Page 39 of Guarded By a Monster

I barely registered when Thurl took my hand and led me outside and pushed me into the porch swing. He crouched in front of me, his ears at half-mast.

“Are you all right?”

I nodded. Tried for a smile but it fizzled. “I’m fine.”

His tongue licked at his muzzle as he inspected the porch boards. “Would you like to talk now?”

His entire frame sagged like an old balloon. I stomped the urge to run my fingers through the fur at his neck and stiffened my spine. “What’s the catch?”

His head tilted, but that porch board was fascinating. “Catch?”

“There has to be a catch, right? Nothing is ever perfect. Why should the mate thing be any different?”

The back door swung open with a bang and we both jumped. Nanna smiled softly at me, her hands wrapped around a thick binder held to her chest. She stepped around Thurl and held it out to me.

“I borrowed this from the common hall. I knew you’d be analyzing every angle, but sweetheart, some things can’t be analyzed. Magic, the fates, and most of the supernatural world fall into that category.”

I took the binder from her and stared down at its nondescript cover.

“That said,” she waved her hand at the book, “they can be explained a bit better than a wave of the hand and a mumbled abracadabra.”

She patted Thurl on the head. “Come help an old woman clean up. Jade will be in after a while.”

I caught his worried look from the corner of my eye before he followed Nanna inside. My focus was on the table of contents which identified this binder as about shifters. Highlighted in the table of contents was “The Fates & Fated Mates.” I thumbed through to that section and read.

Thirty minutes later, I flipped back to the table of contents. There was a phone number, preceded by the word “bacon.” I hoped I wasn’t about to call a butcher, but I had one question left and if the person on the other end of this line could answer it, then I’d risk buying some breakfast meat.

I barely heard a single ring before a lilting female voice answered.

“Go for Bacon.”

“Umm… hi.”

“Hi?” She drew the word out, making it even more of a question.

“Sorry.” I cleared my throat and started over. “I’m Jade, and I’m holding a binder that you gave to … a friend of mine. I have a question and saw this number on the table of contents page.”

“Oh. Well then, hello Jade. What can I do for you?”

I had no idea if the person on the other end of the line knew about Society, or the wyrfangs in particular. Her number was in the book, but people changed numbers all the time. “Do you know my friend?”

“If you’re holding the binder, then yes, we’ve met. Which one of the ‘fangs is your friend?”

I let out a sigh of relief. “Thurl.”

“Oooh, red eyes, big arms. So, what can I do for you, Jade?”

“Are the fates ever wrong?”

“What?”

“Do they ever get it wrong? Are there fated mates who end up not standing each other and being miserable?”

I heard her chuckle. “Those bitches have a one-hundred-percent perfect track record. It’s why all the shifters were so heartbroken when they were cut off from mates—though they seemed to have reversed course on that.”

“Your binder explained that. They were mad at Fenrir?”

“Yeah, the ultimate player and dead set on bagging a moirae. Idiot. Now mates are popping up all over, relatively speaking. Well, at least in Damruck.”

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