Not when everything in her life had been torn up by the roots and scattered.
She sat on the edge of the bed and exhaled shakily.The apartment was quiet and private.
For just a moment, she felt like she was standing on the edge of a new beginning.A new chapter of her life that had everything to do with the stallion male with coal-black hair and enchanting blue eyes.
She wasn’t sure she could afford to believe in a new beginning.
She felt like she could only handle surviving to the next day.
As she settled back on the bed, she stared at the ceiling until it blurred with tears, and then she let herself go into the marrow-deep sorrow.
She cried for the life she’d had to abandon and the hopelessness she felt now.
And she cried for Avi, because she didn’t know if she’d ever be able to say out loud the word that kept banging around in her mind.
Soulmate.
Avi Sinclair was a firm believer in fate.He always had been called optimistic as a young male in the herd he’d grown up in.It was difficult to believe in fate sometimes, especially when life threw boulders and things got tough.
Like when he’d lost his mom just after relocating to her home herd.
He’d been adrift for a while before settling in New Jersey with Dexter and his human mate Nancy and the herd.Now, Dexter was an elder of the recently created Little River herd, and Avi’s best friends—Crew, Ford, Grey, and Khyle—were members, living and working on the farm and for Dexter’s construction company in the off-season.
As he pressed lids on the metal travel mugs in the farmhouse kitchen, he thought about the beautiful female jaguar in the barn apartment, who’d come to the farm with fear in her eyes.
He’d immediately wanted to hold her close and destroy whoever had made her so scared.Not just because he was a stand-up male who took protecting people seriously, but because the dark-haired female who smelled like fresh rain and sultry nights was his soulmate.
So yeah.Avi was a big believer in fate.
How else could he explain a female he most likely never would have run into in his life because she’d been several states away with her jaguar prowl being driven to the farm where he lived and worked by the shifters who stayed at the safari park a half hour away?
It really defied explanation.
He left the kitchen and headed through the farmhouse and outside, where the first rays of dawn lit the sky from midnight-blue to pale gold.He made his way to the barn and up the stairs, his heart pounding and his stallion letting out a whistle of excitement to see Fallon again.
He gripped the mugs in one hand and knocked.“Fallon?It’s me, Avi.I brought you some coffee and wanted to ask if you’d like to take a walk around the farm?”
He suddenly questioned himself.
She hadn’t asked for coffee.And since he’d helped with the preparations to get the apartment ready for her with Nancy and Tatum, he knew that there was coffee in the kitchenette.
Did she even like coffee?Did she like it with milk and sugar the way he fixed it?
Doubt crept in as the seconds ticked by.
He listened, not hearing anything for long enough he wondered if she was still asleep.
And then he heard footsteps and the door opened.
She was wearing jeans and a T-shirt, and her eyes were ringed with dark circles.
“Oh,” she said, her eyes crinkling at the corners as she smiled.“That’s so sweet.I couldn’t get going this morning to make coffee yet.A tour sounds nice, let me grab my shoes.”
She pushed the door open wider and went to the bedroom area, and he walked inside.
“I thought I might have woken you up,” he said.
“Nah,” she said.“I didn’t sleep well.I slept some, just not much.”
