Page 4 of Bullied Pretend Mate
Xeran has been one of my best friends since high school. It was hard to see him realize his own brothers were part of the problem, letting their own greed get to them.
It was even harder to play a role in their deaths.
When they went too far, kidnapping Lachlan’s mate, I was the one to figure out where they were. I’ve always had a wicked good sense of smell, and after the last couple of fires, I could smell something sweet, almost sticky. A burnt sugar smell that nearly mirrored Xeran’s—in fact, all the Sorels’.
It was the old candy factory, barely standing on the edge of town, somehow having survived fire after fire through the years.
That’s where we found them, and that’s where Kalen and I cornered Farris, outnumbering him. The panic in his eyes—the raw, vulnerable fear—was enough for me to feel sorry for him. Younger than me, and younger than Soren, I’d remembered playing with the kid, being there for his first shift.
But in the end, Kalen had tackled his own brother, sending them skittering. A single second before or after, and it would have been Kalen under that jagged piece of rusted metal, his head severed. The memory of it, the image, flashes into my mind frequently, making me sick.
“Felix,” my mother says, drawing me out of the memory.
I blink at her, trying to clear the images of blood and gore from my head. Since it happened, I have a tendency to get stuck in these daydreams—or daynightmares.
“Yeah?” I answer, clearing my throat. “What’s up?
“Will you answer thedoor?” she asks, raising her eyebrows.
As though responding to her statement, there’s a soft, tentative knock at the door. I realize whoever it is has been knocked before, and, for some reason, my mother wants me to answer it.
“Mom.” I shake my head. “You didn’t.”
“Just go answer the door, Felix.”
Sighing, I push up from my chair, practically dragging my feet to the front door, where I find exactly what I was expecting to see.
“Thank you so much for inviting me, Felix!” Annette says, the moment I open the door, before I’m even able to offer my own greeting.
Today, she’s wearing a tight pair of low-rise jeans and a long-sleeved black shirt that shows off her chest. Her cheekbones are high and sharp, her makeup accentuating them to the point of ridiculousness.
Objectively, Annette is gorgeous. The kind of woman you might see walking the runway in a tiny little bikini, her ultra-flat stomach defying the laws of physics. But every time I see her, something in me shudders away.
She reaches in, wrapping her arms around my neck and pulling me in for a hug that I don’t want, her breasts pressing against my chest. Almost like she’s doing it on purpose.
“Oh, don’t thank me,” I say, managing to disentangle myself from her. “It must have been my mother who invited you.”
I don’t realize my mother is standing behind me until she whips me with the towel, where Annette can’t see it. Annette swallows, looking between me and my mom. A blush would rise to her cheeks now if her makeup wasn’t full-coverage.
“Well,” she says, smiling. “Thanks for the invite, no matter who it came from.”
We move to the dining room, and I try not to glower at my mother. She’s been on this for weeks—me needing to find a date for the string of weddings coming up this summer. With the fires raging for the past few years, people around here have been postponing and postponing. Now that it looks like they might finally be done, all those couples are rushing to tie the knot.
Something I thoroughly don’t understand.
I’ve tried to explain to my parents that I’m just not that interested in marriage, no matter how hung up they are on the idea of me getting too old. For one, I’m not some Victorian spinster. And for two, there are plenty of humans who go their entire lives without getting married ormating.
This is something my parents just don’t understand. For them, their entire lives revolved around finding the right person, marrying them, and staying with them. It’s biologically driven in a shifter.
And that biology is there for me. But I just know with a certainty that I’m not going to find the right person, so what’s the point in trying? Better to keep my expectations on the floor.
While we eat dinner, my parents ask Annette questions, charming her, making it seem like this thing is entirely normal. Annette and I grew up together and have known each other our entire lives. But that doesn’t mean I’m going to fall into bed with her, much less mate her.
Not when there’s another girl I grew up with. Another girl who lives in my head, her scent seeming to float around me even when I know there’s no chance she’s within a hundred miles of here.
***
When I wake up the next morning, twisted in my sheets, it’s with the scent of Maeve Villareal around me like a curse.
