Mate Bond

“I found Cristian grilling Turner,” Bowman said. “He’s good at it, so I let him. He’s useful.”

Cristian should have bristled at being called useful, but he was too experienced to react to Bowman’s insults. “What did you learn?” Christian asked the other three.

Jamie had his hands on his hips, looking annoyed. “There’s all kinds of Shifters out here today,” he said, glancing at Afina. “Look who I ran into.”

“He nearly did run into me,” Afina said. “I thought cats were graceful.” She smiled when Jamie hid a snarl. “I will be gracious and let you, the important male, tell your leader what we found.”

Jamie gave her another irritated look. He’d never openly be hostile to a venerable female like Afina, but he was not happy. Bowman had to wonder what had happened between them out there.

“We found buildings,” Jamie said. “Small ones. Shacks, to the naked eye, but shored up and well kept. Two of them, about a mile from Turner’s house. We sniffed around, but they were empty. No smell of Shifters, or Fae, or . . . griffins. Might be used by pot farmers.”

“I found one like that too,” Cade said. “About half a mile from here, maybe a little more. Empty, unused, but well kept. Didn’t smell like much of anything.”

“If they’d been used to store drugs, the smell would still be there,” Bowman said. “To Shifters, anyway.”

Jamie broke in. “Don’t drug dealers use coffee grounds or whatever to hide the scent from sniffer dogs?” He wrinkled his nose. “Not that I smelled coffee grounds either.”

“Turner uses a distinctive blend of coffee,” Cristian said. “You’d have smelled it if it had been him out there. It’s very good. I will have to ask him where he acquires it.”

“There was much mist under the trees,” Afina said, her voice going quiet. “I do not trust the mists.”

Cristian frowned at her, but uneasily. “It’s winter. Of course there is mist as the air warms and cools.”

“That is not what I mean, and you know this.”

Cade watched both of them. “What are you two talking about?”

Cristian gave his mother another scowl and shook his head at Cade. “Romanian folktales. It is of no matter.”

“So you say,” Afina returned. “But you’d do well to avoid the mists. You don’t know everything, son of mine.”

Cristian bristled. They would launch into one of their famous arguments any second.

Bowman was grateful for the soft buzz of his cell phone. He again hadn’t found a signal in Turner’s trailer, but now that they were higher up the hill, the phone worked fine.

It was Kenzie. “You need to come home,” she said, her voice sounding too bright. “A couple of our Shifters are asking to be mated.”

CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

Kenzie took her place near Bowman that afternoon as the Shifters gathered for a mating under full sun. The ceremony had been thrown together in record time, but Shifters were always ready to party.

Streamers had been tied to the trees by females and cubs. Bianca’s sisters had rushed to a flower shop in the nearest town and then wove Bianca a garland that was a bit lopsided. Amid the laughter and excitement, though, no one cared how makeshift anything was.

Bad things were happening outside Shiftertown, but the Shifters were eager to put aside fear and embrace this celebration of love, life, and continuity. Because the moon was in one of the three days of the full, Bowman would conduct the sun ceremony now and the full moon ceremony tonight. The moon ceremony was the more important of the two and would seal Bianca and Marcus’s mating in the eyes of Shifters and the Goddess.

The mate bond the two had already found would seal them more permanently than any ritual. The mate bond was older, a spiritual joining that had no material form. The link would keep them together through thick and thin, good times and bad, and couldn’t be broken. Only death severed the bond, and sometimes the second of the pair didn’t survive the grief.

Kenzie didn’t necessarily have to participate in the mating ceremony. She could simply stand by while Bowman gave the blessing and be a silent symbol of a successful mating. She chose to give a blessing herself today—Bianca was special to her.

Bowman faced the couple in the woods between the houses, under a tree full of streamers. Friends and family formed a circle around Bowman, Kenzie, Marcus, and Bianca, while the rest of Shiftertown ringed them in ever-widening circles.

Though it was cold, the snow had ceased, and the sun poked through the clouds. When a beam touched Bianca, Bowman lifted his hands.

“Under the light of the sun, the Father God, I declare you mated.”

A cheer went up, nearly drowning Kenzie’s words. She had to shout them. “The blessings of the Father God be upon you!”

The cheer renewed. Ryan leapt into the air on youthful legs and did a handspring when he came down. Bianca laughed, and Kenzie pulled her into a hug. Kenzie hugged Marcus next, the long-limbed Feline nearly crushing her in his happiness.

After a marathon of hugging, fire flared high, in both bonfires and barbecue grills, and music boomed out of speakers Jamie had wired up in the trees. It was late afternoon, and as soon as the sky darkened and the moon rose, the second ceremony would commence.

For now, there was plenty of food and drink, music and dancing. Kenzie found herself drawn into a circle dance with Bianca and her sisters—all the cousins who had grown up together. They joined hands and swayed in the eternal dance of love and fertility.