CHAPTER TWELVE
Mori
Nightshade Bear Territory
Lero had always been my weird nephew. I usually brushed off most of his quirks as having grown up around folks who didn’t all shift.
Not just vampires either. They were like non-magical people or something.
If I were totally honest, I never quite understood the set up there.
Though, New Hope Mountain Village had attracted more shifters as time went on.
Still, Lero was strange sometimes. Only these days he’d been stranger than ever.
When he first ducked out of every gathering and feasts several times I thought either he’d taken up smoking or had a long-distance love interest. Only, he never smelled like smoke and signing up for Mated for the Holidays seemed counterintuitive to having a secret love affair.
Now, I was catching glimpses of a tall, dark-haired guy following him around.
Only anyone with a third eye knew that the guy wasn’t living.
He wasn’t solid at all, but he was good at hiding from me.
Hell, at hiding from everyone. Not even Wess spotted him that morning at breakfast when he stood in the doorway waiting for Lero to be ready to leave.
I had promised myself I wouldn’t get caught up in magical mayhem this holiday season, but Lero was family and Bolt’s recent bout of overprotectiveness felt like more than a sign of early pregnancy to me. He hadn’t always been like that.
While everyone else was busy decorating the tree and debating if there were too many ornaments on the left side, Lero slipped out through the kitchen again.
I gave him a few seconds before I followed, telling Preston I was going to grab another slice of peanut butter fudge.
That would buy me a good ten minutes. Maybe longer now that he had Andy and Wess to distract him.
“This doesn’t end well. We’re supposed to be on a break,” my wolf sighed but I couldn’t listen to him. Everything inside me tugged me outside. I had to follow Lero. He needed my help even if he wasn’t ready to admit that he needed it.
Outside the snow was falling again in those bigger than life fluffy, white flakes.
It stole my breath for a minute, the way it always did.
Winter was just as beautiful as the other seasons, if not more so, in its own icy way.
I rounded the house following Lero’s footprints in the snow.
His shoes had little bunnies all through the treads, making him one of the easiest people in history to follow around if the ground was anything except bone dry.
I peeked around the corner to find him leaning back against the house with his arm resting midair. His mouth was open and his tongue was…. What was he… Was he kissing the air? Was this why his carrier was so worried? Was he hallucinating?
“Um…. Furless wonder,” my wolf broke into my thoughts again. “Remember big and dark-haired? It’s probably him.”
“Lero!” I snapped as soon as the thought of an incubus entered my thoughts.
He startled and his arm dropped but he didn’t move. For a long moment, my little nephew was frozen like a deer in headlights. His eyes grew to the size of saucers.
“Mori!” he gasped my name as if I’d walked in on him in the bathroom.
“Are you okay?” I asked, unsure of how to ask which invisible person he as making out with and if he was sure they were real or if this was a good idea at all.
“Yeah. I’m fine. Just needed some fresh air,” he nodded too fast.
“You feeling alright?” I tried again.
“Mori, you’re starting to sound like my carrier and that’s not a good look. You’re not old enough for all that. Go back inside and eat fudge and hang all the ornaments on the wrong side of the tree like you always do,” he grinned.
“I most certainly do not! I don’t think the back of the tree should be neglected.
It probably feels lopsid..” I stopped because Lero had succeeded in distracting me.
I sniffed the air, trying to smell who he was sniffing.
Dead people sometimes had no scents. Incubi and succubi usually had some sort of scent.
They usually smelled like sex, flowers, or candy.
Though, the last few years had taught me there was a million invisible ways people could show up.
The only thing I ruled out was his invisible friend being from my best friend Ni’s jaguar pard.
Their members could find their true-mates by drinking a potion that made them show up where their mates were but that was well known enough that I didn’t think Lero would hide it.
“Mori,” he sighed. “Just leave it be. I don’t really owe anyone an explanation.
I’m not a little kid anymore. You don’t have to understand it or be okay with it.
You just have to leave it alone and if you open your mouth to say you’re going to call my dads, it’s going to prove just how old you are. ”
I let out a long, slow breath and racked my brain for anything that might convince Lero to let me help him.
“Has it crossed your mind that I don’t need your help?” Lero asked, picking up on my thoughts over our family link. “Just because you don’t know what’s up, doesn’t mean something bad is happening.”
“Lero, you know if that changes, you can tell me, right? Like there isn’t anything invisible or otherwise that you can’t tell me?”
“I know, Mori, and I appreciate that. Just explaining it…” he sighed and shook his head. “One day you’ll understand. One day it’ll all come together for you.”
“Lero, you’re too young to talk like that,” I sighed.
“No, I’m not. Now go on back inside and let me have some peace.”
I hated leaving him outside alone with whatever the invisible man was but unless I was willing to cause a scene or call his parents there was nothing else, I could do. My carrier told me to leave it alone but such a course of action had never been in my nature.