Page 35 of Happily Undead in Dark River

Kelly nodded, giving me a small smile and striding out of the room toward the back door. Annie smiled happily at me. “I’ll be outside if you need me.”

“Annie, just one question. Why is it that Brody’s Mom hates me if it isn’t because I’m a vampire?”

She was pulling gum out of her pocket. “Because you’re his Mate, obviously. How can we have an Alpha pair if one of them is already dead?” she laughed. I sucked in a shocked breath and her head snapped up, a comical look of horror on her face. “Shit, you didn’t know? Oh man, Brody is going to murder me. I never think before I speak. Of course, that's why he shot down Kelly. Dammit, Annie, you and your big mouth.” She looked at Tex, whose face was uncharacteristically solemn.

I stared up at him. “You knew?” He nodded. “You didn’t think I should know?”

He frowned. “I didn’t think it was my place to say anything. You guys would figure it out eventually, or you wouldn’t. Telling you about someone else's feelings is never the same as that person telling you, you know?”

Annie was looking at me like I was an alien. “How could you not know? Can’t you feel it?”

I wanted to say that until a few months ago, I'd been a human. The only time I’d ever used the term mate was when I was doing my bad Steve Irwin impression. But the more I thought about it, the more the signs became glaringly obvious. Brody knew when I was sad, or happy, or angry. The fact that when he was around, I felt more content, and I missed him so much when he was gone. Ugh, I was so damn blind.

Annie ducked out, excusing herself to go guard the front of the building. Tex grabbed my hand and walked me back to Brody’s bed. Tex had a bedroom here, but I’d wanted to sleep in Brody’s bed because his scent was all through the room even when he wasn’t here. Yeah. In hindsight, the whole thing seemed pretty damn obvious.

I crawled beneath the covers and Tex hopped in beside me, leaving his sweats on. I stared at the ceiling, turning it all over in my brain while counting the beats of Tex’s heart. “Brody is my Mate too. I have an Alpha Shapeshifter as a Mate.” Tex didn’t answer, just making a small, affirmative hum. “Do you think my life would have been normal? If I hadn’t come to Canada, I mean,” I whispered to him in the darkness.

He wrapped his arms around my waist, pulling me into his warmth. “I don’t know. Maybe? Maybe you would have gone on to major in something you hated in college, lived a life in the city that you hated, and missed all of this.” He squeezed me tighter. “Well, not me. I would have tracked you down eventually. It was too late for you by then. I was yours and you were mine. Then one day we might have had kids, who turned into snakes. Boy, you would have been surprised then,” he laughed, and I couldn’t help but laugh along with him. I can only imagine changing a baby’s diaper and boom, there's a tiny python on the changing table. That would have been a one way trip to the psych ward?

But Tex was right. This life had found me before I’d even thought of coming to Canada. Before I could even walk because Tex had been toddling beside me when I was just a baby. I wondered how much of the supernatural had surrounded me as I’d lived my so-called normal life?

He nuzzled into my hair. “I don’t regret it, you know? I wouldn’t have it any other way now. Thinking you were dead was the worst pain I’d ever endured, but it led me to you and to my destiny. I really believe that.”

I wondered how Walker, X, and Nico were going freeing Angeline. She was one person who probably wished I’d never come to Canada. But I knew that I was a victim of circumstance. Eventually, Alice’s blood harvesting operation would have either drawn the attention of the Vampire Nation or she would have killed someone just like she did me. Judge would have still been ‘The Drifter’, distrusted and outcast by the people of Dark River. Walker would never have taken the leap to love again after the death of Rosalita. Brody would have never met his Mate. Nico…

I shook my head. Maybe it was fate. Who needs a normal life? I was where I was supposed to be. I just wish it didn’t come with so many people who seemed to want to kill me.

We dozed on and off, watching daytime television where the soap operas had people coming back from the dead, illegitimate babies with people’s husbands, and evil twins named Cliff. I tried not to think about how much my life resembled a telenovela.

Eventually, as the sun began to wane in the sky, the front door opened. “Brody’s back,” Tex whispered, and my heart leaped with the same excitement that I always got when Brody came home. I was on my feet and to the end of the bed before I hesitated. I needed to talk to him, needed to understand why he didn’t tell me how he felt, that I was his Mate. Still, I couldn’t deny myself that moment of running into his arms, so I burst through the bedroom door and barrelled into his arms. He held me close, bent me backwards until he could nuzzle the crook of my neck. I wiggled away. “Do I smell nice? Maybe like your Mate?” I said, proud of my complete nonchalance. He froze up, then gripped me closer.

“Dammit, Kelly,” he muttered.

I pulled away so I could see his face. “Annie actually, but it doesn’t matter who it was, except for the fact that it wasn’t you.”

“Raine…”

I stepped out of his arms. “Do you not want it to be me?” I asked softly. Brody had said that male shapeshifters only get one Mate. He went and wasted it on someone dead. He would never have shifter babies. Though not only was I dead, but I was also a whole world of trouble.

Pity party of one. All I needed was cake and black balloons.

Brody was shaking his head. “You can’t ask me that. I literally cannot imagine it being anyone else. You are perfect for me. The Ancestors believe you are perfect for me. So get whatever nonsense you are thinking out of your head because it’s two against one and you’re outvoted,” he teased softly, though there was a worry in his eyes that wasn’t normally there.

“But will you and the ancestors still feel that way in fifty years? In a hundred?”

He pulled me back into his arms. “Yes.” He smoothed my hair down, even though it started to poke up like a bird's nest. “I know you won’t believe that. Lucky I have a full century to convince you. The real question is, will you still love me when my balls hang to my knees?”

I laughed because if I thought about the idea of Tex and Brody growing old and dying without me, I got chest pains.

I held him close because time was short and I couldn’t be mad at him, my sexy, stubborn Alpha. “We better get ready. I don’t want to be late for dinner with your grandmother. She doesn’t look like the type of person who appreciates tardiness.”

Brody audibly gulped then kissed me softly. “This is why I love you; you're as smart as you are beautiful.”

Chapter Nineteen

Shapeshifter dinners are loud. Like, break your eardrums, rock in a corner loud. There must have been thirty people at Nell’s house, ranging from the ages of newborn to whatever age Nell was but better than to ask. I think one of her sisters was there, and she looked even older. There were so, so many children. Shapeshifters bred well at least. Well, they would, except for Brody who was stuck with a Mate who was the living dead.

I stood outside, under a tree covered in fairy lights as people bustled around. Children screamed and squealed, women fussed, men cooked and Nell sat in a chair on the back porch as everyone came and greeted her one by one, a regal Queen on her throne. I’d done the same thing, and as she welcomed me into her home as if I was just another one of her family, my heartfelt a little too full, like it was going to explode.

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