Page 12 of Targeted By Fate

I generally wasn’t a hook-up kind of omega, but I was grasping at straws… any straw that might contain a single answer.

The whole situation was a mess, one I wasn’t going to be able to get out of until I regained my skin.

It was moments like these, moments when my mate was outside, that everything got worse. My memory faded more quickly, my nerves ratcheted up, and my senses were overloaded, with the notable exception of my scent which was still gone. Was that from the drugs too? No. That had been longer. I thought. Arggg, this was so frustrating.

The longing for him to be by my side, to comfort me, to ground me, was overwhelming. He’d gone out with the trash, promising he’d be right back. Only a minute ago—or maybe five, ten? I wasn’t even sure anymore.

I was spiraling.

My cat backed under the chair, hiding—I wasn’t even sure from what. We were safe here. My mate promised us that, and he wouldn’t lie to me. I might not remember much of who I was or how I got here, but I was sure ofthat.

And then the door rattled. It opened. And then… he came walking in. Relief flooded me. I ran over to him and jumped on his shoulder, wrapping myself around his neck, needing to be close to him. I rubbed my chin against his jaw and then licked his cheek.

“Did you miss me, little one?”

He’d taken to calling me that, which was honestly better than when he called me Kitten, although that was growing on me now too. Anything that showed affection and not just disappointment in the drugs.

The Duskthorn I was still having a hard time believing I consumed—but wasn’t the proof there? The doctor found it in my blood. The doctor I didn’t remember.

I believed Boaz when he said that we went, or that they came to us, I wasn’t sure which, but a doctor had seen me. I believed I was checked out and given tests and they came back positive for drugs. There was no reason for him to lie about that. But try as I could, there was no image of that in my head at all. Not even a hint of memory about it.

Maybe it was just being in this form for so long that was doing this to me. I’d taken naps, lots of naps, in my fur over my years. But never had I stayed there for more than overnight. Or maybe I had and those memories had faded too.

Was I turning into my cat? Would the human side of me just fall away? Was that what was happening?

He reached up and pulled me down from his neck, holding me close in his arms. “Hey. Hey. It’s okay, I promise. How about some tuna? You like tuna, right?”

I did. And I’d been eating a lot of it. I appreciated that he was giving me tuna and not cat food. I’d done that once in this form, and whoa, did I regret it when I shifted back.

A soft purr began to build in my chest. This was where I belonged, wrapped in his arms.

He brought me to the kitchen, sat me on a chair, and grabbed a can of tuna. It was the good stuff too—not the 99-cent bargain tuna. It was processed with oil, nice thick chunks, and I enjoyed every last bite of it as he held it out to me, piece by piece.

I could eat it on my own. Physically, I was fine. My cat could jump and run and purr—all the good stuff. It was my brain that wasn’t working. But there was something comforting about having him feed me like this, taking care of me. And piece by piece, I ate it.

Then, after he cleaned up the bowl, he carried me to the bed, sat me on a pillow he’d set up for me, and joined me, taking out a book and reading it aloud until I fell asleep.

It was the story of a prince who found a treasure map and set off on an adventure. I must’ve been more tired than I realized, because I drifted off before he got to any of the good stuff. I didn’t remember anything past him making a plan to leave the castle under the full moon. But then again, my memory had been shit lately, so maybe I listened to the entire thing.

A crash woke me. It was cold. So cold. And I went to grab my blanket, to wrap it around me—and realized pretty quickly I wasn’t home.

Where was I?

I climbed out of bed, my two legs rather wobbly, and found the source of the noise almost instantly. A book about a prince had fallen onto the ground. Had I been reading this? It didn’t seem like my kind of book, but then again, I wasn’t even sure where I was.

It was comfortable, though. Safe even. I belonged here. There was no urgency to leave. But also… none of this space was mine.

“Where the fuck am I?” My voice was scratchy, as if I hadn’t used it in days. “And how did I get here?”

I climbed back into the bed, hoping it would trigger a memory, not wanting to leave despite not knowing where I was. Maybe this was a dream. Yeah, that was it. Nothing else made any sense.

7

BOAZ

“How did I get here?”

My mate scrambled for the covers and pulled them over his naked body when I stepped in.

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