Page 5 of Love Bites

Clementine’s wasn’t one of the pretty, elegant markings I’d seen on the few mated beings I’d met. It was the ugly, basic mark of a man who didn’t give a damn about his “mate’s” throat or confidence.

A basic mate mark was little more than a brand.

And this brand was from a cruel, dangerous bastard who had been chasing my sister for far too long.

“He grabbed her from behind,” Zora said, as Clem’s tears started falling harder. She was shaking—and I didn’t blame her. I would’ve been shaking too. “We pulled her away, but he’d already started the bond. The mark appeared on our way to the van.”

“He’s still in there?” I demanded. “I will fuckingkillhim.”

“He has too many of his wolves with him. We only got away because he let us,” Izzy said from the driver’s seat. “If you go back in there, you’ll get mated to another one of them.”

“I should’ve been with you,” I said, my fists clenching.

Of the five of us, I was the only one who had been taught how to fight. I’d been trying to teach them for years, but my lessons had happened when I was so young that they were instincts more than anything else. I was a useless teacher.

And signing up for public classes was like telling all of the magical beings in the world where to find us, which was just flat-out stupid.

Sirens were weak, but we were valuable. When we fed on people, it made them feel alive. Helped them cope with their emotions, too. For immortal beings, that was a priceless gift.

One that many of the strongest and worst wanted to claim for themselves.

Hence the arranged matings that were common for our kind.

But our mothers had all been trapped in unhappy mate bonds. They protected us from the same fate, even though it put them in danger and eventually led to their deaths.

My sisters and I had managed to get to the safehouse they’d prepared after they were killed, and we’d basically been in hiding ever since. We’d made it ten years, starting businesses from our home and only leaving when we had no other choice.

But we had to go out to eat.

And that was when the wolves had found us.

There were hundreds, if not thousands, of werewolf packs scattered throughout the world, but most of them were fairly small. The main wolf pack was in Mistwood.

And it was bigger than any of the others, by a long, long way.

Because Mistwood was the capital of the magical world, the five most powerful beings (one of every type) were located there. They were basically the kings of our world, though they rejected the termkingsand insisted they were calledleaders.

All five of them were men, by some obnoxious twist of fate.

Their images circled frequently, and I’d heard that people fell all over them everywhere they went. I’d never paid much attention to the pictures I’d seen of them. Everyone knew their names, though.

Talon was the dragon king.

Curtis was the werewolf king.

Hale was the vampire king.

Kai was the fae king.

And Bane was the monster king.

Curtis was the only one we’d actually met, and people definitely fell all over him. We met him for the first time a few months earlier, at a different nightclub, and had been avoiding him ever since. He’d tried to convince us to join his pack at first, then tried to offer us money in exchange for it. When that didn’t work, he’d proposed mating, for the sake of our “protection”.

Clementine was the best of us, socially. She’d been taught to use her magic to make a conversation go her way. Izzy had too, she just refused to do it.

After we watched Curtis kill a bartender just for making his drink wrong, Clementine had used alotof it.

Anyway, Clem was the one he’d wanted from the beginning. As much as it frustrated us, there was nothing we could do tochange that or stop it. And after we turned him down, he went on the attack.

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