“Okay.” She twisted a bit so that she was looking at him. “What happens is that a wolf meets someone that they believe to be their mate. Their alpha will confirm the connection and help the wolf explain about being a shifter.”
He grunted. “That must be interesting.”
She smiled. “I’ve only done it a couple of times. The thing is, it’s not about logic. There’s magic involved.”
The look he turned to her managed to convey skepticism perfectly.
“No, really. Seriously, how else can you explain that your body shifts into a wolf? I mean, your very bones reshape themselves, how is that not extraordinary and magical?”
He gave a grudging nod.
“My point is, it’s not like regular humans. Mates coming together, it’s an amazing thing, something most humans are never able to experience, and that is terribly sad to me.”
He glanced at her but didn’t say anything. She cleared her throat and went on. “So while, in the abstract, it sounds ridiculous explaining that to someone you’ve just met, in reality, they’re feeling the pull, the connection, the magic, just as the wolf is. Plus, once someone changes to show them, so they can’t argue the reality of it, things tend to simplify.”
“And if someone chooses not to change?”
She nodded. “It’s rare, but of course not impossible. Sometimes the wolf doesn’t get over it. Some can have sex, relationships even, but never find another mate. Others are lucky enough to find another mate, though it’s usually many years later. Again, the whole scenario is pretty rare, so there arent’ a lot of examples to learn from.”
He braked the truck as they came to another road and he started to turn toward the town. “I thought wolves mated for life. How can they find another one?”
“We do mate for life. And we live slightly longer than humans. But if you haven’t actually mated, that’s different. But once youhavemated, there’s no straying, no desire to seek out someone else, no need to worry about losing that connection.”
“And if one of them dies? Do they just find another mate?”
Her stomach turned, but she forced her voice to stay steady. “That is also very rare. Mostly because we’re harder to kill, so if one dies, they’ve been a mated pair for a very long time. The idea of giving up that piece, that last connection, with your missing mate, I don’t think most widowed wolves are capable of that. But there certainly are cases of it happening, when many years have passed.” She paused, and maybe the silence was heavy, because he glanced at her but didn’t say anything. “I was mated.”
His head whipped around to look at her, his foot coming off the gas for just a second before he returned his attention to the road.
“We were young. I was still in college. His name was Eric. We were together for three years when he was killed. He was a police officer and someone shot him right in the head, point blank.” She turned back to face the windshield, needing a minute. Then had to swallow back the tears when he quietly laid a hand on her thigh.
This lone wolf who wasn’t used to pack, to touch, to comfort of any sort, was offering that to her. She blinked hard. “I like the idea that someone who’s lost that love could find it again, but I can’t—” She shook her head. “I can’t actually imagine it.”
She stayed silent as he drove through the little town to a diner. They got out and took seats in the small, warm room that looked more like a house than a restaurant. Once they’d ordered, steak and eggs for both of them, she leaned back against her chair and looked at him. He appeared much better, much healthier. Much more handsome, if it could be believed.
“You look better. How do you feel?”
“Pretty much normal. But very hungry.” He glanced around the room surreptitiously. “You guys were thinking poison.”
She nodded. “I don’t have any other ideas. But, the pack says they haven’t run into any humans who could be putting it out.”
“Ask them if they’ve been hearing planes. Small, low-level planes, flying over more frequently than before.”
Well, that was interesting. She nodded, frowned. “I’ll do that. And need to think about who I can contact to look into that if itisthe source. How to track—” She broke off as the waiter brought their food. A small family sat at the table behind Adam, who was holding his knife and fork, waiting for her to begin. Smiling, she dug in.
When he’d eaten half the steak, she decided to see if she could get him talking a bit more. Taking a long drink of her soda, she studied him over the rim. It had been embarrassing admitting her attraction to him, and a little bit disconcerting feeling it so strongly while she was having such vivid memories of her time with Eric—meeting him, losing him—but she could hardly help herself. He wasn’t just attractive. His strength and integrity shown through to her so much that she was amazed Michael and Linda had questioned it at all.
“Will you tell me a bit about you? Your life?”
He watched her thoughtfully while he chewed. “Tell me again what your plans were, for when you found me.”
She blinked. Ouch. Okay, he deserved to be skeptical. “My plans were to make sure you were okay, living a good life. I had hoped that you would have moved on and found a place for yourself in our society, but I was worried, because if that was the case, we’d have heard about you, known about you. So, that was my plan. Find out why you were still anonymous, if you were still alive, and do what I could to make sure you knew you had people who care, who want you to be safe and whole and welcome.”
He didn’t look convinced. “You said you had to make hard decisions, in Arizona,” he reminded her.
“Yes, that’s true.” She glanced at the family eating and talking behind him, lowered her voice a tad. “Do you want me to tell you that if we’d found you and discovered that you were a madman, who’d somehow managed to stay under the radar but was hurting or killing humans or wolves, that I would have ended you? That is true, I would have. It would have sucked. But I wasn’t really concerned about that, it would have been nearly impossible for you to be those things and have remained undetected for so long.”
“You mean like Cage and his band of assholes did?”
