Page 8 of Wicked

“I’m Candlewick.”

“Yes, I know. It’s nice to meet Manny’s fated mate.” She folds her arms across her chest and glares at him. “His very nice, very attractive fated mate who deserves more than a self-righteous brush-off.”

Manny doesn’t meet her gaze. “I should go get H.”

As he walks away from me, the distance between us becomes uncomfortable. I feel tugged in his direction almost like I’m a marionette and my strings are attached to him. I know he can feel it too because he stops right before he gets to the door and looks at me with a raw yearning equal to my own.

It makes me want to scream in frustration. There’s no need for us to be staring across the room at each other like star-crossed lovers. No one is keeping us apart except for his religion. It’s like being cockblocked by my fated mate’s imaginary friend.

He disappears through the door, leaving Anne and I alone on the roof.

“I’m sorry he’s being a dick to you right now,” she says. “I would like to tell you he’s not normally like this, but he is.”

“Normally like what?” It’s not like Manny meets his fated mate every day.

“Unwilling to allow himself to be happy. That man needs therapy more than I need a sweater, and I’m freezing my tits off up here.”

I laugh. She isexactlylike Gran, down to the close-lipped smile she tries to hold back in response to her own joke.

“Let me guess, he reads his scriptures instead of talking to a therapist?”

She throws her head back. “Yes! He doesn’t understand that those are two different things. There’s nothing wrong with reading, but it doesn’t replace dealing with your shit, and he has a lot of shit.”

I gathered as much when he said he was muzzled. They do that to red wolf shifters in the breeding pits. I’ve heard the most horrific things about the pits. The things he saw and experienced there must have scarred him for life.

Maybe I could be a little more patient with him. He was certainly understanding about what happened with Dorian.

“You should change out of that white suit,” Anne says, shivering. “There’s a closet up here with extra clothing somewhere. Every dragon shifter landing pad has one.”

I stare back at her in confusion. She’s naked. Why is she worried aboutmyclothes?

She sighs. “You’re wearing white, and we’re sneaking onto Dorian Gray’s property in the middle of the night. You’ll stand out like a beacon.” She shoos me away with her hands the way Gran used to do when she was baking cookies, and I was trying to snitch some dough. It’s strangely comforting.

I look around the rooftop until I find a small, dilapidated structure the size of a phone booth jutting out from the right corner. I walk up to it and find it’s unlocked.

“He’ll come around,” Anne says.

I turn back to her. “You think so?”

“Yes, I do. Last year he lived at my beach house, and he rarely went outside. He shut himself inside a bedroom and covered the window with paper until it was absolutely necessary for him to leave.”

“What? Why? Does his god believe playing on the beach is a sin too?”

“No. It was a beach that happened to have a lot of nude men. So he stayed in his room all day, even though he loves the beach.”

I know Anne is trying to make me feel better, but that story makes me wonder if our situation is hopeless. Maybe Fate gave me a mate but not a mate I can actually be with.

“One night there was a big fight on the beach,” Anne says. “He left his room to help break it up.”

I roll my eyes. “What am I supposed to do? Go around beating people up to get him to touch me?”

“Just hear me out. Manny left his bedroom because it was the right thing to do. At some point, he’ll figure out that rejecting his fated mate is wrong. And when he does, being with you will feel like the right thing to do.”

“So I just wait around for moral obligation to win out? Heaven forbid he actually wants to be with me.”

She smiles. “He does want to be with you. Of that I am absolutely certain. Be patient with him. He’s a good man. I promise you the wait will be worth it.”

Maybe it’s because she reminds me of Gran or maybe it’s the way Manny held me when I was scared, but I believe her.

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