Compelled (Shadow Beast Shifters, #5)

by Jaymin Eve

No one ever visited me, so I saw no reason not to use my floor as a horizontal wardrobe. Had to be some benefits to the reclusive life.

I’ve always said I fall in love with hearts not parts, and that stood true, but so far I hadn’t found the one with the heart I was searching for.

“You better fucking start talking, Lucien, or I will rearrange your internal organs, starting with your balls.” In case anyone was wondering, Mera did fail biology in school, but that felt like a deliberate mistake.

“I understand why you are Mera’s best friend,” Shadow finally said, and he couldn’t have given me a greater compliment. “You will make a worthy mate and are the best example of what I expect shifters to be. Not the shame that many have brought on themselves.” He patted me on the head, and fuck if I wasn’t his pet wolf now. Worthy. Thanks, oh master of mine.

“Anyone who touched you and didn’t appreciate the fucking gift they were given deserves to die.” Then he was gone, and I was left breathlessly wondering why he’d made the effort to return and tell me that. And why it affected me so much.

Len might have signed up for bodyguard duty, but now he was also on encyclopedia-of-Lucien duty because this was one class I needed to ace. No excuses.

“You have a pack now,” he said in his low hypnotic tone. “This is what we do for each other, no questions asked and no need to thank. We stand together so none of us will ever fall.”

“You know your future can change at any point you want it to,” I told him. “And you are not your parents. If we don’t learn and do better, then what is the point of living at all?”

princess in a fairytale!” My voice rose significantly. “This is my animal sidekick, but I repeat, not a princess.”

“Do you think they’ll lose their shit at me today?” I asked, a touch concerned by what might have transpired among the masters and selected while I was unconscious at Lucien’s. “Not if they value their lives,” Lucien said simply. And there he went again, romancing me like a psychopath. Guess I was one too since I liked it.

I followed him toward the full-length mirror near the shoe shelf, and he knelt before me. “Permission to touch,” he murmured, staring up at me like a golden god of destruction. My destruction. Clearing my throat, I nodded. “Permission granted.”