Page 13 of Collared Mate

“God! Why are you cooking now?” Rick comes downstairs in his robe. He’s not wearing anything else other than a scowl as he climbs up on the kitchen island, yanks the alarm off the ceiling, and deactivates it by ripping the battery out. We live in a house worth millions and yet he insists on treating the place like it’s a frat rental.

“I’m hungry,” I say.

He jumps down from the counter to give me the full force of his fraternal displeasure.

“You couldn’t have toast?”

“Toast burns too,” I quip. “Besides, no. I need protein. And iron.”

“You need to go to bed,” he says. “This is ridiculous.”

“Do you want some? I can put another one on? It’s not like you can be woken up by the smoke alarm again now that you’re already up because of the smoke alarm.”

“Fine,” he says. “I guess I could eat.”

My brother is seven years older than me. It’s not really that big of an age gap in the grand scheme of things, but it’s always felt massive because that’s how these things work when you’re young. I remember being five years old and thinking he could do absolutely anything.

“Where have you been?” Rick asks me the question without really caring. It’s an accusatory question, I guess, but he’s delivering it with almost no interest. He’s box ticking for things to give me shit about.

“Nowhere,” I say as I grab another steak from the box in the fridge and toss it into the pan with mine. “Just out. Hey. I was wondering, what happened between you and Henry?”

Rick gives me a dark look. “Why would you ask that?”

“I saw him around while I was out,” I say. “Almost didn’t recognize him. He’s a lot bigger now. Why aren’t you friends anymore?”

“He’s a lot, a lot of things,” Rick says. His expression darkens in a way very similar to the way Henry’s did and I find myself wondering what the hell went down between the two of them. Whatever it was, it’s left them both furious and kind of traumatized, if I am reading the energy right. “I’m not going to have steak. I’m going to go to bed.”

More for me.

CHAPTER 2

Fiona

I don’t sleep that well. I don’t really know why, because I am exhausted. Trauma, probably. Some of my friends have been on at me to go to therapy about the whole Christian thing, but I think rehashing the past is a good way to get stuck in it. I’ve found my own therapy, in the form of drinking, staying out late, and killing dudes. I bet I’d have a very hard time finding a therapist who was cool with all of that.

I’m up at about eight, on four hours sleep. I don’t feel as tired as I should be. Maybe that’s the sex, or the mate bond. I really can’t stop thinking about Henry. I don’t even have his number. That’s so fucking wild. I guess I didn’t give him mine either, but how the hell are we going to hook up again? Is he just going to show up and fuck me? I giggle at the preposterousness of that idea.

I’m asking myself these questions as I walk down the stairs. As luck would have it, Rick seems to have either set an alarm or been roused by a guilty conscience out of bed at a similar time. He’s coming downstairs with me, more or less. He’s wearing track pants and a sweatband on his head. He thinks it’s the 1980s, I swear. Or maybe he wishes it was.

“I’m heading to the gym. You should go to bed, if you haven’t already… ah, hell, I don’t want to know what you’re doing out there.”

He leaves, and I go to the kitchen. The chef isn’t in yet, but she keeps waffle batter fresh for me in the mornings. All I have to do is pour it into a waffle iron and wait until the light turns green.

So I do that, and then I get the can of whipped cream, I squirt it into my mouth, and then I squirt it on the waffles. I am in a very good mood, which is odd because I am certain I should be traumatized, or angry or… I don’t know. I’ve been killing for weeks now. Every time, I think I’m avenging something or someone, and I think that’s going to make everything okay. But what’s made me feel okay is meeting Henry and everything he did to me.

Did I really only need to get laid? It’s been years. I felt like a virgin again when he took me. It felt like the first and best time. Christian and I awkwardly rutted. He barely even knotted.

I sit at the kitchen counter, the same place I ate my steaks last night. There’s a whole big ass table in the dining room, but it feels absolutely ridiculous to eat there by myself. It can easily seat forty people. Sometimes, Rick and I have breakfast there, but we sit at opposite ends and throw bagels at each other. The memory makes me smile even as I realize we haven’t done that in ages. We’re getting older and more boring by the day.

* * *

“Wake up, stupid.” My brother flicks my ear.

I fell asleep in my waffles.

I know this, because I wake up with one waffle stuck to my face with more syrup than an adult should ever put on anything making sure that it stays glued.

“Christ, Fi,” he says, going for a wet wipe, then changing his mind, taking the whole box of them and shoving them at me. “You’re messier than an actual baby.”