Page 118 of Shifter Situations

Hyland snorted, shouting, “Go away, Dolyn. We’re talking to Lo.”

“You mean you called to tattle.” His gruff voice was muffled.

“Yes. Now. Go. Away.”

I bit at my bottom lip, shaking my head. “I can hear him stomping, so I bet he’s pouting. Tell me what's wrong.”

“Gods, Lo. It’s a little wild in the Drake house right now, and neither of us knows how to handle it.”

“My mates are helicopters, hovering over me at every turn,” Ripley whispered forcefully. “One of them tried to follow me to the bathroom. Hyde came to rescue me before I had a chance to kill him.”

“Was it Dolyn?” I questioned.

She huffed. “No, but I’m about ready to claw to his eyeballs out too.”

“We need some fucking space,” Hyde admitted to me before yelling at the door, “Leave us alone.”

“It’s just me,” someone said to the girls. “I came to check on you.”

“Fuck all the way off, Arwen.”

“Don’t be like that.”

Ripley growled again. “I’ll gut him for you. Just give me the nod. I don’t need verbal confirmation.”

“Wait,” Hyde whispered. “Lo, what should we do? Kill them or…”

I chortled, standing up to pace the pathway as I thought about their problem. I wasn’t sure what Hyde and Ripley wanted me to do about the predicament they were in when I was just as lost as they were.

The only difference between us was that I’d had a few weeks of experience with my mates, and I didn’t want space.

“I mean, I’ll kill them for you, but I need you to make sure that’s what you really want. It would be a shame to waste good men, or at the very least, good dick.”

Ripley scoffed. “There is no dick that’s worth my freedom.”

“Bitch,” Hyde drawled. “No truer words have been spoken.”

“Okay,” I cut in before they started convincing themselves that murder was the right option here. “Can you sneak out of the house, Hyde?”

“What kind of question is that?”

I huffed at her sarcasm, holding my index finger to my lips as Jack sauntered up to me. “I’ll summon you now so you can feel where I’m at. Then I’ll summon you again in twelve minutes. If you can’t get out, call me back.”

“We’ll be there in less than fifteen.”

I closed my hand, snuffing out the flame, and turned to Jack. I whispered Hyde’s name in my mind, pulling her to me. She shouldn’t have an issue following the path to me.

“I saw you out here with the hellfire in your hand and thought you might have been talking to Papi. I was hoping he’d heard from Nate.”

I groaned. That was a whole other set of issues that I didn’t want to think about.

The only thing that I could focus on was my earlier thought.

I didn’t want to be separated from my mates. I didn’t want space. I knew I’d thought about this a dozen times in the last few weeks, but it was more true now than it was yesterday.

“Fuck,” I muttered, rubbing at my chest.

The little black thing behind my ribs was seriously becoming a nuisance. How had I fallen for my mates so fucking fast?