Page 63 of Binding His Fated Mates

Hunter obviously noticed this as well because he shot Daniel a worried look. Then he pulled out a chair for the warlock with exaggerated chivalry. “Sit,” he said. “And stop overthinking. It doesn’t need to be weird.”

Daniel sat. His cheeks went pink but the smile he gave Hunter was real.

I took the seat on his other side and, without thinking about it, rested my hand on his knee under the table. At my touch, his breathing steadied.

The pack simply seemed to absorb the strange new configuration—Daniel flanked by us, with Hunter’s arm draped over the back of Daniel’s chair and my hand on his knee, none of us seeming ready to kill each other any time soon—without question.

Except, of course, for Lacey.

She’d taken a seat next to Oliver at the opposite end of the room and had been so absorbed in powering through her breakfast that she hadn’t noticed us come in, the way everyone else had. She was halfway through her meal when she finally clocked us, her eyes going wide and disbelieving. She stared at us openly, her expression gradually shifting from disbelief to outright hostility.

Lovely.

Though, to be fair, I couldn’t really blame her. We’d been downright cruel to Daniel, whereas she’d been his only real friend for years. From almost the first moment he’d arrived at the commune—shell-shocked and barely speaking—she’d been the only person in the whole pack who’d looked at him and seen his worth as a person, not just a spellcaster. She had every right to hate us.

Emma circulated with the coffeepot—something she never did, which I suspected was purely so she had an excuse to stop at our table—and, when she reached where we were sitting, she topped off Daniel’s mug, then mine, then finally Hunter’s. And then, looking from Hunter to me and then back again, she said, “Well, it’s about damn time,” before moving on.

Daniel’s ears went scarlet at that. Hunter scowled after her. I disguised a laugh as a cough into my hand.

After breakfast was finished, Reed stood up. “Since we’re all here, we have a few things to discuss.”

With that, he told the pack what we’d learned about the sympathetic manifestations, adding that they were already mostly faded and that everything would go back to normal.

Visible relief rippled around the room. Oliver let out a breath he’d clearly been holding, some of the tension going out of his shoulders.

Reed added, “The second order of business: Sarah has made a breakthrough on research into our monster problem this morning.” He nodded in her direction. “Will you tell us what you’ve discovered?”

Sarah stood up, smoothing her red hair, even though it was already pulled back into a ponytail—a nervous tic I’d noticed over the years—and cleared her throat. “Um. Yeah. Well, you guys know I’m not a fan of public speaking—”

A few of us chuckled at that.

“—so I’ll keep it short and sweet. We’re facing a monster—or, well, I guess it’s two monsters—called the Mara. Or the Mare. They’re predatory entities from Slavic folklore. They mostly feed at night, while the victim is sleeping.” She paused, visibly collecting herself. “They’re usually considered to be ghostly creatures that sit on the victim’s chest, causing nightmares and sleep paralysis.”

“What do they feed on?” Harris asked. Though, I suspected that was more for our benefit than for anything else. He and Reed probably already knew everything Sarah was about to tell us.

“Well, they take life force, mostly,” Sarah replied. “But amnesia is a common symptom in the lore we have. The texts were unclear as to whether they’re actually feeding on memories or if the memory loss is a byproduct of losing so much vitality.” She paused. “Robert is probably lucky to be alive, especially if two of them were feeding on him at the same time.”

“Very good,” Reed said, beaming at her. “Thank you, Sarah. Now—”

“Uh, there’s more—” Sarah broke off in mid-sentence and blanched, as if realizing she had just interrupted her alpha.

Though Reed didn’t seem upset. Instead, with raised eyebrows, he said, “Go ahead.”

“Right. Sorry,” Sarah said. “The other thing is that these creatures are drawn to magic. They’ll feed on anyone, but they prefer people with magical ability. Even if it’s latent.”

Reed and Harris exchanged a surprised glance. Apparently, Sarah hadn’t told them that part.

Harris recovered first. “This is important information. Thank you for telling us this, Sarah.” He paused and looked in our direction, his gaze settling on Daniel. “We’ll need to ensure that you’re kept out of harm’s way, of course.”

Daniel blushed deeper, and he seemed about to shrink lower in his chair. Then something changed in his expression, and he looked from Hunter to me, then at Harris.

“No,” he said flatly.

Alarm jolted through me, and when I met Hunter’s gaze, I saw he’d had a similar reaction. What was our mate doing?

Reed frowned at Daniel, confused. “No? You don’t want to be protected?”

“Oh, I totally do,” Daniel said calmly. “But we should be smart about this. If it’s attracted to magic, we ought to use me as bait.”