Bianca and I are getting married.

We’re getting married.

I stared across the table at my new fiancee, watching her gorgeous lips move but not hearing the words coming out of them.

This is a really, really bad idea.

Bianca had no clue how I felt about her. To her, I was a good friend she could chat to over a pint. We clicked instantly, because we’re the only two single members of the pack and we both have crazy families that had scarred us. She talked to me the same way she’d talk to any girlfriend, with that easy confessional air that meant she’d decided I was safe.

She had no idea that every time we met up, I spent the whole time desperately trying to work up the nerve to ask her out. I listened so intently to her because I kept getting distracted from what she was saying by how divine her lips were. She had no clue that my skin sizzled with heat whenever she was near, and that I was drawn to her like a magnet to one of the enormous metal spikes in her ear. She had no idea that she was my fated mate.

And now I was going to be her husband.

Er, fake-husband.

Ever since we’d started hanging out, I’d been dreaming about something like this. Bianca was like no other girl I’d ever met before. Everything about her was tiny and pixie-like. If we stood side-by-side, her head barely reached to my shoulder. Her enormous blue eyes dominated her heart-shaped face, framed by long lashes that tangled together when she closed her eyes. She kept her white-blonde hair cropped super short, so it framed her face in light feathers, often coloured with bright streaks. Her ears were tiny and filled with piercings, her fingers long and neat, her feet dainty, although she usually had them stuffed inside an enormous pair of black Doc Martins. The tattoos that encircled every inch of her arms, chest, stomach, legs, and back with intricate and feminine – skulls and flowers and delicate maidens with diaphanous wings and exquisitely rendered drapery.

If everything about Bianca’s appearance was pixieish, her personality was the exact opposite. You had to be tough to survive as a female tattoo artist, but I think even if Bianca was a butterfly botanist, she’d still be exactly the same. If Bianca wanted to say something, she’d damn well say it, consequences be damned. She was anti-marriage, anti-monogamy, anti-sexism, anti-religious, anti-just-about-anything conservative. Add the multiple piercings, odd hair colours (currently, it was streaked with blue), and tattoos over every inch of her skin (I assume), and you got a hint into her real nature.

All the girls I’d met in Aberdeen – and there were a few (mostly my brother Angus’ cast-offs) – cared about were clothes and celebrities and what their friends said about them down at the pub. They didn’t have an original thought in their heads. Although, it was much easier to watch a film with them. Bianca talked over any film we tried to watch, mostly ranting about various plot inconsistencies or the evils of organised religion. And then you put Wall-E on, and she’d cry.

All I wanted more than anything in the world was to hold her every night and listen to her crazy rants. Now, we were going to be husband and wife.

I drowned my champagne glass in one gulp, the sickly sweet fluid churning in my stomach. I should tell her how I feel. It was the right thing to do. She clearly didn’t see me as anything other than a friend, and she should know the truth before we did this crazy thing. It might change things for her.

And yet … I really did want to help her. I loved the idea of the art house almost as much as Bianca did. The place sounded magical, like something out of the storybooks my mother used to read for me when my father wasn’t around. It was so far from the harsh gang environment I’d grown up in. I loved the idea that all around the world there were these safe houses for misfits to congregate, and even though I could barely read and didn’t have an artistic bone in my body, I wanted to be part of that.

Plus, we’d be flatmates, cooking together, having a beer together before bed, fixing things around the place, sharing a toothbrush cup …

It’s your one chance to show her how you feel, how good a husband you could really be. I knew it was pointless to hope, but I hoped anyway. I hoped one day she’d wake up and see me as more than a friend. That maybe, I could be the one to change her mind about marriage and commitment.

I didn’t want to say no and have her fake-marry someone else and wake up one day and realise that guy was really her fated mate.

So I remained silent, and listened with half an ear while she talked about how we would go about the whole thing. We finished our chips and champagne and left the pub. Bianca said she should probably get back to the shop. She lived in a small apartment over her tattoo studio, Resurrection Ink. I offered to give her a ride on my way back to Raynard Hall, but she shook me off.

“I prefer to walk. I want to stare at the stars and dream about my art house some more.” She stood on tiptoes and grabbed my shoulders, forcing my head down so she could reach it. She kissed me on the cheek, her lips like fire on my skin. “Thanks so much for this, Robbie. You’re the best friend a girl could ask for.”

“Any time, my betrothed.”

“Don’t you start with that shit, or I’ll have the divorce papers signed before we’re even down the aisle.”

I waved her goodbye, and watched her blonde-and-blue head bobbing away around the corner. Sighing, I got in my crappy falling-apart Lada and drove around to Marcus’ place. I didn’t feel like going back to Raynard Hall immediately.

Marcus was a vulpine – a fox shifter – and Ryan’s fraternal twin. He was also a mutt, which meant his shifter genetics didn’t work properly. He couldn’t control his shifting, especially when he got emotional, and he had an aggressive streak that flared up at the worst possible times. We had a lot in common – I wasn’t great at controlling my shifts, either. I’d spent most of my childhood in my wolf form, acting solely on my instincts. It was hard to remember to reign things in. Hell, sometimes it was hard to remember to put pants on before I went outside.

Marcus lived in a small flat just off the high street with his fiancé Kylie, but she was a nurse who often worked night shifts. I was hoping I’d have Marcus to myself that night. I needed to talk to a guy.

I knocked vigorously on the door, and a few minutes later, Marcus threw it open. “Come in. Kylie’s at work and I have pizza and beer and a huge stack of action films to get through before she gets back.”

“Sounds perfect.” I slumped down on the couch next to him. Marcus went to the kitchen to fetch me a beer, but I told him not to worry about me. “I’ve been at the pub with Bianca. We had champagne, and it isn’t exactly agreeing with me.”

As if in response, my stomach churned.

“Champagne.” Marcus made a face. “Why the fuck would you drink that piss?”

“We were celebrating.”

“Celebrating what? Did she finally get her clit pierced?”

“We’re getting married,” I said.

“You … what?” Marcus slapped three beers down in front of us, and shoved the pizza box toward me.

As I stuffed down a piece of Meatsplosion, I explained about the house Bianca had just inherited, and the stipulations her grandmother placed on it. “I haven’t seen it yet, but apparently, it’s this beautiful old Victorian place with dozens of tiny rooms. Bianca thinks it’s perfect for her art commune, so I said I’d—”

Marcus shook his head. “No. Don’t do it. It’s a bad idea.”

“The art house? I think it’s brilliant.”

“Of course you do, mate. You think it’s brilliant because you’re in love with Bianca, which is exactly why you shouldn’t marry her.”

Panic seized my chest. How did he know? Had I got drunk one night and spilled the beans? “I’m not—you can’t say—”

“See, you can’t even deny it out loud.” Marcus shot me a sardonic smile. “I’ve been watching you pine after that girl for months, yapping around her heels like some lovesick pup. She hasn’t noticed.”

“That’s not what I—”

“Don’t marry her, Robbo. End of story. It’s a fast past to getting your heart trampled all over by her shiny black Docs. Now, do you want to know what happened while you were out courting? Ryan called about an hour ago. He’s back from London and he’s made some progress on the location of the Benedict ring.”

Ah, the Benedict ring – an ancient ring of power that had been gifted to the Lowe clan by an infamous witch way back in the dim dark ages. The ring with which our pack and our allies, the Bairds, intended to reveal the existence of shifters to the world, just as soon as we found it.

We thought the whole plan was so simple when we’d cooked it up a couple of months ago, back when I’d first joined Caleb’s pack. The ring should be hidden in the Lowe caves – a network of tunnels and caverns in the Crookshollow Forest that the Lowes used to use as a den. But we’d searched every inch of those tunnels and hadn’t found any trace. Caleb had started to think the ring might be somewhere else, so he sent Ryan down to London to look up old chronicles at the British Museum. He was hoping there’d be some other account of the ring that might tell us where else it could be. It sounds like Caleb’s hunch might have paid off.

“Oh yeah?” I leaned forward. “Ryan found something?”

“Yep. Another historical account of the ring. According to this new info, the ring wasn’t kept in the caves at all. It would’ve been nice to know that before I tore up my knees hunting around in the mud for two months. Ryan said he’s going to tell us more about it at our tattoo session tomorrow.”

I groaned. I’d forgotten about that. Caleb insisted that all of us should get a tattoo to mark our allegiance to the pack. Tattoos are important to shifter society, as there weren’t that many ways we can identify ourselves to other shifters while keeping the whole turning-into-an-animal thing secret. If we were going to be in the media after the big shifter reveal, we were going to need some kind of emblem around which other shifters could affiliate. On paper, a tattoo seemed like a good idea, and a good excuse to spend some time with Bianca in her natural habitat. The only catch was the fact that I hated being tattooed.

My arms were covered in the things, and I detested them. Needles freaked me out. When I’d gone to get my Maclean family crest done, on my eighteenth birthday, I fainted. The annoyed tattooist told my brother Angus to take me home. The next week, Angus took me to a much less-scrupulous friend of his to finish the ink. My second tattooist misspelled Maclean and his dirty needle gave me an infection. My arm turned all green and hurt like hell for weeks. The tattoo looked like shit – an appropriate symbol of our family if ever I saw one.

All the tattoos my arms were done for the benefit of my brother, Angus. Looking at them now, I couldn’t understand why I’d agreed to any of them. Angus would always mock me, calling me a feardie. So I gritted my teeth and had them done, just to shut him up. I didn’t like any of them – not the grinning skulls nor the Viking hammer or the growling tiger with the crooked legs. I especially hated the message written across my shoulders in a cursive font I couldn’t even read. They reminded me of the person I was before, a person who didn’t always do good things.

“I’ll hold your hand if you like,” Marcus sneered. “Although maybe you’d prefer if Bianca—”

“It’s fine,” I mumbled into my chest. “I’ll be fine. Maybe it’ll be different this time.”

“You mean, maybe you won’t make a fool of yourself in front of your hot soon-to-be wife?”

“Yeah, that exactly.” I grabbed a beer from the table and gulped it back. There was nothing like a little liquid courage. Tattoos were Bianca’s life. If she thought I hated them, then she’d never want me. I’d be over before I even began.