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“How many jobs have you had?” I said. “Also, those wolves should be made to douche that shit back into their butts.”
“I’ve had a lot of jobs!” Moe said. “The wolf shifters finding their mates was so cute! I never thought I’d get one because I’m human—or I was before becoming a butt drum shifter. But my stepdad was a tent from Shifter Bay, so I learned all the magical world stuff.”
I’d never met anyone so willing to open up to others; it was endearing in a way that made me want to hug him like he was my favorite teddy bear.
Who the fuck was I? This spell had me thinking like a completely different person. The worst part was that I didn’t want it to end.
“Also…” Moe’s voice trailed off as his gaze slid past Jag to the wall. “Why is that lizard telling me to eat humans?”
Everyone turned to the Human-Ohs poster, even Beverly, as though she understood. But I kept watch on Ram. He didn’t look like his usual conniving self, with his eyes red and face tear-stained.
“Moe, you don’t have to do what every sign suggests,” Elliot said.
“I know that… now. Because this one is telling me to eat people. It says we’re crunchy. Are we? Wouldn’t we be soft?” He poked his arm. “Like gummy bears…awww. I hate that people eat gummy bears. Those little squishy faces!”
Holy shit, I was going to get diabetes hanging around this sweetheart. Time to make things less cringy. “Humans are too salty.”
Jag, Elliot, Moe, and Ram turned their gazes to me. Beverly licked her paws and cleaned her face as though, yeah, human eating was expected.
“Much too tough, like old jerky,” I added.
Ram’s mouth twitched into a smile.
“The only part of a human I ever ate was salty,” Moe said. “I mean the vagina.”
“It’s a pussy, not Wendy’s fries,” I said.
Moe winked one blue eye, and my stomach fluttered like I was dropping from a great height. “I like to fall face-first into both.”
I grinned. “You’re dirtier than I thought.”
Jag crossed his arms. “Ignore the human-eating lizard thing… I never thought I’d say that, but I’m glad I got to. What the fuck does a mate spell mean? Is this some kind of love potion? Is that why…” His ears flushed red, and he looked away from me.
It gave me a little thrill to be able to make him flustered without even saying a word. That’s just the spell talking, I reminded myself.
“Some supernaturals, like shifters, have fated mates: the person or people they’re meant to be with. They’re like soulmates.”
“Awww,” Moe said.
“Other supes, such as witches, don’t have fated mates normally. But some random asshole in Silver Springs keeps casting mate spells. They’re as common as wet on beaver—”
“Hehehe,” Moe said.
At least he got my joke. I gave him the finger guns like some kind of loser 1980s stockbroker, but damn it, it felt good to mess around with him. Moe grabbed his chest as though he had been shot and rolled his eyes back into his head.
Next to him, Ram heaved a sigh. “Oh, for the love of cheese and crackers.”
That was probably the most wholesome thing he had ever said.
Elliot inched toward me as though across thin ice that might break and drown him. “You’re saying this spell forces people to be mates? And it’s been cast on us?”
I winced. There it was: the completely fair and reasonable dislike of the spell… but still it stung.
“Not quite. It binds people who are well-suited to each other and who probably would have liked each other, anyway. It speeds things up. You go from meeting to love in a second. But… yeah, it happens without you agreeing to it. Without any of us choosing it.”
I stared at Beverly as she groomed her paws and face. I couldn’t bring myself to see the disgust or disappointment on the men’s faces, and fuck, why not? I had stared down vampires, dark witches, and entire packs of wolf shifters without flinching. I had even insulted them while doing it—telling the wolves they had PetSmart trainee haircuts and the vampires that wearing black didn’t make them interesting.
But now?
