Page 41 of Venomous Lies
Mate?!
Where the hell were all these mates popping up from?
Granted, Julian said the mate was dead, but still… A hint of haunting laughter slithered up my spine, making me shiver.
I put the pipe between my lips and took a long drag as I wrote back.
It seems that we will need to look for more information closer to Greywood it seems.
What haven’t we tried though?
Asking for reinforcements,
Julian answered.
I’ll reach out to my contact,but I doubt it’s going to be anyone that we like. I’ll be back tonight.
Just like that, the messages disappeared, and I finally released the lungful of smoke I had inhaled. Leaning back in my chair, I closed my eyes, savoring the heaviness and the scratch of the gloves against my skin.
Either way, we’d make progress and then I’d be free.
Free of this place and free of Isla Hallowes.
One way or another.
Chapter 13
Echo
THURSDAY
“Witches have multiple mates?”
Wells jumped in his seat before he whirled around with wide eyes.
“Fuck, Echo, don’t do that!” he complained, taking a shaky breath as he nodded a few times.
“Multiple mates?” I repeated as I sat down beside him, not caring that we were in the library within earshot of anyone who walked by.
Wells turned in his chair to keep his focus on me, his chartreuse eyes watching me closely. I shifted in the chair, not used to being looked at so seriously by him.
“Witches can have multiple mates, though it’s much rarer for men. It helps balance and ground the witch since their powers can sometimes be… overwhelming in some ways.” Wells cleared his throat and paused as if he were thinking of what to say next. His messy brown hair almost had a hint of red peeking through thanks to the lighting in the library. “Right now, you’re the closest you’ve been to the Echo I met on that second day of school. You’ve been different since the rut happened.”
He has no fucking idea.
Wells had shattered the ice building around my mind when he revealed that witches could have multiple mates. That revelation rocked my world. The humanity I had been turning off came back with a vengeance, closely followed by my mother’s voice telling me what a failure I was yet again.
A disappointment.
Not even worth being an echo of our family.
I shook my head violently and squeezed my eyes closed.
“Echo?”
Holding up a hand, I stopped him from trying to say something else or worse, touching me.
“I didn’t… My ruts are bad,” I told him, desperately needing to talk about a subject I could handle. “They last longer than most, and coming out of them… Well, coming out of them can be a hard task.”
