8. Chapter 8
The Mate Hunt, Explained (Poorly)
Meredith
Dash had just returned from running off some excess energy despite our marathon sex session, and I was still searching for my clothes when someone knocked on the remaining wall. It struck me as an odd courtesy considering the scarcity of the wall.
“You decent?” A voice, male, older than Dash’s but with a similar rough edge underneath it. They spoke as if someone had carved them from the same wood.
“Define decent,” I muttered, yanking the borrowed sweatpants back up. Beside me, Dash tensed all over again, his shoulders squared toward the doorway as if he expected a fight.
The man who stepped through the wreckage resembled Dash in his broadness and solidity, but age had weathered him more than travel.
Silver streaked his dark hair, and lines fanned out from eyes that had clearly seen more winters than I could count.
He wore a flannel shirt, the same as Santa had, and with sleeves shoved up over forearms roped with old scars.
He took one look at the room with the splintered wall, rumpled bed, and the two of us barely dressed and breathing like he’d run a race.
To his credit, he didn’t so much as blink.
“Figured as much,” he said with a shrug. “He must be Dasher and you’d be Meredith.”
“I would.” I crossed my arms to have something to do with them, because the man’s easy, unbothered manner made me feel like the only person in the room who hadn’t gotten the memo on whatever was happening to my life. Someone should fix that, and fast. My temper rose. “And you are?”
“His predecessor, the original recipe, in a manner of speaking. Same name, longer tenure.” He nodded at Dash, whose jaw had gone tight enough to ache just looking at it. “You’re vibrating, son. Sit down before you put another hole in the wall.”
“I’m fine.” Dash’s voice came out clipped. I reached for his hand to steady him.
“You are not fine. You’re two seconds from crawling out of your own skin, I can feel it from here.
” The older man’s face shifted a pinch. I squinted as he unfocused in my vision for half a second.
He never moved from his position across the room, but Dash’s shoulders dropped by degrees, the coiled tension in him easing like a hand had reached in and loosened a knot. “There. Better?”
Dash blinked, some of the wild edge gone out of his eyes. “What did you just do?”
“It’s the Heebie Jeebies,” Dasher said, like that explained anything at all. “Well, it’s not a real name for it, before you ask; it’s the closest thing I ever came up with. We’re linked.”
“What? Who?”
“Linked?”
Older Dasher nodded. “The nine of us. There’s an invisible thread that runs through the whole bloodline. I can reach into your head when you need steadying. I never needed to use it before, but I’m glad it came in handy about now.”
“You can do that? Like it’s a super power?
Reach into his head, I mean?” I didn’t love the sound of that, not one bit, and some of my unease must have shown, because the older Dasher’s mouth curved in a tired smile.
Fuck it, from now on it’s Dasher for the old dude, and Dash for mine.
Not a chance in hell otherwise my brain could keep up with this conversation.
“Only when it’s needed. And believe me, girl, right now it’s needed.
” He pulled a chair from somewhere in the wreckage, set it backward, and settled onto it with his arms folded over the back like a man about to explain something he’d rather not.
“You’ve got questions. I expect I can answer most of them, if you can stomach sitting still long enough to hear it. ”
“I don’t want to sit still. I want someone to tell me what the hell just happened to me.”
“That’s fair and valid.” He glanced at Dash, some silent understanding passing between them that I wasn’t privy to, and then back to me. “What happened is called the mate bond. It's old, older than any of us, and it doesn’t happen often.”
“Define often.”
“Maybe once in a generation of the run, if that. When it does happen, it’s not a choice. Not for him, anyway.”
“What does that mean… not a choice.”
“It means his body locked onto yours the second it caught your scent, back before he even had hands to hold you with. He feels a pull to be wherever you are. You watched it in action as he chased you through a wall.”
“Are you sure he didn’t lose his mind?”
Older Dasher shrugged. “In a sense. He couldn’t see you, and his body demanded that he find you. That was the bond doing exactly what it was supposed to do. What it’s built to do.”
An icy shiver slid down my spine. “But… the bond.”
“It’s rare. And once it’s caught, it doesn’t let go. Your Dash can’t let it go.”
“Okay,” I said, my voice low with the lie. “And what about me? What’s my part in this not-a-choice?”
“You,” Dasher said, choosing his words with care now, watching me the way a person would watch a spooked animal they didn’t want to startle further, “get a choice. That part is yours. He doesn’t get to make it for you, and neither do I.”
“Choice is good.” My words came out sharp.
Relief and fury tangled together so tight, I couldn’t separate them.
“Good, because I want that on record. I want everyone in this compound to hear it. I did not agree to any of this. Nobody asked me if I wanted to be some reindeer’s fated mate.
Nobody asked me if I wanted my house wrecked, or my brothers decked, or my whole life turned inside out in the span of a week.
Where the hell is my choice in any of this?
You keep saying I have one, but it feels a hell of a lot like I got handed someone else’s leftovers. ”
Dash flinched at that like I’d hit him square in the gut, and some ugly, small part of me was glad, because at least then I wasn’t the only one bleeding in this conversation. “You regret joining our bodies?”
I flushed crimson. “I…”
“You have a choice,” Dasher said again, his voice steady and patient in a way that made me want to throw something at him. “You can walk away. Right now, today. Go back to your house, your brothers, your life, and no one here will stop you.”
“But...” I said, because there was always a but; I could hear it sitting right there under his voice.
“But it won’t be free,” he said. At least he had the decency to look like the words cost him something to say.
“The bond doesn’t care whether you accept it.
It’s already in him. If you walk away from it, it doesn’t just fade quietly away like the pain from a bad human breakup.
It will unravel him. At first, it’ll start slow.
Your Dasher will lose sleep, then lose focus.
As he does, he’ll spiral and lose the parts of himself that make him a man instead of an animal running on instinct.
Given enough time, given enough denial, it takes everything.
And when there’s nothing civilized left in him, when he’s more animal than man and a danger to everyone around him…
” Dasher stopped there, because he didn’t need to finish the thought.
I watched my Dash’s face contort before the words never landed.
“You’d have to put him down,” I said, my tone flat. If I said it softer, it wouldn’t make the problem smaller. I didn’t want Dash to die.
“Like an animal. He would have no shred of humanity left,” Dasher confirmed. “I’ve seen it happen.”
“How many times?”
“Once, a long time back, one of the nine lost his match before the bond ever settled properly.” He shuddered. “It wasn’t pretty, and before you ask, no, it wasn’t quick or painless either.”
The room fell into a heavy silence. Somewhere past the ruined wall I heard the low voices of elves clearing debris, blending with Santa’s rich baritone pitched in argument with someone. Yet none of the sounds penetrated the quiet sitting among the three of us.
“So, it’s not a choice,” I said, breaking the silence, my voice strained. “It’s a threat with nice packaging. I get to walk away and live with myself killing Dash, or stay and lose… what, exactly?” I stared Dasher down. “What do I lose if I say yes to this?”
Neither of them answered my question fast enough for my comfort, and the not-answering told me all I needed to know.
“I need air,” I said, and turned before either of them could stop me, though I made it three steps before Dash’s voice caught me. It came out wrecked and low, in the same tone that had said my name into my throat an hour before, like it was the only prayer he knew.
“Wait.” I turned back and found him on his feet, hands loose at his sides like he was forcing himself not to reach for me despite his instincts.
Every powerful line of him strung tight with the effort of not chasing.
“Please. Just… one more. One taste before you go. I can hold onto that. I swear to you, I can hold onto that if that’s all you give me. ”
It should have sounded pathetic. Coming from anyone else, it would have.
It should have sent me straight out that ruined wall without looking back.
But it didn’t. Not from Dash. I recognized the look on his face.
He stood before me, a man asking for the smallest possible mercy because he didn’t believe he deserved the larger one.
I crossed back to him before I had a chance to second guess myself or my actions - the way I seemed to keep doing everything with him - my decision arriving after the fact instead of thinking things through.
I let him cup my jaw in one shaking hand and kissed him slow and carefully, nothing like the hunger from an hour ago.
This kiss was something closer to grief, a goodbye neither of us had agreed to yet.
He made a sound against my mouth that undid something in my chest, and I pulled back before it could undo the rest of me.
“That’s all you get right now,” I said, breathless, furious at my body for wanting to give him more.
I didn’t wait for his answer. I walked straight past Dasher, out through the wreckage of the wall, and nearly collided with a woman standing just beyond it.
She was human; I was positive. Her dark hair was pulled back in a lazy ponytail, and her eyes seemed kind.
When our eyes met, a spark of recognition flared between us the second she looked at me.
“I’m Noelle,” she said, her voice soft.
“Meredith.”
“I heard.”
“Oh?”
“I’m Dasher’s mate. I think you and I have a great deal to talk about, and I think you’d rather do it somewhere that isn’t standing next to him right now.”
I looked back once at the two Dashers standing in the ruin of that room.
Mine had his hand half-raised toward the space I’d just left.
I turned on my heel and let her lead me away, because she was right.
I needed somewhere that wasn’t beside him if I was going to have any hope of thinking straight at all.