Page 89 of Kingdom of Betrayal and Unknown

He nods. “We did, but mine wanted to be hard and wait until we met in person to appear on my hip.”

I look at his hip. What exactly is the birthmark he is talking about? Will I have the same thing? I am going to have to check when I get home. I so badly want to do it now, but I don’t want to show him everything underneath my dress...not yet.

“Turn around!” I point at Kieran. “I need to check something.”

Amusement flies across his face before he turns around. I scan the area, making sure no one else is around, before lifting up my dress and looking at both sides of my hips. My shoulders relax when I realize I don’t have any sort of birthmark or tattoo.

Part of me wished there was a birthmark there that would match his so I knew that we were destined to be together. It would make everything so much easier right now. But nothing in life is ever easy.

“You can turn around,” I calmly say, trying to keep my voice even without any emotions.

“Did you look at your hips to see if you had anything?” he smiles.

My mouth hangs open as I look at him. “No! I did not.”

“Are you sure about that? It’s okay if you did. Most human mates do when they find out their mate has a birthmark on their hip.” Kieran chuckles.

“Okay fine, I did look. Can you blame me? It would make things a whole lot easier if I had a tattoo that was the same as yours,” I bite back, irritated and slightly embarrassed.

Who wouldn’t be, though? I got caught red-handed.

“Can you just show me your birthmark?” I wave my hand in the air to get him to move it along. “How do I know you didn’t get whatever this is until after you met me? You didn’t show it to me when we first met.”

“You would have freaked out if I showed it to you the first time we met,” he points out. “I wanted to, but I didn’t want to push you further. I had to take things slowly.”

Sighing, I let my shoulders relax. He is right. I probably would have freaked out if he told me all this information at one point. I know I would have been overwhelmed and definitely wouldn’t have believed him in the slightest if he told me everything. He knew what he was doing.

“You want to see it? Here it is. It showed up when we first met in the forest.” Kieran lowers the side of his pants.

And right there on his hip is my name.

My name.

Adeline Duvall.

Spelled correctly and all. I never told him my last name or how to spell it.

“No.” I shake my head and take a step back. “You must have gotten that after you met me. That is the only way.”

“I didn’t know your full name,” he points out.

“You could have easily found that out!” I raise my voice, trying to make sense of it.

Kieran continues to hold his pants down so I can look at the tattoo once again. But as I lean forward to get a closer look, the more I realize that it doesn’t appear to be a tattoo.

“Wait,” I whisper.

“I couldn’t have found out your name easily. I only knew your first name since you told me it, but your last name, you have never told me. I can’t go and ask a human what your full name is,” Kieran explains.

He’s right. If he were human, I could easily explain how he found out my last name, but it’s not that simple.

“Let the others show you their hips.” Kieran lets go of his pants.

I stand up straight as Elias, Zayden, and Everett emerge from the trees.

“I heard you needed to see my hips.” Everett wiggles his eyebrows at me.

Elias hits Everett on the back of the head. “Knock it off. It’s serious right now. You don’t want Kieran handing you your ass, do you? And that’s no way to talk to your future High Lady either.”