“Can you please tell me what we’re talking about?”
“Adam. We’re mates.”
She jolted as Cindy screeched, “What?”
“Oh my god, oh my god, oh my god.”
Cindy put her hands on her shoulders, gave a little shake. “But, you were with him. And you werewithhim. You would have known if you were mates!”
“I think the extra power of the presidency was keeping that from happening. I wasn’t fully myself this last year, I was holding the power, or at least the potential of the power, of all the alphas. And I even had to use it, to pull on it, right when I met him. We weren’t equals, not then.”
Cindy took a deep breath, dropped her hands. “Okay, calm down now. Nothing is going to be solved by hysterics.”
She glared at her friend. So maybe that last part had come out a bit high pitched and fast and…okay, yeah, she was nearly hysterical. She forced in a deep breath, pulled her head out of her hands.
“Right,” Cindy said. “Finding a second mate is damn rare, but Eric has been gone a very long time, and if anyone deserves it, it’s you.”
She offered her friend a weak smile. “I can’t really process that part right now. I don’t—Eric was—” She shook her head. “No, the crisis right now is that Adam is going to hate it.”
Cindy dashed to the dining room table, grabbed a pile of napkins that were still out from dinner, handed one to Myra. Who hadn’t realized she’d started crying.
“Of course he isn’t. That’s not how mating works, and you know it.”
“I know, but you don’t understand. He hates being out of control. Just the amazing day of sex we had the first time made him feel out of control enough to run away.”
Frowning, Cindy considered that.
“This is bad, Cindy. I don’t know what to do. Do I call him and apologize?”
“You are absolutely not going to apologize for the gift of being mated.” She rubbed her hand up and down Myra’s back. “Honey. Remember that he’s going to be feeling the good stuff, too. He’s going to want to be your mate, just like you do.” She paused. “You do want to be his mate, right? You liked him?”
“I’m in love with him. I was going to talk to you about that, after we finished here. But Adam. Being pushed into something that he doesn’t want is going to be horrible for him. Talk about a loss of control, the mating is like the ultimate loss of control!”
“Well, yeah, but it’s an amazing and glorious one. Or so I hear.”
She put a hand to her chest, trying to relieve the squeezing pressure in her heart. “I know that and you know that. But it would be a betrayal to force it on him.”
Cindy scoffed. “He’ll be thrilled, once it’s all done.”
Myra just shook her head. Though it was nothing like when she’d lost Eric, she actually felt a sense of grief, in addition to the want, need, and desire pulsing through her. Adam was her mate, which meant the last thing she wanted to do was hurt him.
“Okay,” Cindy said. “I haven’t met him, so let’s assume for a minute that you’re right, not overblowing this due to the sudden, enormous flood of emotions that just hit you. Do you think that he knows what happened?”
Myra tried to think. “I don’t know. I shut down my connection pretty fast, so he shouldn’t be getting any feedback from me, but I’m sure he’ll be feeling the same need to mate that I am. He just might not know what it is. It’s not as if he’s human, and only feeling a tiny echo of it. He’s an alpha wolf, he’ll be feeling it strongly.”
“You need to call him, then. Hopefully he’s not running around as a wolf and can answer the phone.”
Should she try and connect to him through their bond? No, that would just freak him out, if he felt it. She was going to have to actually ask him how he was doing, and then figure out how hereallywas doing, based on his answers. Ugh, men.
She made the call, got no answer. “Okay. We wait.”
“Twenty minutes,” Cindy decreed.
“Fine.”
She dropped her head in her hands again. Her emotions were warring between elation and fear. And she was so worried about Adam that she almost felt sick. She looked at Cindy. “Let’s get out of here, I don’t want to be here when they get back.”
Taking charge, Cindy wrote a note for the pack. They had planned to stay the night, but luckily they had rented a car at the airport and weren’t stuck waiting for a ride. They grabbed their bags and Cindy shoved her into the passenger seat.
