She blinked.“How come?”
He sighed.“Because you’re not guaranteed to live with your partners.You can outlive everyone you care for, and after so long on this earth, being alone at that age isn’t good for anyone.”
“That makes sense.”She pursed her lips as another thought came to her.She’d spent the last week not exactly avoiding precarious topics of conversation, but riding the wave of them.
Maybe that was stupid of her, but dealing with what she’d had to deal with of late was more than she was capable of.
Learning she could shift, that her mother wasn’t her birth mother, then almost losing Ryan and Trip, as well as handling the aftermath of the bomb blast, and the mass grief that was filtering through Pride land?
Yeah.It had been tough.
Then, throw in the fact her mother-in-law had glanced at her once, then refused to look at her now?And when she did mention El’s name it was to blast Ryan with rage?
Ryan who loved her.
Who’d told her that.Who was now having to defend her to his mother.
She blew out a shaky breath, turned her head into Trip’s arm, and hid her face.
“Hey.What’s wrong?”
She wished it was as simple as that.Wished it was easy as just telling him what the matter was, but she couldn’t.
She just…
It was a big ball of hurt in her chest.
If she unraveled it, if she let things loose, it would have the power to destroy her.
“Nothing.I’m just feeling a little…” ‘Overwhelmed’ was too small a word to describe what was going on in her head.“Do you think I have four mates because the Panther is mated to Shawn and the human is mated to you, Marc, and Ryan?”
He stiffened at her side “I don’t know.”
“Do Shifters usually cross species?”
“No.”
“Well then, what do you think?”
He was silent a while, then murmured, “I don’t know.We can’t know because there’s no way of learning whether that’s true or not.”
She nodded, loving the feeling of his cotton shirt against her brow as her forehead rubbed against it.
“You ran off to get away from Leilani, didn’t you?”
Her throat tightened and she had to swallow to speak.“Maybe.”
He sighed.“I’m sorry.”
“Don’t be.It’s not your fault.”
“Neither is it yours.”He shook his head.“I don’t know what the hell’s gotten into her.She’s crazed.”
Crazed was the word.She wasn’t crazy.She was very, very rational; blasting out statements that had El wincing with the truth of them.
Remarks like, “They’ll never accept her.”
“A Panther can’t lead a Pride.”
