Liam shook his head. “No, that’s not right. That’s notreal. Wait, are you trying to tell me thatyou’rea…a shifter?”
“I am. A panther, just like you.”
“No. That can’t be. I’m not. I…”
“Look.”
Eve held out her arm and as Liam watched, hair sprouted from the back of her hand, then her hand shifted into a paw with long, sharp looking claws at the end. His eyes seemed incapable of moving away. This wasn’t right. It couldn’t be.
“I…”
He lay back down and squeezed his eyes closed. “I’m losing it. I need my meds. I think I’m…”
“No,” Eve said firmly. “You don’t.Lookat me!”
She pulled on his arm to get him to open his eyes and meet her gaze. “You do not have an illness, do you understand me? The voice you hear in your mind is your panther. Mine talks to me, too. It’s perfectly normal for people like us. A shifter is taught all of this from a very early age, but you grew up in the care system, so you had no one to explain it to you. You are not crazy, neither are you ill, do you understand?”
“I’m a…ashifter?” Liam said, the word feeling foreign on his tongue.
“You are, and a beautiful one at that.”
Liam leaned forward and put his head in his hands, trying to process the information, but it was too difficult to digest. How could this be true? Did this mean that everything he’d ever thought about himself was a lie? That everything the myriad of doctors had told him about his illness was all false?
“I can’t process this right now.”
“There’s another way I can prove it to you.”
Liam met her gaze. “How?”
“When we met for the first time, and maybe even after, there was a name the voice in your mind called me, wasn’t there? Did it call memate?”
Liam’s mouth fell open in shock. “How could you know that?”
“Because my panther called you the same thing. A mate is, oh boy, this is difficult to explain.”
She flushed a beautiful shade of pink, and ducked her gaze away, and Liam abruptly wished he was back in the safehouse with a convenient throw pillow because he was pretty sure it was the most perfect thing he’d ever seen.
Mate,the voice in his head purred. But he still didn’t know what that meant.
“Please try,” Liam said, leaning forward now and desperate to hear more. He reached one finger toward her chin to turn her face back to his, but stopped mid-way, suddenly unsure of himself.
“Unlike humans,” Eve began, “shifters have what we call a mate, like a soul mate, someone who is fated to be with them and only them. Some shifters can go their entire lives without meeting their mate. Others are lucky enough to find that person early on.”
She turned her face back to him, not quite meeting his eye.
“When you meet that person, both you and your animal recognize them instantly because it’s a meeting of souls—some say you have one shared soul and when you meet your mate, your soul is finally complete.” The flush of pink deepened. “I don’t know how true that is, but I’d like to believe it. It’s certainly romantic.”
Liam stared at her, his eyes wide. “And you’re saying that you aremysoul mate.”
“I am. And you’re mine.”
Liam didn’t dare to hope. But then something occurred to him, and his heart turned to a heavy, lifeless rock in his chest. “Wow, didn’t you draw the short straw.”
“Don’t say that. Look, I’ll be the first to admit that when we met, I was…disappointed, I’m not going to lie. But that was because I didn’t know you. And I’m ashamed to say I judged you.”
“You were right to,” Liam said. “I’m not good enough for you. I could never be good enough.”
“Don’t say that.”
