Page 13 of Just Right
Okay, then.
Stepping back out, meeting Finn’s excited smile, I just ask, “Rowan has a closet full of women’s clothing?”
I’m not making any judgment. I mean, I don’t see how some of those pieces will fit his bulk, but if he likes to collect clothing… hey. You do you.
For a moment, Finn is confused, and then his luscious lips part in understanding. “Oh, no. No. Those aren’t Rowan’s.”
“They’re not.”
He shakes his head. “They’re for our…hismate.”
Hiswhat?
“Mate?” I echo.
Finn nods this time. “The one female that Fate picked for him.” A tiny teasing smile. “That might actually put up with his temper.”
When I find myself nodding in agreement to that, he winces. “No. I shouldn’t say that. Rowan… when the hunters came for Mama, he was the one who gathered me and Colt up. We were only cubs. Hadn’t even had our first shift to skin yet, but he tossed us on his back, and ran through the forest until he found a territory where we could all be safe. Where we could wait for our mate.”
It’s in that same lovesick stare he gives me as he looks down at me.
Mate. Like the romantic—and sexual—partner to an animal.
Mate.
Me.
Uh-oh.
CHAPTER 4
FEVER
It’s been five days since I’ve started my time in Blackmoor. Four since I woke up as a guest of the Brown brothers. Just as many since Finn let slip that he thinks that I’m meant for one of them.
Is it Finn? Colt? Rowan? I immediately shut him down when we were in Rowan’s room—though I’ve returned to that closet every morning for a different outfit to wear because, yeah, my black dress started to get iffy by the end of day two—but I’ve done a little surreptitious digging about the topic of mates?—
And who am I kidding? Finn. Whenever I get the youngest brother alone… and I say youngest with a grain of salt because, while he’s younger than Colt and Rowan, he’s certainly older thanme… whenever it’s just Finn and me together, I ask my questions and let him talk.
So… mates. It seems like one of the largest classes of ‘beasts’ that live in the forest are shifters or animal-based creatures. Men who turn into bears. Others who are part wolf half the time, full wolf at others. Centaurs that are always half horse. There’s a lake with merfolk that he warns me against going near, as if Rowan would even let me step two feet away from the cabin. There are demons and other monsters, too, but luckily—or maybe notluckilyso much ascoincidentally—I’ve found myself on brown bear territory.
Shifters mate for life. They have one fated partner that soothes the savage edges of their beastly nature. Translation: since none of the Brown brothers have found their mate yet, each one of them is still a virgin. They’ve been waiting for their female to venture into Blackmoor and find them, and it seems like I might belong to one of them.
Who? That’s the only time that Finn shuts down. He’ll tell me anything I want to know while Rowan and Colt are out in toiling in the words, but the topic of who might behismate… he always changes the subject.
Colt and Rowan? Neither one mentions the topic at all.
Now, I know there’s something going on. Rowan grunted the first time he noticed I’d changed into one of the outfits in his closet, but that’s the only acknowledgement I got. If he’s pissed that I borrowed an outfit he handpicked for his future mate, he doesn’t say so, and I’m just glad that I can squeeze into them myself. It’s not even a squeeze. The clothes fit like a glove, a point that Colt likes to make when I join the brothers at the breakfast table to eat our morning porridge.
Colt’s not hiding his attraction to me. If Rowan is feeling any, he’s doing a phenomenal job of doing so. As for Finn…
He’s adorable, but he’s so fucking clingy. A little smothering, too, but since I’d be lonely otherwise… I deal. He’s certainly fond of me, even if he’s not coming out and telling me that he thinks thatheis my supposed mate, and if that’s because I make it clear that once my twenty-one days are done, I’m gone… well, I’d be wary of a stranger, too.
It’s mid-September. With the bees winding down their honey production, Finn uses that as an excuse to keep me company while the others are working. I spend most of my time with him,but just yesterday, for the first time all three of them stayed inside with me.
It took me until I was lying awake in bed later that night to realize why. That was technically my third day in Blackmoor. If I’d entered into a usual contract, I would’ve finished my seventy-two hours. I would’ve been free to leave yesterday, and as though they wanted to make sure I didn’t, we hung around the cabin, baking bread in the wood stove and telling stories in front of the fire.
Well, Finn and I did, with Colt adding his own input. Rowan, of course, sat on his tool, quiet and baleful as he watched the rest of us as though he was being our guardian instead of part of the discussion.
