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“I think they will be even better than last time,” he says. “It feels good to be close to our mate even if we can’t see her. Her scent is all over this house.”
I frown at him, hoping he is not going to talk about Lita in front of my mother.
She knows I see her surrogate daughter as my mate, but I do not know how she would feel if she knew my brothers all see her that same way.
“He is not wrong,” Scratch murmurs. “And it does feel better to know she is close.”
Snake makes a murmuring sound. He usually hisses in agreement, but occasionally he makes this sound instead. Apparently, we are all in agreement that it is a good thing to be close to our mate even if she is sleeping in another room. If that was the only reason we were here we would have nothing more to worry about than running low on cookies.
Unfortunately, our situation is a bit more worrying than that.
My mother returns to the room with a tray of drinks, and a tin of cookies on the side.
She sets the tray on the table and closes the door.
Fox is quick to open the tin and snatch up one of the cookies.
He inhales it and picks up another before my mother walks past to sit at his other side.
“Thank you,” he mumbles with a full mouth.
I suppose I should be grateful that he is making an effort, not annoyed that he is ruining the attempt at good manners by speaking with his mouth full.
“Thank you,” Scratch says, as he takes a cookie.
He must be hungry. He doesn’t have much of a sweet tooth.
“So, our Alpha was not a wolf shifter,” my mother says, picking up a glass of water from the tray. She looks from Fox to Snake and back at me. “Is he feline, or reptilian?”
I give her a rueful smile. “He has elements of both, along with wolf. He is a chimera.”
She puts the glass down carefully and looks at me. “A chimera? Are you sure?”
“He became a giant monster with the face of a tiger, the body of a wolf and the lower part of a snake,” Fox informs her.
“Oh, Goddess,” My mother mutters.
“Do you know anything about chimeras?” I ask.
“I know there isn’t much they can’t do,” she says. “Besides show empathy. They are notoriously self-serving and will not hesitate to kill others to get what they want.”
“He seemed to be expecting us,” I admit. “Well, me, at least.”
“So, he stopped the ritual on purpose,” she muses. “Then the ritual was never meant to keep monsters out of Nightshade. It was made to keep his rejected children out of his plans.”
“What could his plan have been?”
She shakes her head. “Chimeras were hunted to the brink of extinction a long time ago. It’s possible his father set Nightshade up as a feeding ground for the few that were left.”
“If that was the plan, wouldn’t that mean there are others in town?”
“It would.”
That’s what I was afraid of.
I look at Scratch. He nods, knowing this is why we came here.
“Do you know any ways to kill them?” I ask.
