And didn’t they want you to make more werewolves? Wasn’t that important to their packs for longevity?
She was absolutely not in the market to make little anythings—especially not with a werewolf. He was, if you looked at it from a very basic evolutionary aspect, essentially a dog. She was a cat. Cats and dogs didn’t mate. What would they produce if they mated anyway?
Catdog?
No-no to the mate. She liked single. She didn’t want to mate for life with anything but a copy of Vogue, and even then, she cheated religiously with Cosmo. What she wanted was her freedom.
And really, what kind of line was he spewing? I’ll die if you don’t mate with me on the full moon.
It certainly had more impact than “If I could rearrange the alphabet, I’d put U and I together” followed by a yuck-yuck-yuck, she’d give him that. But the curse of death? Not that she wasn’t privy to plenty of curses. She knew all about them.
Just ask Escobar the warlock.
JC had a sympathetic look on her face when she peered at her. “We’re not inspiring you to shift, are we? It was the death thing, right?”
Why would something as dire as death-sex keep her in shift atrophy? Silly.
Martine walked to the edge of the coffee table and looked at JC. Her instincts told her there was no malice here. If there were a way to tell JC how thankful she was that she’d at least been kind enough to address her, she’d do it.
Instead, she stuck a paw out, placing it on JC’s arm, hoping that was enough to show her she understood.
JC patted it, smiling at her. “It’s a little like the paranormal Hunger Games, huh?”
This was a little like the paranormal Crazy Games, was what this was like. Even in her world, this was crazy. How could she, out of all the shifters in the world, have been picked to be this man’s life mate?
Ah, but you’re forgetting the big picture here, Martine. While you’re here, you’re free. Sort of.
But for how long before someone came looking? Maybe this was a good thing. Maybe she could just hide here for the rest of her life?
And in order to do that you have to have death-sex and mate for life.
A lottery of choices, if you will, Martine.
JC nodded her head, tucking her curls behind her ear. “I know exactly what you’re thinking right now. ‘Who’s in charge of this life mate thing and how did I end up like this?’ I’m still not sure how I, out of all the people in the world, was chosen for Max,” she said, poking him in the shoulder playfully. “It was a little like, ‘here, take that. Have a human who’s going to drive you out of your mind because she doesn’t believe in werewolves. Then, for your troubles, go on and try to make her fall in love with you and convince her to mate so you won’t die. Ha-ha-ha.’”
Max wound an arm around her shoulders, a definitive possessive gesture, making Martine shiver. It was clear this man Max loved this woman, and JC loved him back. It was in the way he looked at her, in the way he touched her, in the way her eyes scoured his face with unadulterated worship.
The mate-or die-thing had clearly worked for them. Squee, love.
Martine looked to Derrick and waited. He had a jaw that possessed a delicious tic she’d take a nip of if circumstances were different. There’d been a time when she’d enjoyed a man just for the pure enjoyment of him. If she’d run across Derrick during that time, she’d have definitely chosen to enjoy him.
Like if they’d met in a club—or at one of her office parties. Not in the backwoods of Cedar Glen, New Jersey, where distant banjos plucked the tune from Deliverance.
JC cocked her head. “Maybe you should explain the details of the curse, Derrick? Tell her why the need to mate is truly so dire?”
He was clearly running out of patience. Martine smelled it, saw it in his rigid posture. “A long time ago, several scientists kidnapped a group of werewolves to perform experiments on. We’re still not sure what those experiments entailed. We only know the results. Anyway, the experimental weres managed to break free, but they were scarred from years of abuse, and their DNA altered somehow.
“When they returned to their packs, our elders shunned them, didn’t want them to reproduce for fear they’d weaken their packs. They were due for extermination until my grandparents stepped in and spoke out. When they chose to defy the elders by taking in those pack members and their families and coming here to Cedar Glen, the elders cursed all Adams males. Sort of retribution for disobeying their wishes.”
Shunned? She was somewhere in the country with a bunch of redneck werewolves who’d been shunned? That really was a banjo she heard playing in the distance.