Chapter 3 MATE

CELINE

I stood at the top of the stairs and stared at the empty corridor where the cold-eyed man had been.

Are you blind, or something?

Silver on the roadside. Ice blue on the stairs. I had seen both, and I wasn't delirious. Maybe it's contact lenses, I decided.

Rich people wear contact lenses. Colourful ones. It didn't explain the personality, but it was the only theory I had, so I started down.

Thank him. Leave. Find your father.

"Well. Who do we have here?"

I stopped on the last step and turned.

He was leaning against a marble pillar, arms crossed, enjoying the view. Same face. Same jaw. But his eyes were light green, bright and mischievous, and his smile was the most unrepentantly flirtatious thing I had ever seen on a human being.

"A pretty girl like you wouldn't go unnoticed around here," he said, pushing off the pillar. "How have I not seen you before?"

"Alpha Zithan?" I said carefully.

"Mm." He tilted his head as if tasting the name. "Is that what you're calling me?"

"I came to thank you." I stepped back. "Your eyes were silver this morning. Then blue ten minutes ago, when you shoved me on the stairs and asked if I was blind. Now they're green."

For a second he went completely still. Then he laughed, silently at first, then out loud, head thrown back, a sound that echoed up to the chandelier.

"Blue? Darling, I've never insulted a pretty woman in my life."

"That's an outright lie. Do you have a condition?"

"You're the first woman who's asked if I'm ill before asking my name."

"I know your name."

"Do you?"

I opened my mouth, then closed it. He had never once said yes.

'Three moods, three eye colours, one face.' Was that even possible?

Nothing in my life made sense today, and, annoyingly, I felt comfortable around him. Where the silver-eyed man had been still and quiet, this one crackled, like standing next to something about to catch fire.

When I turned to leave, his hand caught my wrist, gently, and my free hand landed flat against his chest. His scent hit me, cedar and warm spice, different from the roadside man's, and that pull in my chest tugged like a rope drawn tight. I stepped back fast.

"Come with me to the Mating Festival tonight," he said, unbothered.

"No. I need to find my-"

"Wonderful!"

"I said no."

"You didn't say it fast enough." He scooped me up before I could blink.

"Put me down!"

"You'll love it." He started up the stairs like a man on a Sunday stroll, ignoring my fists. "Best festival in the territory. I'll have a dress sent." He dropped me onto a bed in a room with tall windows, pointed at me with that infuriating grin, and backed away. "Be ready by sundown, darling. I will never lose."

He was gone before I could throw a pillow.

I pulled out my phone, and the notifications arrived like a flood. Thirty missed calls from Muize. Five from my father, with seven messages.

I opened Muize's first.

'Pray to the Moon Goddess Doland survives this. Prepare to rot in jail.'

'Where the FUCK are you?'

And the last one, sent forty minutes ago: Dad's on his way back. I told him everything.'

My stomach dropped. His father, my stepfather, would believe whatever story Muize told him. Doland on the floor, bleeding. Me, standing over him with a lamp. He tried to rape me, I told myself, testing how it sounded. And I'm the one who has to run.

I hadn't wanted to seriously hurt him. I had wanted him to understand what a boundary was. But he had unlocked my door. He had put his hand over my mouth.

I opened my father's last message, cut off mid-sentence. Elin, where are you? Do not leave the air-

The screen went black. Battery dead.

"You have got to be kidding me," I whispered.

The dress arrived that afternoon, carried by three maids who looked frightened of me.

"The Alpha's orders," the eldest murmured.

I held up my dead phone. "Does anyone have a charger? I need to call my father."

"After the festival, miss. The Alpha's orders come first."

It was the closest thing to a threat anyone had made to me all day, and it came with a smile.

"Which Alpha?" I asked. "Alpha Zithan?"

A very long glance passed between them. "The Alpha, miss."

They wrestled me into deep green silk, and the youngest couldn't help herself. "The Alpha has never attended a festival, miss. Tonight is the first time he's agreed to go."

"Why now?"

"We don't know. But he's never carried a girl up those stairs, and he certainly never ordered a dress. Alpha Rythan-" The eldest pinched her arm. "I mean, the Alpha."

Rythan. I filed the name away. "Does he have brothers? There are a lot of men in this house with his face."

The pins stopped moving. "Two, miss," the youngest burst out, "they're-"

"Lina." The eldest's voice was soft and terrible. "The Alpha will explain tonight."

I turned to the mirror, and a stranger looked back. Dark hair over one shoulder. Eyes too wide. A girl who looked, strangely, like she belonged somewhere.

'Don't you dare start hoping.'

The great hall glittered. Chandeliers, music, couples laughing in low voices, the air thick with perfume and wanting. An actual, real Mating Festival.

'Unattractive. No wolf. No mate.' Muize's voice again.

One hour, I told myself. One drink. Then find your father.

I told the bartender, "Whatever's strongest," and drank two shots before he could blink. "Something bigger."

"You won't make it home in one piece." He warned.

"Good thing I don't have a home."

He set down a full bottle. I drank from the neck.

"Careful, sweetheart." A girl in a silver dress stood at the end of the bar, looking me over with open contempt. "Wolfless. That's what they say. The new girl smells like nothing at all."

Wolfless. A different mouth, the same word. It landed in exactly the same place.

"I came for a drink," I said evenly. "I'll be gone in an hour."

"Make it ten minutes. The Alpha is coming tonight, and he won't want to see something like you in a borrowed dress."

"Enough, Ann," the bartender said quietly. "Leave her."

She smiled and walked away.

"That one's been waiting years for the Alpha," he muttered. "Everyone has. She'll-" He stopped.

A sharp pull struck the center of my chest, so forceful my knees nearly buckled. I gripped the bar. "Does too much alcohol cause chest burn?"

The bartender had gone completely still, staring past me at the entrance with an expression I had never seen on a bartender. Fear.

"The Blackthorne triplets," he breathed.

The music didn't stop, but the whole room inhaled. The crowd parted.

Triplets?

I turned.

Three men stood at the entrance. Three identical faces. Same height, same dark hair, same shoulders filling the doorway as if they owned the air inside. One pair of eyes is silver. One ice blue. One light green.

The floor dropped out from under me.

Not moods. Not contact lenses. Not a condition. Three men. All day, I had been arguing with a family.

The pull struck again, fierce and bone-deep, from all three of them at once, like three invisible ropes tied around my ribs. Across the hall, the green-eyed one found me through the crowd, and his smile slipped into something that looked almost like wonder.

And in perfect unison, all three of them spoke the same single word.

"Mate."