Destined to Run

by J. Kearston

  “That can’t possibly be all you’re eating?” Cole asks in shock and I frown down at my plate.

  “What’s wrong with it?”

  He leans across the table, scooping more food on until it’s practically overflowing. “The first few days I thought you just weren’t feeling good because of your head or something, but is that seriously all you eat at every meal? No wonder you’re all skin and bones!”

  I bite my lip, stowing my instant retort and instead muster up a bit of courage to just be honest. “That’s just how I was raised. High class society has certain expectations, and even though I snuck some junk on occasion, I had to exercise twice as hard to make up for it.”

  Both men look at me in horror and Ares gently pushes my plate closer to me. “They make you starve yourself to stay thin and fit in?”

  I take a hesitant bite before quoting my father. “Never going to land a good husband if you let yourself go.” Three growls surround me as I focus my attention on picking at my food.

  “Excuse the hell out of me,” Cole starts, incensed, “but your society is fucked up. It’s the person that matters; not what they look like. Also, you’re gorgeous, if you weren’t aware. And you’d still be just as stunning if you got to a healthy weight. You’re underfed, and winter’s coming. You don’t have fur!” He throws his hands out animatedly. “If you don’t put at least a few pounds on, you’re going to freeze to death!”

  Ares turns to him and smacks the back of his head. “She’s not going to freeze to death, don’t scare her. We’ll just need to stock up extra firewood for the house and get her some more clothes.”

  My breath hitches in my chest as they squabble, but I continue to keep my head down and eat so I don’t need to look at them when I say, “It’s also a lot warmer sleeping next to one of you guys. It was pretty chilly last night and it’s only fall. I might need to borrow at least one of you as a personal heater until spring.”

  Like a damn coward, I don’t look up to gauge their reactions, just focus on eating more than I’m accustomed to. By the time my stomach is full to bursting, I’ve only cleared about seventy percent of the plate, but I don’t want to make myself sick either.

  Nobody comments from that point on and by the time I look at them again, whatever reaction my words received is long since hidden. We break into an easy routine of putting away leftovers and cleaning up without any more heavy issues, for which I’m thankful.

  When I go to dig out my jacket so we can leave, I pull to an abrupt halt, looking around in surprise. “It’s like a whole new house.”

  The living room is completely clean for the first time since coming here, and I retrace my steps around the house to give it a once over. When coming down from my shower I wasn’t paying attention, a desperate need for caffeine and hunger taking precedence.

  Cole scratches the back of his head, looking guilty. “I was going through sort of a rough patch for a while and keeping up with the place just went on the back burner. Ares was busy making sure we didn’t fall behind on any of our projects and keeping up with the bills. So I thought it was only fair that I gutted it.”

  I smile at him, trying to make sure there isn’t an ounce of pity in my gaze, because I can only imagine he’s seen his fair share over the years from the little bits and pieces I’ve managed to gather.

  “You did an amazing job. Did you even get any sleep?”

  He sheepishly looks to the side. “Not really.” His head tilts in Osiris’ direction before he sighs and looks at me, admitting, “Ares was convinced I was smothering you, but I knew if I went to bed, I wouldn’t have slept anyway.”

  Giving Ozzy a grateful look at being a buffer for all of this awkward mess, I start to relax. I’ve clearly built things up in my head more than they have to be, and if I just take a step back, things might be a lot easier.

  “Remind me not to change up my shampoo then so you guys don’t riot,” I tease, still getting used to this whole ‘you smell like mate’ nonsense.

  Cole shrugs a single shoulder. “Wouldn’t matter. Even with Osiris coating you in his scent every day, you still smell like you. It doesn’t come from a shower, it’s just...you.”

  I grimace. “Well thank gods it’s appealing then.”

  He snickers, Ares coming back with my jacket since we got side tracked. “If we want to make it by nightfall, we need to get moving.” He holds it out for me to slip into and I fight the urge to lean back and rub against him like a needy kitten.

  “Just how far of a drive is it?” I ask, surprised.

  Ares raises a single eyebrow, turning his bright orange gaze onto me as I tilt my head up to face him. “Who said anything about driving?”

  Eleven

  Cole

  “Why don’t you just ride me?” I offer again, torn between finding it adorable the way my mate trudges through the forest like a newborn deer, and terrified she’s going to break her neck.

  She scoffs, fixing her ponytail to recapture all of the stray hairs that have slipped out and are sticking to the side of her face. “If I can’t even walk around in the wilds, how am I supposed to live here?”

  I think she’s coming around to the idea.

  “Of course she is!” Ares replies, like there was never any doubt. “She belongs with us. Even if she doesn’t have animalistic instincts, it’s clear she feels it too. What sane human would willingly snuggle up beside a damn panther unless it was their mate?”

  Osiris scouted ahead and is nestled in some low branches about a mile out. “She just needs time. Everything she’s feeling right now goes against what she was raised to believe is okay. To the humans, if it seems too good to be true, it is. You need to sacrifice your own happiness for the sake of doing what’s expected of you, and if you don’t, you’re a selfish, horrible person.”

  “Fuck, they’re a mess,” Ares scoffs, disgusted, and I have to agree.

  “Like a jungle princess?” I offer, falling into step beside her so I can catch her if she trips.

  She snorts, the most unladylike sound I think I’ve heard from her, and my grin takes over my face. “Sure, Bagheera.”

  “To be fair, he was the smartest one in that movie. But nobody ever listens to the logical ones.”

  She stops dead in her tracks, whirling around so quickly I’m surprised she’s still upright. “You got my reference.”

  I share a confused look with Ares. “I mean, it’s a classic. And call me a narcissist, but more movies should have jungle cat representation; the wolves took over everything.”

  She looks happier than I’ve seen her yet, and fuck, I could get addicted to having that look aimed in my direction. “No one ever gets my references. They all look at me like I’m nuts.”

  My brows draw low in confusion. “Because you have good taste in movies?”

  A split second later her hands are on my cheeks and she’s pressing an enthusiastic kiss to my lips. I just stand there in shock at first, not really understanding how we got to this point, but definitely not objecting.

  When she starts to pull away, I cup the back of her neck and draw her back in, not letting her go. My other hand settles on her hip possessively as I use my tongue to part her lips, absolutely devouring her. Her scent surrounds me, consumes me, and still I want to get closer. She’s quickly become the center of my entire world, everything shifting with such clarity.

  I was a mess my entire life because I was missing an integral part of myself. My pride was enough glue to keep me together until I could find my way to her, but nothing, absolutely nothing, can replace this feeling of being whole for the first time. She’s everything I didn’t even know I needed, and it physically hurts to push down the need to shift and mark her as mine.

  Her hands slip down to my chest, gently stepping back and looking flushed. Covering them with one of my own, I try to rub some heat into her chilled fingers.

  “I might have gotten a little carried away,” I admit, but I certainly don’t apologize.

  �
��Same,” she smirks, winking before going back to forging a path through the wilderness, since we have at least another hour walk ahead of us at this rate.

  When we catch up to Osiris, we sit down to give her a break, and he promptly tackles her, paws on her shoulders and licking her face. She laughs, shoving his face away and donning a scandalized voice.

  “No, we musn’t! There are laws.” She flutters her hand to her chest as Ares growls.

  “They actually passed a law now? When did that happen?” he demands and she waves away his anger.

  “No, no, no. Not shifters and humans, that’s just frowned upon, but not illegal. I meant like, you can’t go molest a swan without ending up on some type of registry somewhere.”

  I watch the gears in her head turn, guessing at the direction of her thoughts that I sincerely doubt she’ll actually voice.

  “You’re thinking about it, aren’t you?” I tease and she turns red.

  “Am not,” she quickly protests and I burst out laughing.

  “I didn’t even say what I meant, so you clearly were.”

  Ares barks out a laugh, leaning back against the trunk of the tree and taking a sip from one of the water bottles we packed. “You’d be surprised at the sort of things people get into behind closed doors. As long as everyone’s into it, not our place to judge. Though biologically, that might pose some issues depending on the breeds.”

  The rest of the distance flies by, the setting sun barely visible now. Bigger than a pond, but not quite enough to be considered a lake, the chilly water laps at the rocks. In the center, the massive tree stretches above all of the rest in the vicinity, the leaves a myriad of autumn colors. Plenty have fallen and are floating on the surface of the water alone with the closed lilies.

  “Damn. I figured as much, but it was worth a shot,” Ares grumbles, crouching by the shore and dipping his fingers in the frigid water. “Going to have to wait for spring.”

  Rin has her arms wrapped around herself and I drift closer, standing beside her to try and block the wind a bit. She soaks everything up as best she can in the dim lighting, the moon starting to rise enough to help.

  Her voice is wistful as she stays enraptured. “It’s beautiful just as it is.”

  She ends up sitting, wrapping her arms around her knees and getting lost in her head as she commits every detail to memory. It’s insane to me that she’s been kept so far removed from nature that this place is having such an effect on her. We stay in comfortable silence, Ares and I sitting beside her, and trying to brainstorm other places we can show her that we’ve taken for granted all of these years.

  Whether it’s from her exhaustion or the chill, she ends up leaning into me. Her head rests on my shoulder while Osiris settles between her knees. Rin pauses in her stroking of the top of Osiris’ head, stiffening a bit with tension. Hesitantly, she reaches over and steals Ares’ hand, setting it on her knee before going back to petting my brother.

  Ares’ thumb rubs back and forth and the tension dissipates from her form gradually. We stay like that for hours before having to make the call to start the arduous journey back.

  Ares yanks me back from staying two steps away from her. “She’s going to just end up tripping over you too. Give her some space.”

  Rin catches herself on a tree before she faceplants and I glare at Ares, gesturing at her to make my point behind her back. “What if I stay human and just give you a piggyback ride?” She flips me the bird while righting herself and I chuckle in surprise. “You know, for being some high society girl, you’ve gotten progressively more crass since being here.”

  I ignore Ozzy trying to butt in, wanting to hear from my mate herself instead of everyone telling me how I should treat her.

  “I think I’m just becoming more comfortable around you guys,” she states flippantly, like her words don’t make my entire night. “It’s not like I’ve been faking it around you, I just…” She swipes a hand down her face, turning to lean against a tree trunk rather than risk getting distracted and tripping again. “You know that feeling you get when you walk into a room? The one where you just have a sense of the sort of crowd you’re in?”

  I nod, coming to lean beside her. “When you’re uncomfortable so you stay quiet, as opposed to being surrounded by friends and you’re more yourself.”

  She gives me a sad smile. “Exactly. And I’ve spent enough time forced into situations where I just need to be seen and not heard, that it’s become my go-to response for everything. But I’ve always been Rin; not Corinna Harlow. It’s just strange to be in a position where I don’t need to overanalyze everything I say and do.”

  I flick her arm and she blinks at me in shock. “You didn’t need to get all philosophical on me, I was just giving you a hard time. Please, tell me to fuck off as often as you want,” I chuckle with amusement, grabbing her hand and picking up where we left off. “Hell, start screaming obscenities at the trees for all we care, gorgeous. No need to read so much into it.” I wink, teasing and keeping her hand in mine for another few miles.

  The sound of wolves howling makes her tense, but it just makes the rest of us groan in annoyance.

  Ares sneers in their direction, flipping them off as Rin starts snickering. “Damn wolves; always trying to get a glimpse of our dicks.”

  Rin can’t keep the smile out of her voice. “Is interspecies breeding a no go?”

  He turns to her in confusion. “What? No, it’s just,” he trails off, looking uncomfortable.

  She waggles her eyebrows at him. “Hung like a horse or something?”

  His annoyance fades as he barks out a harsh laugh, just as enamored with the girl as the rest of us. He can’t seem to get the admission out, so I take pity on him.

  “It’s the spikes. Feline shifters have penile spines and the wolves like to give us a hard time about it.”

  She blinks a few times as she tries to temper her reaction. “Are they, um, like that all of the time?”

  Ares starts cursing and looks about two seconds from whipping it out to prove a point, but she releases my hand to hold hers up in surrender, laughing. “So you can only jack off as men,” she nods stoically, but the effect is ruined by her snickering. “Makes sense.”

  I roll my eyes. “We don’t have opposable thumbs in those forms, so we weren’t going to anyway,” I defend.

  She swipes a hand across her forehead, striding ahead with a confidence she really shouldn’t feel while everything’s pitch black. “Well that’s a relief. And here I thought I was alone on the weird genital front. Was worried about starting that awkward conversation, so this is a load off, really.”

  I become rooted to the spot in shock, Ares only a second behind me. We share a look then pivot to Osiris, because of any of us, he seems to have the best read on our mate.

  “I mean,” he stutters, trying to rein in his shock. “I’ve never seen her naked. But she’s our mate no matter what’s going on down there. Like you all haven’t sucked a dick at least once anyway. We’ll figure it out, it’s not important.”

  “I haven’t,” Ares points out and I just shake my head at how absurd the conversation turned.

  “Well now this is twice as awkward,” Osiris states before shutting down the connection and I’m pretty sure my stomach is going to hurt for days at how hard I’m laughing.

  Rin, oblivious to our inner conference, just continues unperturbed. “Like a venus fly trap down there.” She mimes the teeth clamping shut with her hands and tears start to leak from the corners of my eyes. “They call me the mantis in the city; one and done,” she finishes melodramatically and we all just fucking lose it.

  Ares braces his hands on his knees, face red and struggling to breathe while I fall on my ass, laughs bubbling out as I gasp for breaths while tears stream down my cheeks. Even Osiris’ body is shaking with silent laughter and I can’t tell you the last time I’ve let go this much.

  Every time we try to talk, someone wheezes and starts the process all over again. Ou
r hike is slow going like this, someone always stopping as they dissolve into an immature fit.

  “You are absolutely perfect,” I manage to gasp out, throwing an arm over her shoulders and kissing the top of her head. “You put even my weird to shame.”

  Ares smiles. “I haven’t seen you this happy in a long time.”

  I think I’m already in love with her. It’s way too soon for that, right? I’m being an obsessive weirdo. But fuck, man…

  “Not weird,” he assures me. “And you’re not alone.”

  Twelve

  Ares

  “Mantis? Why the hell didn’t you stop me?” Rin hisses at Osiris upstairs, underestimating our hearing.

  I’d clue her in, but honestly? The way she gets into one sided arguments with my brother is one of the highlights of my day. I’m not sure it will score me any points in her favor when she finds out that we can pretty much hear anything happening within the house no matter how much she whispers.

  Like the way she snores, but Osiris made us all swear never to bring that up to her face.

  “They’re going to think I need to be medicated,” she continues and I share a grin with Cole as we finish cooking lunch.

  By the time we got home, there was no way we could crawl into bed or our sleep schedules would be trashed to hell. It was worth it though, exhaustion aside, and I would gladly do it again.

  “She doesn’t appreciate herself enough.”

  Cole pulls the plates down from the cabinet. “Then I guess we’ll just have to keep reminding her how amazing she is until she finally accepts it.”

  I pull the pot off of the stove, putting noodles on everyone’s plates. I add extra to Rin’s even though I know she’ll never finish it. But if I’m reading her correctly, it might help her adjust to eating more if she isn’t feeling like she’s clearing her plate every time. By leaving a good portion untouched, it can appease that part of her brain.