Page 2 of The Fated Mate Bandit

His head bobs up and down. “Thank you. I mean, thank you, sir.”

Always with the “thank yous” and the “sirs.” Link used to complain that Lucas made us look bad with his politeness.

I place two fingers under his chin and lift it until he meets my gaze. “I’m not a sir to you, Lucas. Not now, not ever.”

There’s such pain in his eyes, like he wants that to be true, but he knows it isn’t. What happened to him over the last five years? I know better than to ask the question out loud. He won’t tell me.

Lucas has always had his secrets.

2

LUCAS

Silver’s hair is short. I try not to stare at it as he weaves through the kitchen, grabbing ingredients for French toast. When we were kids, his silver hair was halfway down his back. It made him look like an elf from Middle Earth or a character from a Studio Ghibli film. That made his role in my life feel more plausible, somehow. He was simply Howl giving me sanctuary in his moving castle or a Galadhrim warrior protecting me from the orc Dad turned into every time he drank.

Now Silver’s hair is almost shaved, and in place of the lean muscle he had in high school, he’s all shoulders and big biceps. He’s still beautiful. He has the same prominent cheek bones and big brown eyes it was so easy to get lost in back then. But his beauty is harder now—more real. He’s no longer the magical boy who seemed plucked out of a book.

That’s strangely comforting. His realness feels solid and safe. I want to burrow against his big chest and revel in the hard warmth of his body. But I can’t do that again, no matter how tempting it is. Silver isn’t my alpha. I place my hand over the crook of my neck where the scar from Daryl’s bond bite is imprinted on my skin.

Whether I like it or not, Fate chose Daryl for me, not Silver. And for wolf shifters, Fate always gets the final word.

“Quin has his own bakery now,” Silver says, pulling two pieces of bread from a bag labeled, Bandit Bakery. The logo is adorable, with a little raccoon head next to the text. It’s very Quin. “And a little daughter named Chime. She’s so cute. Let me find a photo.” Silver sets the bread down and pulls his phone out of his back pocket. His lock screen is a picture of a little brown-haired girl grinning at the camera. She has Quin’s dimples and big brown eyes.

“She’s beautiful,” I say.

He looks at the photo and smiles. “Yeah. Smart as a whip, too.”

It’s easy to get caught up in Silver and his family. Belatedly, I realize that’s probably the point of this conversation. Whenever I was afraid and stuck in my human form, Silver would start a conversation about one of his brothers. Hearing about them calmed me down and made me feel like part of their family. That was my ultimate fantasy as a child—that I’d wake up and discover I’d been transformed into a raccoon shifter and had to be adopted into their family.

When we got older that fantasy changed, of course. I wanted to be Silver’s mate, not his brother. But I never stopped wanting to be a part of his family in one way or another.

“I’m sure you heard about Link going pro,” Silver says, smoothly moving from one brother to the next. “He has an obscene amount of money, but he won’t spend it on anything except Chime. He still goes dumpster diving and everything. I keep telling him that the paparazzi are going to catch him one of these days.”

I can’t help but smile. Link and Silver were best friends in high school. They were always wrestling or challenging each other to do stupid things. I ended up timing their races or counting their push-ups. Link usually won.

I loved that Silver continued on anyway. He didn’t even get mad when he lost.

“Coin has been recording some music, here and there.” Silver pulls out an electric grill and plugs it into the outlet on the island. “I guess he’s on the shortlist for this recording studio in Austin, and they call him up whenever they need someone to play the guitar or drums. He’s an airplane mechanic, too.”

Coin taught me how to play guitar when we were younger and even let me borrow his guitar every day to practice. He was so patient with me, even when I had panic attacks, which made me feel special, because he wasn’t patient with any of his brothers.

Silver cracks a few eggs into a bowl and starts mixing in the milk and vanilla. He doesn’t stop to measure, he just eyes it, like his omega mom. “Tin’s training horses. He lives like a hermit out on this ranch in the middle of nowhere. Our moms make him visit once a month, but other than that, he just stays out there all the time. They’re worried about him not having a social life, but he seems happy to me. He was never a social guy.”

I never knew Tin as well as the others. He spent every weekend with their Aunt Emerald helping out with her animal sanctuary.

Silver dips two pieces of bread into his concoction and tosses them on the grill. They sizzle on contact. After going almost all day without food, my stomach gnaws with hunger.

“What about you, Lucas?” Silver asks.

I glance up at him, the calming effect of talking about his family vanishing as I realize it’s my turn to give him an update about my life. My swollen cheek is self-explanatory, isn’t it? Does he really want me to spell out how miserable I’ve been during the last five years?

“I’m six months along,” I finally say.

“How long are gray wolf shifter pregnancies?” he asks.

“Nine months. I’m having a litter of three, so it might be less than that.”

His eyes widen in obvious surprise. Most mammalian shifters take limiters to avoid multiples. Raccoon shifters are one of the few shifter species who have full litters on purpose. The problem is, limiters cost money. Birth control costs money, too. Daryl promised he’d use the condoms I got for free at the clinic. Maybe he did.

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