I shook my head, my chest tightening. All this talk about the pack and mating made me anxious. They were all coming at me too fast. It was too much. I could still feel the echo of tragedy from Uncle Adam’s love story with a shifter. I didn’t want to write my own.
I’d only talked to Boyd Wolf on the phone when he’d offered to buy my property. He seemed nice. As for the other guys, including Becky’s mate, I knew nothing about them. Were they as possessive and crazy as Rand?
“Hey,” Audrey touched my arm. “I know how intense these guys are when their biology kicks in. Rand’s desperate to mark you as his and seal the deal, but you don’t have the same urge.”
“Mark me?” I leaned forward on my forearms. Had I heard her correctly?
Becky and Audrey glanced at each other. “You explain,” Becky said. “You’re the doctor.”
“Well, we don’t know the science of it, obviously,” Audrey replied. “But from what I can gather, when a male has found his true mate, his fangs coat with some kind of serum, and he has the urge to bite her to leave his scent in her skin.” She pulled aside her collar to show a pair of scars.
“Oh God,” I muttered. This was just getting weirder and weirder. Not only did Rand want to control everything from my house to where I slept to who talked to me when I was working, but he’d left out the insanity of his need to bite me. I didn’t even know if the guy loved me let alone if I wanted his scent in my skin. Sheesh. “No, thank you.”
“If he doesn’t mark his chosen mate, he’ll go m—” Audrey put her hand on Becky’s arm to stop her, mid-sentence.
“Go where?” I asked.
Someone waved me down, and I went to fill their drink order.
Audrey answered my question when I returned. “I’m sorry—you don’t need to know that. I can tell we’ve already overwhelmed you, and that’s the last thing we wanted to do,” Becky said.
The knot in my stomach grew tighter.
“I thought it was all nuts when it happened to me,” Audrey confessed. “Boyd was this big player on the rodeo circuit. Smooth talking, good looking. I’m pretty sure he had a different woman in every town. I wanted nothing to do with him.” She picked up a celery stick and dunked it in the blue cheese. “But he kept coming on stronger and stronger. And I felt like it must be some kind of joke. I mean, I was just the nerdy small town doctor. There was no way a guy like him was playing for keeps.”
Becky nodded the entire time at Audrey’s story. “But they do play for keeps,” she interjected. “A wolf never leaves his mate. Never loses the urge to protect her and provide for her. I found that a little daunting after a bad marriage… before Clint. Like if I jumped into another one—there’d be no getting out. Clint and I aren’t married, like humans. We’re mated, same as Audrey and Boyd. It sounds pretty darn scary, but there won’t be a reason to get out. These guys are totally dedicated to their mates.”
I loved the story they were selling me, but I just didn’t buy it. “How do you know, though? You’ve only been married—mated, what? A year or two? You’re both still in the honeymoon phase. And Rand’s not Clint or Boyd.”
Becky gave me a commiserating smile. “I’d say I know Rand better than Audrey does since he’s Clint’s brother. Those guys have a good family. Solid. Clint’s and Rand’s parents are fated mates. When you meet them, you’ll believe it,” Becky promised.
“This is too much pressure,” Audrey said, probably reading my doubtful expression again. “We definitely didn’t come to talk you into anything. Only to lend our support if you need it.”
“Thank you, I appreciate that.” I did. I liked both women, and I believed they meant well, I just didn’t trust this wolf biology thing. I wanted a real relationship based on shared experiences, love and respect. Not on the way I smelled.
“Just don’t push Rand away if it seems too good to be true. Let yourself have him and all that comes with being with a shifter, if you like it.” Becky winked.
I smiled reluctantly.
Yeah, I did like the good.
And she was right—it did seem too good to be true. How could it be this amazing and be real? Or lasting?
I was letting myself have it—some of it, anyway. I just didn’t want to trust that it could possibly be forever.
Not when it was something I didn’t even understand.
17
RAND
A few days after the pack meeting, I pulled up to Natalie’s following a day of installing a tile backsplash as the final touches of a shifter family’s kitchen remodel. I couldn’t help but smile at the sight of her sitting on the porch steps like she was waiting for me.
The sight made my heart gallup, but I forced myself to act casual.
But keeping things casual for a shifter who needed to mark his mate was like teetering on the edge of a cliff for hours upon hours.
Every day that went by without me marking Natalie was a new ordeal. I didn’t tell her this, obviously, or any of the shit with Nathan. Venting any of his issues, which solely revolved around her, was not going to help me with Red. Not one fucking bit.
But I made it through. It was damn hard to prove my love to someone when I was also supposed to be playing it cool and not putting any pressure on. That made no sense to me, but I wasn’t human. I had shifter parents as role models. I wanted a love like theirs, and while it was based on shifter traditions and customs, it was a relationship. A mating, which was pretty much a wolf marriage.
But my wolf couldn’t be denied. It was a part of me, and it had to be tamed and only Natalie could do that. I wasn’t about to go moon mad anytime soon, but it was getting harder and harder to not claim her. Even now, sitting here and staring at her, was I blowing it? Was I doing this human thing right?
Like—how many gifts were too many? How many orgasms? How many fix it jobs could I do at the house without her asking before I seemed presumptuous and intrusive? I had every intention of living here with her. Forever. But she lost her shit over me paying for a fucking fuse box. It was a fine fucking line I had to walk, and it nearly had me out of my mind.
“Hey, darlin’,” I called as I forced my steps to slow down on the way to her. Yeah, I was whipped.
She stood. She seemed to be wearing a bikini under her tank top and jean shorts, which made me fucking crazy to pull off her clothes and see her in it. And nothing else. “I was going to go down to the swimming hole to cool off, but I thought I’d wait for you. Wanna come?”
Fuck, Natalie and the swimming hole? I grinned. “Does a wolf need to run?”
Her gaze caught mine, curious. “Do you?”
I’d been trying not to mention my wolf. It was part of my playing it cool act. I leaned down, meaning to just give her a quick peck on the lips, but instead my forearm looped under her ass, and I hoisted her legs up around my waist, bringing her warm center against my middle, her breasts in my face. I nipped one of them through the shirt.
“When the moon is full,” I admitted. “And when I need to let off steam. It helps keep the wolf in balance. Otherwise, he starts running the show.” I winced, hoping this wasn’t too much again. Fuck, I second guessed every thing I said these days.