Bear the Burden: McMahon Clan 3 (Fated Mates Book 6) (3 page)

“No,” I gasped, shaking my head in confusion. “I hadn’t.”

“Just like you’re the only witch whose consort’s mark appeared before she met the man the Goddess intended for her. You’re different from all the other witches who’ve come before you in more ways than one. The proof is right there on your wrist. You need to believe in yourself as much as I do because with all of my heart, I know the world will be lucky if you’re the witch from the prophecy.”

I glanced down at the bear imprinted on my skin, tracing it lightly. “Maybe you’re right,” I admitted softly, opening myself to the possibility.

“This could be the reason our coven was meant to help the McMahon clan. Your whole world might change at our meeting tomorrow if your bear is one of them.”

“It won’t just be my world that changes if you’re right. It will be the entire world if we’re the couple from the prophecy.” As I watched the sunset on the horizon, I couldn’t help but wonder if this was going to be the last normal day I’d have—the final moments before my whole world changed.

M
y night was filled with wild dreams. Images of a mysterious woman and myself played over and over, leaving me gasping for air each time I woke up. By the end of the night, I’d reached out to the other side of my bed more times than I could count, hoping she was there—longing for her to be real instead of a figment of my overactive imagination. Each dream was more vivid than the last, until finally, I erupted in my sleep. I hadn’t had a wet dream since I was a teenager, so waking up to find my dick in my hand and my come on my sheets was quite the surprise. But the way my heart pounded each time I saw her face and watched as pleasure clouded her eyes was more shocking than my unexpected climax. I’d never met her before, but I knew with a certainty I’d never felt she was important to me—more so than anyone else in my life. She was the one, my fated mate.

“Holy shit,” I whispered and rubbed my face, hoping it would help me wake up. “How the fuck am I going to find her?”

The timing couldn’t possibly be any worse with things finally coming to a head with Annora’s stepdad. Throw in the involvement of a witch coven to help battle the dark practitioners who’d been hiding him from us, and it was all I could do not to scream. Now my bear was growling in my head, urging me to search for my mystery woman. To say fuck it to all my other problems and find my mate. Only, I couldn’t walk away from my family obligations. Not now when we had our best chance of finding Annora’s stepdad and putting him in the ground where he belonged. Ending the danger to our family had to take priority over searching for my mate, but maybe I could put some feelers out to see if I could get a lead on her identity in the meantime.

I reached out to grab a notebook from my nightstand, determined to write down all the details I could remember, when a twinge in my bicep brought my gaze down to my arm. The sight of what I found made me forget why I wanted the paper and pen in the first place. When I went to bed last night, I didn’t have a single tattoo on my body, but the black ink wrapped around my arm was impossible to mistake for anything other than what it was: a tattoo I had no recollection of getting.

I licked my thumb and ran it along my skin, hoping it was a practical joke from one of my brothers and the ink would wipe off. No such luck. And oddly enough, it didn’t hurt when I rubbed a little harder. I might not have any tattoos, but from everything I’d heard, I would have expected it to be tender the morning after. Maybe my brothers had used a permanent marker to draw it on me while I slept...what little sleep I had managed to get last night.

None of this made any sense to me, but I didn’t have time to think about it. My dad and Damien were going to be here any minute so we could prep for the meeting with the witches this morning. They were due to arrive in a couple hours, so long as their plane was on time—not the broomstick I’d jokingly thought they’d use to get here from the west coast. A misconception Damien had enjoyed taunting me about with an inexplicable twinkle in his eye when he’d told me how much I’d come to know in the near future. As though my thoughts had conjured them up, there was a knock at the door. I stumbled downstairs to find my dad and Damien on my front step.

“You look like crap,” my dad grumbled as he pushed past me into the house. “What did you do? Go on a bender last night? You’ve got to pull yourself together, Camden. Now’s the worst possible time for you to fall apart.”

I slammed the door as soon as Damien stepped through it. “I didn’t get drunk last night, Dad.”

“Then what the fuck is that?” he asked, pointing to my arm. “You went out and got a tattoo?”

“I didn’t get a tattoo.”

“If it’s not a tattoo, then what the hell is it?”

I didn’t have an answer. There was no way to explain the tribal band encircling my bicep. “As impossible as it sounds, I don’t know. It was just there when I woke up this morning. I was kind of hoping Dair or Bray broke in here last night and played a practical joke on me.”

“It’s no joke,” Damien interrupted, lifting my arm to peer at the mark. I yanked my arm away when he leaned closer and sniffed at it, completely weirded out. Then his eyes did their strange swirling flame thing again and the moment went from weird to freaky. “Are the witches here already?”

I glanced around my house, half expecting a witch to pop out of a corner and surprise me. “They aren’t due into town for a couple more hours. Why would you think they were here already?”

“Because that’s a consort’s mark on your arm.”

“A consort’s mark?” I had no idea what he was talking about.

“A consort is the witch’s equivalent to a shifter’s mate. That,” he said, pointing to my arm, “is the same to them as the bite mark a shifter gets from their mate. It tells the witch world you’ve been claimed by one of them.”

“Are you telling us one of those witches can just reach out and claim my son without giving him a choice in the matter when he has a fated mate of his own waiting for him out there somewhere? That won’t stand. I’m not about to let a witch take away my son’s chance for happiness.”

“I’m not saying a witch can mark someone as her consort without even meeting them. I’ve never heard of it happening before.” Damien glanced at my arm again before lifting his gaze to mine with a questioning look. “And a consort has to accept a witch as his before the mark will appear.”

I thought about my reaction to the woman in my dreams last night. Acceptance was too mild a word for the feelings she evoked in me. It had to be her. It was the only possible explanation.

“My mate’s a witch.”

“What do you mean, your mate’s a witch?” my dad roared. “Shifters don’t mate witches. It just doesn’t happen.”

“Except it has happened once before.” My dad’s jaw practically dropped at Damien’s proclamation.

“I’ve never heard of a shifter mating a witch.” I nodded in agreement with my dad. It was news to me, too.

“I’m not surprised since her coven and his hold worked hard to keep it a secret.”

“Then how do you know about it?” I asked him.

“Because he was part of my hold,” Damien admitted.

“Was?” I repeated.

“Her coveners and my holdmates united in their efforts to stop the mating, but they were too late. My great-uncle had already claimed his witch. That didn’t matter to them, though. They wouldn’t allow him and his mate to have their lives together, and neither were willing to give each other up, so they killed my great-uncle and his witch followed him into an early grave.”

“How did they manage to keep it a secret?”

“The how isn’t what matters,” Damien answered. “It’s the why that’s important.”

“Then tell us the why dammit,” my dad growled, his bear thick in his voice.

“Because they didn’t want anyone to know about the witch’s prophecy, which involved another witch and shifter matchup. Only this time around, I don’t think it will be a dragon involved, but a bear shifter. And not just any bear,” he said, looking pointedly at me. “Based on the mark on your arm, I’m almost certain the shifter is you. It’s the only explanation for how you got it without seeing her in person. You’re not just her consort. She’s not just your fated mate. You’re the couple who will unite witches and shifters.”

I listened quietly as he explained the details of the prophecy, shock leaving me unable to speak. I quickly understood why his hold and her coven worked so hard to keep it quiet for all these years. Shifters had always been wary of the power witches held, and witches had long been afraid of the possibility of being outed by shifters since they were the only ones who knew their secret.

Witches were well aware of how humans would react to their existence in the world. They’d survived enough witch hunts in the past to be terrified of the possibility of one happening again. It didn’t matter that they held the same power over us. They were too resentful of shifters to think clearly, so we all steered clear of each other. Only now, I was apparently going to take a witch as my mate. A witch I’d dreamed of the night before a meeting with witches. It couldn’t be a coincidence.

“What’s your connection to the coven we’re meeting today?” I barked out my question, possessiveness thundering through my veins at the possibility Damien knew my mate. Had seen her before I did. Might have touched her.

“I wouldn’t say I have a connection to them exactly,” he drawled. “Since I serve as a council enforcer, I’ve had dealings with several covens before. I’ve met a few members of this one a time or two in the past. It’s why they reached out to me when they learned about the threat to your family. I was the best option for them since they didn’t feel comfortable reaching out to you on their own.”

Fur rippled along my arms as I struggled to keep my bear at bay. I didn’t like the idea of my mate distrusting me and turning to Damien instead, even as unfair as it was. She didn’t know me and her coven was risking a lot to help my family. “The witches you’ve met, does one have strawberry blonde hair, green eyes, and curves that go on forever?”

“Two of them do,” he confirmed. “The high priestess and her daughter. Both are gorgeous and currently unattached.”

My bear growled at the word ‘daughter’, telling me which woman was mine. Then the hint of lust in his tone hit my ears and I stormed toward him, wrapping both hands around his collar and yanking him toward me. “No, only one of them is unattached, because the daughter is mine. She came to me in my dreams last night and left her mark on my arm for the world to see. She’s the mate I’ll claim as my own the first moment I can.”

The dragon shifter could have taken me in a fight, but he held his hands up as a sign of surrender instead. “You won’t have to wait long for your opportunity. They will both be here today.”

“Fuck,” my dad hissed, his displeasure clear in his tone.

I let go of Damien’s collar and turned to face my dad. “You have two hours to get over it, Dad. Our prejudice against Finley’s dad almost ruined Alasdair’s mating with her. I thought you’d learned your lesson, just like I had, because you were as quick as me to accept Tahlia into the family even though she’s a lioness.”

“That’s completely different. Nobody will accept your mating if it’s with a witch.”

“Prove them all wrong then,” I challenged him. “Show them the head of our clan, a member of the council, has given us his approval. Help us instead of making it harder for us.”

“Camden,” he sighed, “you don’t know what you’re asking of me.”

“But you know exactly what you’re asking of me. If I walk away from her, witch or not, I’ll spend the rest of my days without my fated mate. Is that really what you want for me?” It was a bit of a low blow considering his past with Annora’s mom, but sometimes the truth—as hurtful as it could be—was the only way to make someone see reason, and I didn’t have time to waste. I meant it when I said I was going to claim her at the first possible chance, which meant my teeth were going to be sunk into her shoulder shortly after she walked through the door of my home.

“Y
ou’ve been staring at your wrist the entire flight,” my mom whispered in my ear as she joined me inside the limo that had been waiting for us after we landed. The coven’s maiden wasn’t far behind her, hence her hushed tone. I jerked my sleeve back down. We weren’t ready for any of the coveners to know I might be the witch mentioned in a prophecy to bring witches and shifters together. I wasn’t sure I’d ever be ready, but announcing this news to my coven right before we met with a clan of bear shifters would have been enormously stupid. Fear of the unknown would have caused them to distrust the shifters more than they already did, if that were possible. I should have been just as hesitant about the meeting, probably more so due to my potential role in the prophecy, but I felt a measure of excitement too.

Butterflies swirled in my stomach as I thought about what my mom had suggested. One of the bear shifters we were meeting today could be my consort, and if he were, it would be further proof I was the witch from the prophecy. Now that I was a short car ride away from my possible future, my heart raced and my hands trembled. When my mom told me about the prophecy last night, I couldn’t believe I was the witch mentioned, but now, I found myself hoping it was true and prayed to the Goddess that I’d walk through that door and find the man from my vision. Shifter or not, I wanted him. Wanted the connection I’d felt when I’d seen him while I’d been meditating. Even with all the challenges I knew we’d face as a couple, I yearned for him.

I was silent during the drive, half listening to my mom and her second talk about how to handle the meeting while I traced the bear imprinted on my wrist. I felt my mom’s gaze as it landed on me. I knew she was worried, but she gave me the space I needed without pressuring me to add to the conversation. Not that I had much to offer. If what I was hoping for came to pass, any plans they made would be blown out of the water. If one of the shifters at the meeting truly was my consort, his clan would be my family. As such, I would offer him all my support in his upcoming battle with the dark practitioners. I fully expected my mom to do the same, which meant his clan would have the backing of my entire coven.