She nodded, sipping from her own steaming mug.
I drew a heavy sigh. I couldn’t hold it in anymore.
“I-I found my mate!”
Dropping the atomic bomb on one friend at a time was a strategic choice. Or so I thought.
She choked. For several long moments. “Seriously? When?”
Amaia had told us that we could ask her for help when we had news that was a nine or a ten on the importance scale. Talk about well-defined boundaries.
“Just today.” I averted my eyes, staring at a pile of books categorized by author surname.
My friend’s gaze could dig holes into my cheek. Yet she didn’t ask the who, the where, or the how, always reflecting before she spoke. Her heart was so gentle, so kind, but it often found itself overwhelmed by her big brain, so busy saving the world from cancer.
“Okay. And how do you feel?”
With a sigh, I told her everything—my doubts, my happiness, this new sense of wholeness.
“I’m going to give you a piece of advice.” She didn’t wait for my reply. “You are the most extraordinary person I know. A special soul who’s blessed the world with her presence. So, your mate has to be special, too. Don’t let appearances ruin it. There’s always more behind them.”
I pondered that for a second…and then threw my arms around her. Amaia, like Archie, was simply a golden person.
I pecked her cheek. “I won’t.”
“Good.” She grinned before pulling away. Not a hug person. “Now, drink more.”
Smiling, I grabbed the hot mug and blew on it.
We stayed in her bedroom, chatting until my lids grew heavy.
What a day.
She patted the side of her queen-size bed, and I dove in.
She knew I couldn’t sleep alone…not without my mate. Another fun post-mate quirk.
CHAPTER 21
YVAINE
Social media: a messy swamp of faux smiles, filter abuse, and enough insecurity to power a generation. Iknewthat. Rationally. Logically. I was in the middle of training that would end with me slicing into people’s brains for a living—I understood how dopamine worked.
But when emotions hijacked your frontal lobe? Logic got tossed out like a pair of bloodied gloves after a botched surgery.
Up until that day, I had managed to ignore the world of likes and the abrasion of ever-scrolling fingers. I was living my best no-filter life.
But then I found my mate. I would have loved to give a friendly reminder about the risk of early-onset arthritis and myopia to everyone zooming and double-tapping on someone else’s mate—my mate—but it felt something like justice. If they all ended up needing physical therapy for their thumbs and bifocals before thirty, they’d have earned it.
I only made an Instagram because Makena and Tiziano kept whining about how they couldn’t tag me in their stories. Lachlan—bless him—was like me. Mind-links and texts were enough, but being team captain meant having a public presence.Engagement and visibility. Who was measuring it all, anyway? Probably the same people who still thought that likes equaled love.
Ultimately, my twin had caved and made an account. But this had triggered a dangerous chain reaction: Uncle Andrew and my mother had joined, too, with a joint account. Scottish Twinos. That had led my father to make his very own.
And that, ladies and gentlewolves, was the day my digital dignity had died.
Imagine being tagged in Lachlan’s post only to find your Alpha father—the terrifying, war-hardened leader of your pack—dropping a string of heart and kissy-face emojis on it. With 870,000 other people also watching. Most of his feed was old pictures of me, Lachlan, and Ian as kids, and he refused to post my mom because he didn’t want “creeps” looking at her. His words. He defended himself by stating he missed us, and scrolling our posts helped him feel close. From a man who still called Facebook “the face space.”
Sweet? Yes. Cringe? Also yes. Therapy? Everyone needed it.
