Let’s Talk One True Mate (One True Mate Companion, Vol. 1)

2-Graeme and Heather ♦♦

“A week or so went by—this was last October—and that whole time, Graeme never recovered and even got worse. Remington thought he was dying—wanted to die even—so Remington called around, looking for help, and he talked to Serenity’s foremost expert on all things cold-blooded and with scales.”

Guess who , Canyon said.

Burton shook his head.

Timber grinned. “The lizard expert was Heather. You know her super power?”

“Fireproof,” Burton said.

“Right. She can’t be burned,” Timber said. “And she can start fires, but she’s repressed about it because she was punished for doing it as a kid. Remington called her and asked her enough questions to make her think he had an illegal Komodo dragon, so she tracked him down. She found his place and happened upon Graeme pulling his sleeping beauty act. She touched him, he woke up like, ‘ Ach, me fair beauty, ’ then she shot out of there so fast he thought he was dreaming. Later, he woke up invigorated and full of life—”

Life and lava jizz.

“—and Remington ended up with a destroyed hospital bed—do NOT ask how that happened—"

Lava jizz.

“—no worries though, Wade replaced it, then invited Graeme into the KSRT. He said yes eventually.”

Once he said yes to Heather.

“Exactly. Graeme regained his health and will to live when he saw Heather, and Heather was affected too. Her pendant called her that night at her family home for the first time—”

Maybe it had been calling her and that was the first time she’d heard it.

Timber pointed at Canyon. “Could be. Either way, she found it hidden in her mom’s stuff and she took it home with her. Later that night, she sleepwalked and started a fire at a business just up the hill from here. It was pretty fancy and it even had a message. ‘You are not the last dragon’. Graeme was shook up by this until Heather turned up pregnant, and then he decided the message was referring to his young.”

Burton nodded like he’d heard this before.

Grey, Canyon prompted, with an eye on Burton.

“This was about the time Grey went on the run. Once he heard we had his boxes of code he walked off the job at Chicago P.D. Jaggar figured out that Grey and the angel dad, Azercadabra, or whatever his name was, had some sort of friendship, and that Grey had early knowledge about the plan and the pendants, and still Grey has been stealing pendants and working against the KSRT’s core mission of ‘kill Khain’ for decades now.”

Burton got up and circled his chair a couple of times, growling to himself.

Leilani, Canyon prompted.

Timber waited until Burton settled and sat back down before he went on. “That was the first time we saw Leilani. She time-traveled to Trevor’s house, calling Harlan’s name, which got everyone all worked up, then a video of Boe speaking the vahiy went viral, inciting the local foxen population, or so we thought. While we were dealing with that mess, Heather came here to SPD to turn herself in for the fire, and Graeme was here. He beat the crap outta some wolves for being in the same room as Heather, so we caught on that she was his mate real quick like.”

Graeme was pissed he had a mate after having nothing for 900 years—he was pissed at being manipulated by Rhen… and he was also unconvinced that he wouldn’t burn Heather from the inside out, so he flat-out rejected her.

Timber nodded along as Canyon spoke, then said, “Heather was upset at being rejected, but then a giant spider attacked her and Graeme fried it, which cooled her off a bit.”

Burton laughed. “Nothing like a giant spider attack to cool off a female.”

“It was Khain himself, come through a spider crack the length of a football field under Rolling Meadows Park.”

Burton’s laugh hardened into a sneer. “Good fuck,” he said.

Canyon opened some image files on his computer, showing a wide view of trees and bushes covered with layers upon layers of millions of spiders and webs. The crack is too fucking long, but it’s no wider than a human hair and Khain can only send a bit of himself through, so he comes out as millions of spiders. Graeme says Khain can widen the crack, but we’ve got cameras and seismographs set up and there’s been no more activity since that day.

“Graeme and Heather found a bobcat kitten caught in a spiderweb,” Timber said. “Heather had a friend at Serenity Humane Society who she called.”

Guess who, Canyon said.

Burton’s face took on a thoughtful cast. “Another mate?”

“Yep. Dahlia, Crew’s mate. She came and got the bobcat, named it Angel, took it home, and never went back to work. The little guy turned out to be her echo , and Crew’s echo … but we didn’t know any of that for a while. After she left the scene was when the spider attacked and Graeme roasted him, then he flew Heather to Scotland, and left the mess for the rest of us to clean up. While they were in Scotland, Heather saw something in the forest that Graeme didn’t see, and she thinks there’s a chance it was a dragen, but Graeme says all the dragen but him are dead.”

Burton nodded along, a vertical crease between his eyes.

“I never explained where the video of the Vahiy came from—Boe was living with Rogue and she knew something was up with him. One night he went into a trance-like state and recited the Vahiy and she videoed it. The internet got ahold of it and a couple of opportunistic foxen used it to create a sham foxen revolt here in Serenity, out at some doomsday prepper’s farm just outside the city limits.”

“This was Rex Brenwyn’s bullshit?”

“Yeah. He and a partner in crime faked a rally at Serenity Community College and managed to trick some college students onto a bus, then he took the whole bus hostage—drove them out to the farm, and holed up. The place was set up to withstand a siege from zombies, with an actual ring of fire around it—like some real The Walking Dead shit. At first they said they wanted mates, then money, but the real purpose was that Rex wanted Khain’s attention.”

Burton listened intently, leaning forward.

“Here’s where it gets crazy. Graeme took hours to fly to Scotland, but he made it back in minutes. He did it by dragen travel through other worlds that took less time than travel here would have—and that’s not even the interesting part.”

Burton’s expression said he was hanging on Timber’s every word. Timber loved it. He took a moment to rummage a package of mints out of a drawer. He tossed them on the desk and went on.

“Heather had purposely left her pendant at home, but it magically appeared in her pocket while they were in one of the worlds. She says she was told by a voice in her head to leave the pendant with a kid there.”

Burton was incredulous. “She left her pendant in another world?”

“Crazy, I know. What’s crazier is how she got it back, but I’m getting ahead of myself—Graeme and Heather came back without it. They went out to the field operations headquarters and Heather saw the ring of fire, and she ran right through it to prove to Graeme she was fireproof. She turned off the fire and our team rushed the place, they captured Rex and took him to jail. Later, Heather and Graeme officially got together—bonded in some secret ceremony, and then they moved out to Trevor’s place.”

Timber paused, thinking, scratching the stubble on his chin. “You know about the boinkorama moment, right?”

Burton blinked. “The boinkowhat?”

“Every time one of them gets claimed, everybody gets all excited and disappears for a few hours for super secret sexy times but nobody talks about it. Anyway, we call it the boinkorama.” Timber leaned against his desk and spoke wistfully. “Someday, I’ll get my boinkorama moment.” He snapped out of it and went on, his voice all business. “Trevor hadn’t given Ella’s pendant to her yet, but he did around this time, and it sent her to another world, possibly the same world that Heather left her pendant in, but she came back right away.”

Burton looked more than a little confused, but he nodded at Timber to go on.