turned my head. I cleared my mind and prepared myself for the ritual. I picked up my fountain pen and let the tip hover above the divination paper, ready to mark down the star points as I glimpsed them in my mind’s eye. I allowed my energy channels to open, saw the glimmer of the spectral flow, and dove in.
I kept the thought of her fated mate in my head as a guiding navigator to point me to what I needed to see. Each person’s spectral cluster was like a galaxy of stars, so dense with potential futures that it took keen senses and special skill to move through it and call out relevant information. With my abilities, I saw more precisely and quickly than most other readers. I didn't have to spend days poring over a jumble of constellations messily scribbled out on the divination paper. In the normal world, I needed glasses to see five feet ahead of me. Here, I could see better than anyone else.
And even with my vision, nothing was coming up. I could see glimpses of other fortunes—potential money, new friendships… but nothing for a fated mate. Nothing for romance.
When I opened my eyes, the candles had burned down to stumps. The divination paper was blank. I sighed and tightened the cap onto the pen and got up to gently bring the room lights back on. Miss Brokenfang looked up at me hopefully. My heart was heavy. I felt so sorry for her. All she wanted was love, and even though I knew that all I could do was read what was written in the future, I felt like I was somehow the one responsible.
I shook my head. “I’m sorry, Miss Brokenfang… Nothing turned up.”
She shifted back to human form. “That’s alright, Kole," she said, smiling. "I feel I'm on the right track, with the meditations and all. I'd like to keep trying. Maybe there are some other exercises I can do to open up my energy channels and all of that?"
I took my glasses off and wiped the lenses with the bottom of my shirt. “Miss Brokenfang, I know this isn’t what you want to hear, and it’s honestly really hard for me to say it, but not everyone has a fated mate. To live life without one…It’s the hard truth, but that may be their fate. That’s how it is for me. I know that I’ll never know love.”
“I hear what you’re saying, Kole,” she said, “but I won’t give up.”
“But, Mrs. Brokenfang. I don’t know what I’ll be able to tell you. I don’t think anything is going to change, no matter what exercises or meditations you do.’
“But there is a chance?”
“What I see is never one hundred percent. Technically speaking, yes, there’s a chance, but…as your agent, I can’t say that I’m confident things will change.”
“If there’s a chance, I’ll keep going. Don’t worry. I’ve got plenty of money and plenty of time.” She stood up. “Same time in two weeks?”
I nodded. “If that’s what you want, I’ll be here.”
4 Markos
Ivan, Jillian, and I owned the two units directly above the café, our front doors facing each other at the ends of a connecting hallway that split into a staircase in the middle running down to street level. The stairs had their own entrance, so we typically kept our front doors open and freely moved between each other's condos. We traded off cooking each day and would usually spend our time together in one unit or the other. The neighborhood, though it was smack dab in the center of downtown Mir, had wolf run access to a great park, and sometimes Elise and I would go together in our wolf forms and for some exercise.
It was my day to cook. Elise was at the kitchen table doing her homework—or at least was supposed to be doing it, I kept catching her drawing little hearts all over the paper—and Ivan and Jillian were watching TV. I trimmed the fat from pieces of pork loin and salted them before turning my knife to chop up some shallots and broccoli.
Cooking had always been my talent. Dad used to always say that the Plaintails had exceptional noses, that back in the very old days our family were sentinels for the clans, sniffing out intruders. I had no idea if that was dogshit, but it was true that I could sniff out delicious combinations of ingredients with ease. Ivan had the skill, too, but he