Hadley didn’t bother to point out that it wasn’t his fault. With his omega so close to the surface, his prey drive was on high alert. He’d chased the escaped convict for no other reason than because the man had run.
“Karissa must have realized it was a trick long before I did—thankfully,” Carter muttered, his gaze distant now as he stared off into space. “There’s a part of me that wishes she would have said something, but if I’m being honest, I’m not sure I would have listened to her at that moment. All my attention was on catching the man we were after.”
“It’s okay,” Hadley said softly, turning to face him. “Karissa was able to get me out of the apartment. We started going downstairs, but then McMahon and Bray showed up. We had no choice but to head to the roof. Then you got there and saved me.”
“Saved you? I came close to killing you,” Carter said with a snort. “I was so intent on getting to that man that I almost followed him off the roof. And I almost took you with me.”
“But you didn’t,” Hadley said soothingly, walking over and wrapping her arms around his waist. She needed to calm him down right now or risk him losing control all over again. “I was able to stop you and you came back to me.”
That earned her another snort of derision even as he rested his hands on her hips. “I was supposed to be saving you and you ended up saving me instead.”
“Hey,” she said. “There’s nothing wrong with us saving each other, you know.”
Carter nodded. “Yeah, on some level, I get that. But for the most part, my omega seems to think it’s his job to keep you safe. He’s being a complete caveman about it.”
Hadley considered that for a moment, combining it with what Karissa had told her earlier concerning the connection between the two of them.
“Does it seem like your control over your omega has slipped a little more since meeting me?”
Carter frowned, an expression that quickly turned to one of alarm. “What? No! It’s not like that at all. Things have been getting better since we started having our sessions. Okay, yeah, I have lost control like three times in the past couple days. All right, maybe four times. But it isn’t because of you.”
“I think maybe it is,” she murmured. “But not necessarily in a bad way.”
“What do you mean?”
She took a deep breath. “Karissa told me about the werewolf soul mate thing. “I didn’t know what to think at the time, but it would explain a few things, the most obvious being the way your control slips whenever you think I’m in danger. You and your omega are simply worried about your soul mate.”
Carter stared at her for a long time, his face unreadable. “You seem to be taking the whole soul mate bond much better than I imagined you would.”
“I have a lot of training on how to maintain a calm, cool exterior,” she said with a small smile. “But on the inside, I’m spinning. We just met a couple of weeks ago. I barely know anything about you, and we haven’t even been out on a real date yet—or had sex. Or said the L-word to each other. But we’re soul mates anyway. In any rational world, we’re doing this all out of order.”
“Yet, here we are,” Carter said, leaning forward until his forehead was resting on hers, his gaze warm as he wrapped his arms around her.
It felt nice.
Like she was meant to be there.
“Is it true?” Hadley asked. “Am I your soul mate?”
For a moment, she thought Carter wasn’t going to answer her. Instead, he stood there with his eyes locked on hers as if looking for some kind of confirmation.
“Yeah, I’m pretty sure you are,” he said simply. “At least, as sure as I can be about something that nobody really understands. It’s one of those things that you can’t see or prove. You have to feel it and believe.”
As a psychiatrist, she was already more flexible than most doctors when it came to accepting things that were impossible to see. There were very few hard and fast truths when it came to dealing with the human mind. And yet even after the conversation with Karissa, there was a part of her that still wanted to insist this couldn’t be real.
But now that she was in Carter’s arms, she didn’t feel as resistant to the idea as she’d been before. In fact, the idea that she and Carter were connected in this way was somehow comforting.
“How long have you known we were soul mates?” she asked, almost laughing at the thought of those words ever coming out of her mouth.
“If I’m being honest, I think I’ve known since our first therapy session,” Carter said, stepping around her to grab his toothbrush from the cabinet behind the mirror. “From the moment I smelled you.”
She couldn’t have stopped the snort of surprise that slipped out, even if she’d wanted to. Or the soft laugh that followed. As romantic confessions went, this one was definitely original. “I hope I smelled nice. I’m pretty sure I took a shower the morning before our first meeting.”
Carter chuckled, which was quite impressive considering his mouth was still full of toothpaste. “Yes, you smelled nice. Like strawberries and vanilla.”
Hadley paused, trying to remember if she even owned any strawberry and vanilla perfume, shampoo, or body wash. But nothing came to mind. Usually, she preferred neutral or lightly scented stuff because it was less likely to register with her patients and cause a reaction.
“It’s not anything you’re wearing,” Carter said as if reading her mind. He paused, rinsing his mouth, before turning back to face her. “It’s your unique scent, one only your werewolf mate can pick up. Other werewolves might be able to smell you, but the scent won’t be the same for them.”
