Page 43 of Feral
I slumped back against the wall. “Holy crap!” Darius threw me another angry look, so that was clearly the wrong response. “Well, you did kind of accidentally steal her eggs, so maybe this makes you guys even?”
Every set of eyes turned to look at me then, even Kit’s. Beckett shook his head. “That’s not helpful, Coop.”
I wasn’t getting this. “Why is everyone acting like this is a tragedy?” I walked toward the center of the nest and knelt down in front of Kit. “Babe, I’ve wanted to bite you and make you mine almost from the first moment I met you. Hell, I barely knew you and I wanted you to be ours. Now that I do know you? I can hardly imagine our Pack without you.” She looked up at me with watery eyes, so I grabbed her hands and clasped them in mine. “I can safely speak for all of us when I say we are waiting for you. We’ll continue to wait for you. Just because you’ve initiated the bond with Darius, that doesn’t mean you need to bond with us all right now. Or that Darius has to complete the matebond with you. Your Beast had different ideas, but it was an idea that lined up with our own.”
I lifted her hands to my lips, kissing each knuckle. I sucked in a breath, because this next part was physically painful to contemplate.
“If you don’t want to be mated to us, or to Darius, we can help you find a way to break the bond. It isn’t two ways at the moment, which means breaking it will only be painful for you, and not for Darius.”
She shuddered, and Darius wrapped that possessive arm around her a little tighter. I could see his Beast burning in his eyes, and I would bet my left testicle that he was straining to keep his teeth out of her skin and his dick out of her delectable-smelling body. His Beast would be riding him to finish the mating.
God, I loved that man for waiting.
Kitten blinked slowly, chasing away the tears that were resting on lashes. “I don’t want to break the bond. That's why I feel so damn bad. I took away his choice.”
Darius gave a rumbling growl that turned into a low, barely audible thrum, while Corvin let out a relieved snort. “Kitten, pretty sure he would have thrown himself at your itty-bitty fangs if you’d even whispered the suggestion of a matebond with him. We all would. We thought you hated that you were tied to us now.” He grinned at her from across the room. “Anytime you wanna take a nibble out of me while riding my knot, you just let me know. Day or night.”
We all echoed our agreement, and I lifted my shirt, showing her Darius’s matebond mark on my right pec. “There’s space for a matching one right here, whenever you’re ready.” I pointed to the left pec. “Now, can we all stop moping in the nest? I want to make some pasta and eat it off the body of at least one of my Omegas.”
Kitten huffed a small laugh, and I grinned at my success. She might think I was joking, but I really wasn’t. Not about using her as a pasta bowl and definitely not about the matebond. The sooner she was Pack, the sooner both the man and the Beast would be happy.
The following day,I called off work to take Kitten to see Tanner the vampire. It was hard to call him Doc Tanner when he looked like a frat boy who lived on ramen and surfed instead of studied. Still, the Alpha General seemed pretty happy with him, and the Convocation seemed to have faith in him, so I’d give him the benefit of the doubt.
Tanner had called to say he had the results of our DNA tests, and wanted to talk to Kitten about it. She’d automatically looked nervous, so we decided one of us Alphas should go with her. Actually, we’d all wanted to go, but Kitten had found her pride and talked us down to one.
Then we’d rock-paper-scissored like grown-ups to decide who got to go. I won—those other fuckers were predictable as hell. Beckett always over-thought it, and went with scissors. Corvin went with rock. Every single damn time.
We were sitting in the waiting room, though I couldn’t smell the vampire anywhere. That didn’t mean much really. Vampires didn’t have strong scents; Tanner’s scent mainly came from his clothes. Antiseptic wash and other strong medical smells, mostly. And chocolate, which confused me, but he must eat a bunch of it to smell so strongly of the candy.
As if I’d conjured him, he appeared in the doorway. He looked flushed, with his hair more mussed than usual. I breathed in deeply, and a familiar scent filled my nostrils, though I couldn’t quite place it. Definitely Manix though, and if I wasn’t wrong, horny Manix at that.
I raised an eyebrow at the vampire, and he flushed pink. “Sorry I’m late. I was detained with another patient.”
“I hope the patient is doing okay?” I asked, with as much gravitas as I could muster while trying not to laugh.
He cleared his throat. “Yep. Right as rain. Let’s go into my office, hey?” He almost sprinted through to the exam room, and I stood, pulling Kit to her feet and holding onto her hand. She squeezed it back, making my heart swell.
Tanner pulled out a couple of chairs and grabbed a file. “Okay, so your results are back and I’m not gonna lie, I was surprised as fuck.” His eyes scanned the page, and I groaned.
“Don’t leave us hanging, Tanner.”
“Well, Kitten, you are fifty percent Manix, which I expected. But your remaining DNA is only partially human. The rest is Griffin.”
I blinked.
Kit blinked.
Tanner grinned. “Right? How bloody cool is that?”
I shook my head. “Can you just repeat that?”
“I had the DNA test sent away to a specialist who’s contracted by Raine, as the Convocation Member for Endangered Species. You can imagine that it’s a service that is often needed.” Kit nodded dazedly, though I wasn’t sure she was really listening, but if Tanner noticed, he chose not to draw attention to it. “So it says you are 50% Manix, 35% human and 15% Griffin. That would explain why you didn’t get the infant sickness that the De Léon cubs suffered from—there wasn’t enough of the other shifter in there to cause a dominance battle. But congrats. I thought the Griffins were long dead. Like long,longdead. Even before the succubi. Guess this makes you the last of your species, unless your mother is still alive.”
“It couldn’t be her father’s genes?”
Tanner laughed. “Not unless Gatlin Huxley is hiding a bird head and some seriously epic wings.”
I choked. “Excuse me, fuckingwhat?Gatlin is her father?”
