of shifting and getting into a fight with someone else.
Were they both bears?
Bear shifters on ice. The new aggressive ice show coming soon to a rink near you.
I snorted to myself. This town was weird, and I was actually kind of liking it.
5
Seren
Neve was my mate? No. Not possible. I rushed out of the ice rink, not caring for the moment about whether or not Neve could find her way home. She was a big girl, who was as graceful as a fucking swan on her skates. She’d find her way, I was sure.
I dug my phone from my satchel. It wasn’t a man purse. I could already hear my sister’s voice teasing me in my ear. Whether or not I wanted to be teased by her was inconsequential though, I needed her advice. She was mated, she’d know whether what I was feeling was real or not.
I pulled up Samantha’s number, her face smiling back from her contact page as I pressed the call button. The conversation was bound to be awkward. I knew as soon as I brought up mating, my sister would get overly excited, thinking that this was finally it, that her big brother had found the one. It couldn’t be right though. Neve was a witch, and a bad one from what I could tell, or at least one who wasn’t familiar with her magic. Hares and witches? It sounded ridiculous. A mate bond was between two shifters, right?
It was a good thing I was walking because I wouldn’t have been able to sit still for this conversation anyway. The walk home was brisk, but it made me feel alive and more awake than I had been for most of the day. If I was going to have to have this conversation, I’d rather it be now.
“Broski! What’s happenin’?” Ugh. Greg was not who I wanted to talk to.
“Hey, Greg, is your wife around?” I asked.
“Yeah, I just got to her phone before her. Didn’t want to miss a call from the golden boy now, did we?” he replied, laughing to himself, which meant it sounded like a donkey was braying in my ear.
In the background, I heard my sister berating him for answering her phone. A few moments later, there were some muffled sounds and her irritated voice came on the line, “Hello?”
“Hey, Sammie, you got a minute to chat about something private?” I asked, letting her know that I wanted her to move out of Greg’s earshot.
“Of course, what’s up?”
I heard the sound of their backdoor opening and closing behind her, the squeak she’d asked Greg to fix still loudly present. I held back a sigh at my brother-in-law’s lack of follow-through, knowing that if I brought it up, we would only get into a fight about it.
I so did not want to ask this question, but what choice did I have? After taking a calming breath, I said, “What did it feel like when you first met Greg?”
There was a long pause before Sammie quietly asked, “Have you found your mate?”
“I don’t know, that’s why I asked,” I ground out.
“Okay, okay. Don’t get your panties in a twist. When I first met Greg, it felt like he was just a random guy, then something shifted when we made…let’s say prolonged eye contact. I felt the bond snap into place, and then we went at it like…well, rabbits for the next few days.”
“Gross. What did it feel like when the bond snapped into place?”
“Like the world had shifted and my new normal centered around this other person. From what he’s told me, he felt the same way, like gravity turned sideways and was pulling him to me, whether he wanted to go or not.”
“So you can’t fight the bond?”
“Fight it? Why do you want to fight it?” Sammie asked, sounding worried on my behalf.
“She’s not right for me. Hell, she’s not even a shifter. I don’t know what’s going on, maybe some kind of spell. After all, it is Silver Springs we’re talking about here. I mean, after all the lattes, and I swear something was going on with the library as well, it’s not out of the realm of possibility that this isn’t right. I just need to know if I can fight it, if I can find a different mate? Or is this my only chance?”
The idea of Neve, prissy, stiletto heeled boots in winter, martini chugging Neve, being my mate… It couldn’t be right, could it?
“What is she if she’s