“Willow! This is stupid!” I hammered on the door. “Why are you being such a bitch?” I winced. The old me never cussed unless I was really mad or upset. “I’m sorry the mages took me away that day, but it was out of my control. And I’m sorry I didn’t call or whatever, but again, not my fault.”
Willow opened her door with a scowl. My annoyance faded as I stared around the small room. It was a reminder of how insular my life had been before Starfall. Like me, Willow had very little of her own.Just a few tattered paperbacks, a framed photograph of her long-dead parents, and a collection of random stones I’d given her over the years.
She caught me staring at the stones and then shrugged. “You’ve moved on, so we have too.”
“Moved on?” Stars above, it wasn’t as if I’d jumped on a Greyhound bus to seek my fortune in Hollywood!
“Yeah. You have mates now.Shiftermates.” Her lip curled up, betraying her true feelings about my mates, and when I focused on her aura, it had turned a nasty shade of gray.
But I refused to give up on our friendship. I cared for Willow, and I knew deep down she cared for me too.
Pretending not to notice her blatant hostility toward my soul-bonded mates, I asked, “Have you met any cute males lately?”
A derisive laugh said no. “Do you think I have time to trawl bars in search of males? No, Raven. I’m too busy doing all your chores as well as my own these days. And besides, we have to stay in at night because of the curfews, remember? Although,” she sneered, “those don’t seem to apply to you and your mates.”
I bristled. “Hey, it’s not my fault you got stuck with my chores! Like I said, it wasn’t my choice to leave. Why don’t you ask Adam to spread the chores out better? Surely Nula can help?”
“Nula is still recovering and weak, so she spends all her time with Adam.” Willow’s aura sparked green with jealousy. Did my friend have a crush on Adam? How had I not noticed when we lived together? Eww, he was way too old for her.
“Please leave. I’m going to bed. Some of us have chores first thing.”
“Hey, I can help with the chickens and stuff!”
“Don’t bother.” She shoved me out of her room and slammed the door, leaving me facing the faint pink heart withWillow + Ravenwritten over it in glittery ink.
My eyes welled up with traitorous tears, but I brushed them away. Willow would come around eventually. I just needed to be patient.
35
Alaric
After ten glasses of elkwine and a fae wine chaser, I was feeling no pain. Okay, so my legs had gone numb, and I was fairly certain my glamour might have slipped a bit, but in this shitty bar, nobody cared.
The other patrons appeared as miserable as me. I strongly suspected the only reasons people drank in this inn, with its stone floor and mossy walls, were the extra-strong liquor at bargain-basement prices and the warm fire.
The place lacked ambiance, and the tables looked like a drunk troll had flung a few bits of lumber together while high on witch weed. A crude painting hanging above the fireplace—of a unicorn—reminded me of the terrible artwork on my apartment wall. A picture the little witch had laughed at when she and her friend visited that one time.
But I wasn’t thinking about her.
Nope.
The longer I spent nursing a drink while hunched over the slab of timber that functioned as a bar, the more flashbacks I got to a shitty inn on an equally shittyotherisland, the cursed night I met the polar bear shifter and his dumb-as-bricks wolf shifter mate.
Fond memories.
Not.
I raised a hand at the bartender and mumbled a request for a second glass of fae wine. Not gonna lie, that stuff was seriously lethal. Like rocket fuel with a side of nuclear fusion lethal. But if it numbed my emotions, I’d call it a win.
The barkeep, some kind of monosyllabic shifter, grunted at me in a language I didn’t understand. I pulled a few notes from my pocket and threw them at him.
“More fae wine,” I slurred. Fuck him, was my money not good enough? What an asshole. I’d recommend additional customer service training when I left a review on trust-magical.com.Oh wait. I’d thrown my phone in the ocean two days ago, so I had no internet access.
It sucked to be me.
Huffing out a sigh, I rested my cheek on the rough bar top. Maybe I’d sleep in here tonight. It was warmer than my shitty room. Smelled better too.Marginally.
A bulky figure dressed in a thick fur coat stomped up to the bar. He smelled of salt and frost. I tried to raise my head to make sure he wasn’t about to slit my throat, but the fae wine had taken its toll.
