Page 39 of Bred Mate
“A couple more silver bracelets,” my mother says, procuring some from her pocket. She has them wrapped in a pretty little kerchief with her initials on them. “Wear these and remember who you could be if only you’d try.”
“Why don’t you remember who you would be if you weren’t so scared of yourself,” I shoot back.
I want to shift, and to run, but the silver I’ve got around my neck is making me less certain of that ability. Also shifting in front of these people means having to kill them, and that means two dead bodies, and though I want them dead for obvious reasons, that doesn’t actually mean I want to kill them. It’s fucked up, how the average person is left at the mercy of evil people simply because they won’t also be evil.
“You’ll thank me one day,” she says. “Months, or maybe years from now, when you’re happy and you’re normal and you live in a nice house with nice, normal children. You’ll understand then that this was a gift.”
There’s nothing worse than someone reformed. My mom used to fuck every shifter guy she met and have a kid with him. Now she’s acting like some kind of Martha Stewart of human propriety, and she wants me to play the same game too.
“I’ll take care of her,” Patrick says, trying to get some of his previously lost composure back. “I lost control a little, but then there’s…”
“Women are hard work,” his father says.
I feel like I’ve been trapped in some 1950s nightmare. All I want is Karl. I fantasize about him smashing through the window and beating the shit out of these people, just like he did to those guys who were driving their machines through the forest. I was so ungrateful at the time. I didn’t know what I had.
“I’m going to take her out of state, far enough away that she can start a new life with me,” he says. “I understand what’s needed here. Don’t worry. I’ve got this, Dad.”
This is all about making his father proud. Sick.
Patrick and I get into the car. He’s driving, naturally, which is good. He keeps his eyes on the road and piece by piece I take the fucking silver off.
He’s not paying attention. Why would he? My mother will never admit that she’s a shifter, or I’m a shifter.
“Why did you agree to do this?”
He never moves his eyes from the road. He’s not looking at me at all. He’s blanking me, basically. Stupid asshole. I can’t believe how easy this is going to be.
“My father is going to cut me out of the will if I don’t get married,” he says.
“Why not marry a friend?”
He snorts. “That’s gay.”
I didn’t say male friend. He went there first. Confirms my suspicion. I feel kind of sorry, so I want to give him one last chance. He’s a fucker, and a danger to women, but I figure if he’s not really interested, he’s not really going to be a danger to them. Unless, I guess, he finds someone else to marry.
“Shut the fuck up,” he says.
That decides it.
“Thanks,” I say.
“For what?”
“For making my decision really easy.”
I shift.
The sound he makes when he finds himself in a closed vehicle with a massive beast is really funny. It’s a strangled sort of noise, one of disbelief and fear. I had intended to bite his goddamn head off, but the last scrap of human sentience makes me consider that we are traveling at sixty miles plus down a highway, and if this idiot freaks out too much more, he might kill us both and someone else who doesn’t deserve it.
I shift back. Now I’m sitting naked in his passenger seat, and to be frank, that might actually be worse for him. A naked lady on his leather car seats. The horror.
He keeps screaming. The sound of his fear is like licking the last bit of frosting off a spatula. It’s satisfying and cozy and feels just a little decadent, but also well earned, like it’s the product of having done something others will also enjoy.
He pulls over to the side of the road and throws his car door open.
“Help!” he shrieks at the top of his lungs. It makes me laugh. There’s nobody to help him.
“Nobody’s going to help you now. I tried to help you, back at the house, when I told you that I’d go in on this with you and just escape. But you wanted to slap me around. You wanted to brutalize me with beatings and silver. You wanted to do what Daddy told you to, and now look at you.”
