Bryce wassopredictable, yet it was also kind of nice having what was between him and Riley talked about. Somehow, it reinforced that they were really together.
Bryce put his bottle down, and when he met Jason’s eyes, the teasing glint had vanished. “So when were you going to tell us you’d met your mate?”
Jason rolled his eyes and waited for the punchline, looking to Matt when it didn’t come. Matt looked expressionlessly back at him. And something in that lack of expression felt serious enough for Jason not to just ignore Bryce’s question the way he’d been going to.
“What are you talking about?” he asked.
“Riley. Don’t tell me you don’t know,” Bryce said, an eyebrow raised quizzically.
“He’s not a shifter,”Jason spelled out. “Just how much of that beer have you had?”
“So you fall into the one point four percent of shifters whose mate isn’t a shifter,” Matt said calmly.
Jason blinked, but Matt was simply looking at him, as if what he’d just said was perfectly normal.
“I’m sorry, what?” Jason said faintly. “You—we—Riley’s mymate?”
Bryce passed him an open bottle of beer and Jason took a swift swig. It did nothing to calm the fluttering in his stomach. “But how—no, you must have got it wrong. What makes you think that?”
“When he thought I was making a move on you, that was pure wolf looking at me through his eyes. Which, by the way, is averyinteresting insight from the point of view of genetics and evolution. It was what I’d see from any shifter who thought I was making a move on their mate. And believe me, Jason, I’ve seen that look alot.”
“Ain’t that the truth,” Matt agreed. “You okay with this, Jason?”
Jason’s head was reeling, and he sank down on the nearest chair because otherwise his knees would have given out.
“I have no idea,” he admitted, his voice soft. He’d spent so long wanting to belong somewhere, fitting himself around everyone else, making himself useful, quiet, careful. And just after he’d got out of his own way—finally understood his place in the pack—Matt and Bryce were telling him he belonged to someone, forever. Belonged toRiley. He could have both these things, either of which were more than he’d ever dared hope for. It felt too good to be possibly true.
But how could it even work, having someone as a mate who wasn’t a shifter? He looked down at the damp wrinkled label on the bottle he held between his hands and worked his thumbnail under one of the corners, easing the wet paper away from the glass because it was easier to concentrate on that than it was to think.
“I don’t know.” He stumbled over the words. “Are yousure?”He didn’t want to start to believe if it wasn’t true. “How can you be sure?”
“How do you feel about him?” Matt asked.
“I love him.” It was easy to say because it was the truth, even though they’d only just gotten to know one another. “But that doesn’t mean we’re mates.”
“It doesn’t,” Matt said, his voice tight. “But tell me, Jason—when you’re not with him, is it just that you miss him? Or is there something inside you that’s restless in his absence, that tugs you toward him?”
As Matt spoke, he looked out to where his own mate was currently rolling in the grass with Tristan, ferocious mock snarls escaping them. Jason was almost sure Matt was unaware he’d done so.
“And then there’s the way sex is between mates,” Bryce said.
“Bryce.” Matt cut across him.
“What? I’m just saying.”
“Enough,” Matt said firmly, and Bryce subsided with a wink at Jason.
Jason thought again about everything with Riley, about how it had felt the first time they’d touched. He’d assumed the surge of electricity that had left him shaking was what everyone felt when they touched someone they were attracted to. He’d had nothing to compare it to, no way of knowing it was anything out of the ordinary.
And there was the way he wanted nothing more than to follow Riley to town right now and spend the night with him, even though this was his home, and the pack was his family. Something inside him was urging him toward Elk Ridge. To Riley.
“I guess we are,” he said softly. It started to hit him and he could hardly breathe for delight. Riley would stay. This was forever.
“Oh my God,” he said, staring at Matt. “We’re mates.”
Out of nowhere, his eyes stung. He’d thought he’d never find his mate, but he was here, in Elk Ridge, and he wanted Jason just as much as Jason wanted him.
“Congratulations,” Matt said, raising his bottle in a half salute.
