Chapter 43 Maverick
Maverick
Istill couldn’t get my head around the idea Thorrin was alive and well and now had two mates. The fact one of them was an annoying wolf shifter made my bear grumble, but the wood sprite seemed sweet.
“Drink?” Thorrin filled my cup with a fragrant liquor when I nodded.
“There’s something I need to tell you.” I waited until he’d poured himself a large drink. “It’s about your father.”
Thorrin and Seamus had fallen out long ago, mostly because of Seamus’s drinking. At the time I suspected that was why Thorrin had left, but so far he’d not explained.
“What’s the old fucker done now?” Thorrin asked with an eye roll.
“He’s dead.”
Thorrin went quiet as he processed the news. My bear whined in my head because we could smell the bitter scent of sadness emanating from Thorrin, but I knew Thorrin wouldn’t appreciate me trying to comfort him. That was his mate’s job.
He drained his glass before he spoke. “How?”
“The feral shifter disease took him. I was the one to put him down.”
Thorrin closed his eyes briefly. “I’m grateful it was you and not some asshole mage.”
“For what it’s worth, I’m sorry. He was a good bear before…” I trailed off, not needing to spell it out. Seamus had lost his way, but we both had happy childhood memories.
I glanced across the room. The others sat huddled around the fire without Raven and the vampire. Against my better judgment, I’d let him take her upstairs to bed. Knowing he’d need to drink from her life source made me want to tear his throat out, but as her soul-bonded mate, I couldn’t harm him.
Not badly anyway.
From the way the mage kept glaring at the undead bastard over the dinner table, I had a feeling we were in for a world of pain.
Raven had mostly ignored the mage and his histrionics. Once she’d sated her curiosity about the wood sprite, she’d picked at her food and stared into space.
Her sadness over the merman’s departure was palpable, and I knew she had yet to process his inexplicable trip home. My gut told me there was more going on than his brief note suggested, but for now, I planned to keep my feelings to myself.
“Let’s go sit down. There’s more we need to catch up on,” Thorrin said in a defeated voice. His sadness tasted like ash, and I wished with all my heart I’d not had to tell him about Seamus.
The incubus wandered around the living room, poking at various ornaments and being irritating. When he picked up a small ornament and promptly dropped it, I lost patience.
“Sit down, Zane! You’re driving me nuts.”
He rolled his eyes and dropped into a chair by the bookcase.
“I’m restless. I need…” His voice trailed off as his eyes lit up, but I ignored him. We all needed the same thing, but I wasn’t about to risk her health. My sweet little mate deserved a night of uninterrupted sleep.
Ignoring the incubus was always the best policy, so I turned to Thorrin, who sat in an armchair with his mate perched on his lap. She hummed as she worked on a needlepoint project, the point of which I failed to grasp.
“Why didn’t you send word once you settled?” Thorrin winced at my sharp tone, but having spent years thinking he was dead, honestly, he was fucking lucky my bear hadn’t killed him. “Ma cried for months when you disappeared without a trace.”
“Ouch, dude. That’s some piss-poor treatment of your relatives,” Zane commented. “Although I’d be more than happy to ghost my grandparents. Or murder them if I weren’t likely to get caught.”
We all turned to stare at him with various degrees of surprise and horror.
“What? My family members are assholes.” He shrugged, completely unrepentant.
“No wonder his father went loopy,” Alaric muttered under his breath, but the incubus was out of his chair in a flash. He shoved Alaric to the floor and held a summoned blade to his neck.
“What’s that, mage? I’m clinically insane and prone to psychotic episodes?”
“Fuck off, Zane. We all know you are a lunatic. No need to be dramatic about it.” For a male at risk of being decapitated, Alaric feigned nonchalance, but the loud clap of thunder outside said otherwise.
“Pity you’re my pet’s soul-bonded mate,” Zane hummed. Blood trickled down Alaric’s neck, but he remained still even as lightning flashed through the window. “Aside from her, would anyone miss you? No?”
“Go fuck yourself,” the mage gritted out before Thorrin gently placed his mate to one side and stood. I watched as he lifted the incubus by his collar and tossed him across the room.
“Enough! We have bigger problems than some stupid rivalry,” he growled. Zane picked himself up and laughed. The blade vanished before he sauntered back to his chair while the mage cursed and wiped his bloody neck.
“Good thing the bloodsucker doesn’t like your vintage, sparky,” Zane taunted, because of course he had to have the last word.
Thankfully Alaric kept his mouth shut this time.
Thorrin turned to me once he’d settled his mate back on his lap.
“I didn’t reach out to anyone because I didn’t want to risk my communication being intercepted. I killed a group of mages when I rescued Skyla, so I’m on their radar now. It’s why we’ve mostly stayed off-grid.”
The front door opened. A blast of cold air blew in as the wolf stomped in, covered in snow. He pulled on some dry pants and padded over to the fire, casting a wary look at his mate. She pouted and chewed her lip before giving him a sweet smile.
“Am I forgiven?” he asked hopefully. The kitsune lifted his head from where he lay on a pile of blankets and growled, but the wolf didn’t respond this time.
“Of course you are, my puppy.” The wolf’s shoulders relaxed. He sat down on the arm of Thorrin’s chair like a needy little pet. Within seconds, he was stroking the sprite’s hair, making her giggle and making Thorrin roll his eyes.
“Rex, take Skyla to bed while I catch up with Maverick.”
The wolf didn’t need asking twice. With a gleeful yip, he scooped up the petite female and disappeared upstairs. A few minutes later, we heard a faint moan, which suggested the wolf was back in his mate’s good graces.
“Sorry about that,” Thorrin apologized. “Rex is a needy bastard, and Skyla loves to wind him up.”
I chuckled. “Wolves, eh?”
“Yeah. Idiots, the lot of them, but what can I do? He found her first.” I was curious about how they’d met, but there were more important issues to discuss.
“Are you safe here?”
Thorrin nodded. “Yes, the mages came here once but found nothing, and they haven’t been back. This island lacks the natural resources of most others, and the mermaids tend not to hang around in these waters, which means it’s not worth the mages’ time or resources traveling here.”
“Why would they care about mermaids?” Alaric asked in confusion.
“Because there are teams of heavily armed mages rounding up rare females and shipping them off to fuck knows where.”