Page 50 of Her Purr-fect Christmas Mate

She’s seen into the deepest part of my soul. The weakest part of me. And she didn’t reject it.

I need to tell her.

“Destroying the Hypatia isn’t my revenge. It was my grandmother’s. Her family built it. It was my great-grandfather’s grand gift to us all—a home to live in, with apartments and communal rooms big enough for our other forms. If we couldn’t fly, here in the city, we could at least lie beneath the stained-glass canopies and pretend we were lounging under starlight instead of electric bulbs.” He sighed.

“You… youwantthat. I felt it.”

His mouth twisted wryly. “It surprises me, too. I haven’t allowed myself to feel anything about the building except as something to destroy for… for a long time.”

“You said your grandmother took you somewhere underground to wait for your inner animal to emerge. Was that the Hypatia? No,” she got in before he could answer. “The timeline doesn’t match up.”

“The Hypatia had been lost to our family for decades by the time I first shifted. But the first time my grandmother described it to me, I wanted it.” He laughed humorlessly. “She soon cured me of that.”

“And you never let yourself want it again.” She narrowed her eyes at him. “No wonder there was a storm raging inside you.”

“What better way to ignore my own conflicted feelings than to hide them away where even I could not interrogate them?” He grimaced again. She leaned against him, warm and soft and reassuring. “My great-grandparents had their family late. Grandmother was still young when they died and left the building to her. And she found her mate young. And lost him young, too.”

“You said your grandmother is your only family.”

“Tragedy upon tragedy. Your soul has picked an unlucky family to connect itself to.”

She took his hand in hers. “No. I’m lucky to have found you.”

“My grandmother lost everyone she loved. Maybe if she hadn’t, she would be a different person. But she let her business advisers manage the Hypatia, and they took advantage of her grief to take the one thing she had left. And then they let it fall into ruin, as though it meant nothing.”

“That’s awful.” Peony bent her head against his shoulder, then looked up at him. “But she hadn’t lost everyone. She still had you.”

“I… do not believe she saw it that way. Later, I was a useful tool. Once my shifter abilities emerged, I could forge myself into someone who could help her achieve her revenge. Before that…” He shook his head.

Cold crept beneath his skin.

He looked down at Peony. The cold was coming from her—and behind it, a trembling, red-hot rage that made the last traces of the storm inside him vanish.

“I was wrong about the Christmas orders being the final loose end to deal with. Forget waiting until tomorrow to see your grandmother,” she snapped. “I want to meet her now.”

It was dark by the time they arrived at his grandmother’s apartment building.

Peony’s nose twitched as they looked up at it. “This is where she lives? I think I looked at a place in this building when I first moved to the city.” Her rage was still simmering, a reassuring warmth around his soul, but as she frowned up at the building, it was joined by confusion.

“Perhaps if you had, we would have met sooner. This is where I grew up.” He joined her, staring up at the dark, shabby building. “She refused to let me move her anywhere better until the Hypatia was back in her hands.”

“And then what? She was going to go squat in the rubble?”

He sensed her cat in the way she pinned the building with her gaze, but not the playful creature who’d tormented him—this was something fiercer and more intent. Protective.

Protective of me.He felt guilty at how wonderful it felt to have someone who wanted to protect him.

“You’ve got the paperwork?”

“In my pocket.”

“Good.” Peony marched forwards.

The smell of his grandmother’s home sent Mordecai straight back to his childhood. It filled his nostrils the moment they stepped out of the stairwell onto the landing outside her apartment. Rust and ash. Old, broken things full of old, dead memories. He tensed, and Peony took his hand.

His grandmother didn’t answer the bell. He braced himself. *Grandmother?*

*Mordecai? What are you doing here?*Her mind was heavy with suspicion.

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