The Hybrid's Fated Mate

I smelled it before I even opened the door.Not perfume exactly, more like something sweet and wrong mixed together, the kind of smell that makes your stomach drop before your brain catches up.I had my keys in my hand and my work bag on my shoulder, and I was thinking about what to cook for dinner, and then the smell hit me, and I just stood there in the hallway like an idiot.I told myself it was overthinking. I told myself a lot of things in those three seconds before I pushed the door open.The apartment was dim. I hadn’t left it that way. I always leave the kitchen light on because Marcus said it helps with the electric bill, but I still do it anyway because I hate coming home to dark rooms.The kitchen light was off.Everything was off.I heard them before I saw them."Hmmm, ohhh… baby," a female voice said from the room. "You are so good… Yeah, right there.""You like that," a voice that sounded like Marcus said with a tone I had never heard from him before.Maybe I am just ove

The house was bigger than I expected, older too, the kind of house that has a personality, where the floors creak in specific spots and the windows don't sit quite flush in their frames. It felt lived in the way only old houses do. Priya pulled into the driveway, and before we were even fully there, the front door opened.Her mother came out first. Small woman, Priya's same eyes, hair pulled back. She looked at Priya with this wide open relief, and then she looked at me, and the relief didn't disappear exactly, but it changed. Tightened. She pulled it back behind a smile that she placed carefully on her face."Zara," she said. "We've heard so much about you.""Thank you for having me," I said.Her hands when she took mine were cold. She held on a second too long.Priya's brother was in the doorway. Maybe nineteen or twenty, tall, and he looked at me the same way the people in town had, that alert confused look, and then he looked at Priya, and something passed between them that was no

She talked while I got ready. Sat on the bed and talked, and I listened and asked questions, and she answered them, and by the time I was dressed I had the outline of it, the shape of what Wrenfield actually was. And that there were other creatures living in this world, that those vampires and witches they show in movies are real. The town had been here longer than the official maps showed. Built by a pack that came over before the country was a country, dug in, grew, and stayed. The alpha wasn't elected; it was blood. The pack had a hierarchy that everyone understood and nobody questioned publicly, and questioning it privately was something you did very carefully. The ceremony tonight was not a suggestion; every unmated she-wolf of age was expected to be present because the first son choosing his mate was a pack event, not a personal one. "What happens if he doesn't choose anyone tonight?" I asked. "He will. There's pressure. There's always been pressure on Darius." She paused on