Page 13 of Undesired Mate

“They banished her a long time ago. She lives on her own.”

This keeps getting worse. “For what was done to her?” It’s not beyond belief, but it strikes me as being fucking cruel and unnecessary.

“Even though it wasn’t her choice, I came out of it. They couldn’t accept me.” Her tiny shrug is pitiful. “Just another reason to hate me and make sure I know she wishes I was never born.”

She deserves normalcy. The chance to live the way she’s meant to. “Can you take me there? I’ll find some other way to track her down, but it would take less time if you would lead me to her.”

“Now wait a second. What are you planning on doing?” She stands slowly, and the suspicious, dark energy pulsing through her is kind of enticing. “I know what I just told you, and every word was true, but I can’t sit by and let you kill her.”

“That’s not what I had in mind. I was thinking more about asking her to lift the curse. It’s keeping you from living as anormal shifter, and it’s going to get you killed. Not everyone is as understanding as I am.”

Am I imagining the way her mouth twitches? Like there’s something funny about that. “She’ll never do it. It doesn’t matter what you say.”

“You get me to her, and I’ll handle the rest.”

If I were human,I would never imagine a witch lives here. When they think of witches, they imagine all of the shit they have been fed since they were children. All about what witches are supposed to look like, what they do, how they live. I’m fairly sure that started as a way of protecting real witches, letting them blend in. It’s the same with our kind. Fill their heads with legends and lore, and they can’t see the reality in front of them.

A shifter like me, on the other hand? I smelled her a mile back, maybe further. Loping through the woods with Clara on my back—she wears a backpack containing my clothes, and when I shift a few hundred yards away from the neat, quiet cabin, I change into them.

“I feel like this might be a mistake.” If she chews her lip any harder, it will bleed. Her eyes are wider and filled with more terror than they were when we first met. “I don’t know if we should be here. Especially with you being a shifter. What if she?—”

Pulling my shirt over my head, I mutter, “I can handle her. But I need to know you’ll be able to handle yourself.” I can’t keep my attention on the witch while protecting the shivering, frightenedgirl now staring at the cabin through eyes as wide as saucers. Every breath she takes sends a shudder through her thin body. I’d swear I hear her bones rattling.

She frowns, chewing her lips some more, before nodding. “Okay. I’ll handle myself.” Her shoulders roll back, and her furrowed brow goes smooth. My wolf sees this, senses how hard she’s fighting to hold herself together.

I’m strangely proud of her as we continue to the cabin. The front porch is covered with potted plants, herbs for the most part, filling the sweet air with spicy, pungent aromas. I recognize a few symbols above the front door, drawn in what looks like brick dust. “Protection spells,” Clara whispers, noting the direction my gaze traveled in.

“So long as they’re not the kind that kill a shifter instantly on crossing the threshold.”

Snorting, she replies, “Then they would have killed me… not that she would’ve cared,” she adds, and some of the light drains from her eyes before she raises a fist to rap against the door.

Inside, a voice rings out. Female, powerful, tinged with rancor. “Why bother knocking? I know you’re there, and you’ve brought one of them with you.”

What a nice welcome from mother to daughter. We exchange a look, and Clara holds up a hand like she’s got this under control. “We came to talk. It’s very important. If it wasn’t, I wouldn’t have come back.”

After a silent moment, the voice rings out again. “Enter.”

Clara draws a deep breath before opening the door into what would be a cheerful home if it wasn’t for the presence of thewoman standing near the hearth opposite the doorway. She’s tall and slim, wearing a cardigan long enough that it almost sweeps the floor. Like Clara, her eyes are a startling shade of green. Her long, black hair is streaked with silver, but her face is youthful except for the deep frown lines bracketing her mouth. “Who are you? What right have you to disturb my peace?” she demands, glaring at me. I notice she doesn’t greet her daughter.

“My name is Levi.” Looking her up and down the way she does to me, I ask, “And you are?”

“Persephone. Owner of the home in which you stand, so I would advise you to show respect.” Now she turns her cold stare to her daughter before her nose wrinkles. “What could possibly bring you here? With one of them,” she adds, jerking her pointed chin my way.

Clara opens her mouth to speak, but I’m quicker. “You put a curse on your own daughter,” I murmur. “I’ve come to ask you to remove it.”

Folding her arms, she looks me up and down while my wolf growls in my head. “Who are you to come here and tell me what to do?”

“Someone who found your daughter in the woods, close to death, because she cannot defend herself or hunt for herself or live as a shifter due to what you’ve done.”

Snorting, she mutters, “Perhaps you should have let nature take its course.”

How could she mean that? Clara trembles but doesn’t seem surprised to hear it. “Lift the curse,” I warn with a growl, “unless you want me on your doorstep every day until it’s done.”

Her lips purse like she’s thinking it over before the corners tug upward. “You want the curse lifted? I’m afraid you will have to do something for me.”

“It’s not enough to set your daughter free?”

She only blurts out a laugh that sends an icy finger sliding down my spine. “Please. What I want is much more precious than that. I want the life of the shifter who destroyed mine by cursing me with her.”

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