backed off a little and as soon as I did, the thing shifted into a boy of about fifteen. I was so shocked I shifted too.” Griffin shrugged. “We got to talking because what fifteen year old boy isn’t a little bit awed when he comes across a wolf that doesn’t eat him, and the next thing I knew I was having dinner with his family.”

Nova stared at him for a long moment, trying to gauge if every word out of his mouth was complete and utter bullshit or not. The thing was, he sounded genuine. Honest. As if he was as amazed by the experience as they were. She shifted slightly, wondering if he had more details he could spit out at the drop of a dime.

“So they look like regular raccoons then?”

“Slightly larger than your standard raccoon. Probably to accommodate for their human size though I didn’t ask about it since it seemed like a personal question.” Griffin shrugged, “I mean, our wolves are all moderately bigger than a normal wolf so it makes sense.”

“I’m surprised they just let you walk out of their territory if they’re so worried about being hunted down and wiped out.”

“I stayed with them for a few days. Helped them with some projects they were working on like building a better alert system for when someone invaded their territory. I wasn’t a threat to them and they recognized that so when it was time for me to move on, they only asked that I not share their location with anyone who might be a threat to them which I happily obliged.”

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