Mate Bond

“For now,” Bowman said, a carton of orange juice in his hand. “Can’t say that for everyone out in the woods tonight. I need to make some calls.”

Bowman tumbled Ryan’s fur, and Ryan’s tail whacked against Kenzie’s side.

“Ask Cristian for his version of things,” Bowman said to Kenzie. He dropped a brief kiss on her cheek and was out the door, his cell phone already at his ear. “Cade,” she heard him say, “Wake the hell up already . . .”

Then he was gone.

“Adventures?” Afina asked in Romanian.

“Too many. Ryan, honey, go clean up, and I’ll make us breakfast.”

“I will,” Afina said as Ryan squirmed out of Kenzie’s arms and scampered away. “You have had too much happen to you. Which you will tell me all about.”

* * *

Talking to her grandmother did help Kenzie calm down a little. It always had.

Grandmother Afina could be a ruthless fighter, and she was Shifter to the core, but she could also hold Kenzie until all the bad things went away.

After Kenzie had lost her immediate family, Afina had been the only person that had kept her going. Shifters could die of broken hearts or terrible grief. They stopped caring about eating or sleeping until either the wild animal in them went feral—pretty much forgetting about the human part of themselves and reverting to living on crazed instincts—or their neglected bodies simply ceased working. Kenzie, just a cub and wanting life, had nearly gone feral, but Grandmother Afina had pulled her back from that edge. Kenzie would always owe her for that.

She saw Cristian walk toward them from up the road, but he stopped at the edge of the snowy yard, not coming up the walk. This was Bowman’s territory. While Afina had been coming here to check in on Kenzie from the moment she moved in, Cristian refused to stand anywhere so infused with Bowman’s scent.

Kenzie and Afina left the house and crunched through the snow to talk to him. Ryan banged out after them, still wolf. He ran around and around the three adults, trapping them inside a furrow in the two-inch snowfall.

Cristian watched Ryan play for a moment, then raised a troubled gaze to Kenzie. “What was that stink out there? At that trailer house? Humans are crazy.”

Kenzie folded her arms against the cold. “We’re not sure, but we thought we smelled something Fae. Or Fae-born.”

Cristian gave her a brief nod. “I smelled it too. We should investigate.”

“I’m sure Bowman is already doing that.”

Cristian’s expression turned weary. “I know you think your mate is a superhero, but he can’t be everywhere doing everything. He was caught off guard with that shooter and the man in the trailer, and so was I. We need to learn more.”

“That’s why he has trackers,” Kenzie said, but without conviction.

Cristian gave her a sharp look. “Bowman cannot investigate the murder of the young woman, the monster and its death, the sniper, the odd professor, and whatever other things are going on all at the same time.” His brows drew down over his wolf-gold eyes. “I want to discover who was shooting at me and almost hit me. And who was shooting at my niece. You are still Dimitru pack at heart, Kenzie, one of mine. I refuse to let this sniper get away with trying to kill you.”

Kenzie raised her hands. “If you’ll stop talking, I’ll tell you I agree with you. We should check it out.”

“Not we.” Cristian pinned her with a stare as intense as Bowman’s. “Me.”

“Uncle, you can’t go running around out there with a shooter on the loose. And you can’t without talking to Bowman first—why don’t you two work together? That was the whole point of my mating with him, wasn’t it?”

Kenzie heard the rising pitch in her voice, and she tried to suppress it. She was running on lack of sleep, too much adrenaline, worry for Bowman, and irritation at Cristian for trying to use any excuse to undermine her mate.

Cristian stepped to her and laid his hands on her shoulders, his touch surprisingly gentle.

“Kenzie, child,” he said, reverting to his native language. “When I was a young Shifter, my territory was caught between that of Ottoman Turks and the Austrian Empire. Trust me when I say that my life has calmed down a great deal since. Survival then meant to stay alive at any cost—here and now surviving is simply following a set of rules. Humans, especially in this country, are more—how do you say it in English?—touchy-feely. I can deal with one man and his rifle.”

“Huh. Are you sure it was only one?”

“I think so. And it was not the man inside the cabin. Different scent.”

Kenzie had decided that too. She also knew she had this snowfall’s chance in hell of stopping Uncle Cristian doing whatever he wanted.

“If you go back out there, you be careful,” Kenzie said sternly. “We don’t need to be searching for your dead body on top of everything else.”

Cristian gave her a smile that warmed his eyes. He could be a handsome man, when he let the ice crack. “Look at it this way—if I am shot, Bowman will have his victory. None of my nephews will be ready to fight for leadership for some time. Perhaps it would be better for everyone.”

Afina scowled. She was half a head shorter than her son, but her glare could have knocked over a building. “Not better for me,” she snapped. “I refuse to lose another child before I am old enough to call for the Guardian. This Shiftertown will not be better without you. If nothing else, your antagonism of Bowman helps him be a stronger leader. He’ll do anything to keep you out of power.”