Page 22 of Forsaken By Fate

But even as I say it, I smell it vaguely now, through the sickening smokey smell that permeates the atmosphere around us. There’s no fire, but the magic is playing tricks on all of us in the house.

“We’re mated,” Lachlan insists petulantly. “It happened at the last full moon, and then she just left. She packed up all her belongings and took off. I guess she got a better deal over here, huh?”

He shrugs and grins cockily at me. I fly across the table to lunge at him, but Wyn blocks me from knocking him out as Lachlan cowers.

“It was a joke!” Lachlan whimpers.

“Come on, Lachlan,” Lancer grumbles. “We should have left you in the car.”

The youngest Galvin hauls the dragon shifter out of the house and away from me.

“I’m sorry we sprung this on you like that,” Wyn tells me honestly.

I frown, thinking of how evasive Aurora had been about her past. “We need to pause this for now,” I tell him grimly. “We’ll reconvene later.”

“But she’s—” Lachlan argues as Lancer drags him out.

“That’s fine,” Wyn interjects, shooting him a scathing look, cutting him off mid-protest. “We’ll reschedule this when you have a better handle on your house.”

I suck air in between my teeth, the jab not lost on me. “My house is fine,” I growl. “It’s your pack who can’t keep their mates in order.”

Wyn grimaces and waves his brothers out of the dining room without a word. The shifters move into the armored vehicle and head out of Oak Hollow—for now.

I spin around and rush through the estate, my nose raised to sniff out Aurora and my brothers, but it’s hard through all the livid smoke pouring from my nostrils.

I findFenris in the gardens, searching for Aurora, too. He looks at me shamefully, but he has no handle on Aurora’s whereabouts.

“Where the hell did she go?” I growl, furious that we lost her. My brother’s cobalt eyes glow at me in the fading dusky light, his own upset shining through as he glowers at me.

“Did you know anything about this asshole? This Lachlan?” I demand of my brother as we keep looking.

“Of course not!” Fenris grumbles. “Where are the Oklahoma Apexes?”

“Gone,” I reply.

“Gone where?”

“Nevermind them. Where the hell isshe? She didn’t leave the estate, did she?”

“She’s here.”

Zane emerges from the thick of rosebushes with Aurora, her chin thrust forward defiantly, green eyes blazing. “It’s not what you think,” she says before any of us can utter a word. “I told you everything you needed to know.”

“Uh, clearly not everything!” Fenris barks. “You missed a pretty big part.”

“No, you didn’t need to know about Lachlan,” she insists.

“Enlighten us,” I say coldly, folding my arms over my thumping chest. “How do you figure?”

I hate the effect she has on me, but even as Zane pulls her closer, I can’t feel the mate bond surrounding her, even though I briefly felt it moments ago.

How did I not see it, if what Lachlan is claiming is true? Would he dare lie to us? To his own Alphas? That doesn’t seem likely.

But I do feel a different kind of pull, one toward her, that I don’t understand. It’s not a mate bond, it can’t be. I’ve heard about what happens when Apex Alpha bonds snap into place, with the celestial events and whatnot. This is more primal, deeper and under my skin. I’m undeniably drawn to Aurora, as if she’s belonged to us in another life or time.

Shrugging off the semantics of it, I glower at her. “Is Lachlan your mate?”

“No!” she fires out.

---