“That’s a bullshit fantasy romance novel answer, Trina. You’re wrong. Love doesn’t exist. A mating bond exists. Shifters should absolutely stay for it because it’s genetically ingrained in us to find a partner and procreate so our species can live on. A shifter should never leave a mating bond. Shatter that tether and you can destroy a shifter. But love? It’s just a notion you humans come up with to justify settling down with a partner. There’s no science to it. You learn it when you’re young, with drawing hearts and watching sappy movies, and you are trained to write romantic poems and spend money on gifts. But that word makes it okay to put up with a hundred red flags and tether yourselves to some idiot who doesn’t match you. They can act however they want, and you’ll stay because you ‘love’ him.”
“Geez, Nuke. You sound like you got hurt.”
“I tried it once a few years ago with a human. I was in a bad spot, felt alone and was desperate to just be happy, and I took a girl out. Made myself open up to her and let her in, and stayed way too long because she’d explained what love was. She made it sound so damn perfect. I wanted it. And for a few months, it did feel perfect, but she made me soft. She got unhappy because I couldn’t be everything I was supposed to be. The more I tried, the more I failed, and the more she pulled away. Rejection made my control slip, and that relationship got me to a bad place. Got her nowhere, too. She was happy to leave, and at the end of it, I looked back and realized she didn’t even fuckin’ know me. She couldn’t. I can’t allow it, so what’s the point of it all? Perfection for a few months and then hell?”
Ooooh, he had been hurt. Tough man, but he’d just admitted more than he realized. He’d tried, and the relationship had crumbled, and it had jaded his view on love. He’d separated the ideas of love and shifters’ mating bonds, like they were from two separate worlds. Trina had been burned too, but she still wanted to believe in it, even if a bond never happened for her. “That’s not the love I was talking about, Nuke.”
He cast her a look, and his dark eyes swirled with confusion.
“You loved your brothers.” Her eyes pricked with emotion. “It’s very sad that you lost them, but if you didn’t love them, you wouldn’t be trying to protect a family that reminds you of them.”
“The Banes aren’t like my brothers. Not even close. No one is. No one was. No one ever will be.” A long snarl rattled in his throat, and she saw it for the first time. She saw the monster. It was in the silver, elongated pupils that appeared in the middle of his dark irises. There he was, just a glimpse. It was enough to remind her where she stood in this pecking order.
He turned into a parking lot for a donut store that had the lights on and a blue neon sign that said Open.
He threw the truck into park, and sat there with his hands gripped onto the steering wheel. He hummed with tension. She’d done that. It was her style to step on every trigger with people. Why did she do that? What was the freaking point of pushing people? Why couldn’t she just be normal and have a fun ice-breaker conversation? She always did this backward.
“I agree with you,” she murmured. “Love didn’t work for me either. I think some people are born with a harder destiny to bear. Some people are cursed to deeply understand love, but to never find it. And some people are cursed to find love, but never truly appreciate it. No one can ever get to know me either.”
“Why not?” he popped off. “What’s so bad that you can’t share yourself with someone?”
She huffed a breath and tried to smile. “Because you were wrong about something else too, Nuke.”
“And what’s that?”
She opened the door and slid out of his truck. And before she shut the door behind her, she told him, “I’m not human.”
Chapter Six
Nuke was careful to pull the donut shop door open as gently as he could. He’d learned at a very young age that his power would have broken every door that he ever touched, and shop owners didn’t change out broken glass doors without making a big stink. The less attention on him, the better.
“Holy balls, we’ve got a big one, girls.”
Nuke had been looking at Trina as she stood at the counter looking in the glass cases at the donuts lined up on red trays, but the older woman’s voice filled his head.
Three ladies in fancy green hats sat at a table in the corner, and all three were staring right at him.
Great.
“Mornin’ ladies,” he said, tipping an imaginary hat.
“Boy, I haven’t swooned since I was fifteen, don’t make me lose it now,” one called out.
“Yeah, she’ll throw another hip out,” her friend said, and then cackled.
Nuke chuckled and made his way to the counter beside Trina.
“I bet you have crushes on you wherever you go.” Trina’s lips were curved up into that smile he liked. Thank God. He hadn’t liked upsetting her in the truck.
“I get defensive,” he said low. “It’s not you.”
“You don’t trust me,” she said. “I don’t blame you, and good. Don’t trust me. I’m trouble.”
Whooo, there was truth in that admission. Why did that pique his interest more?
He clasped his hands behind his back and straightened up to look at the trays of donut holes lined up against the back wall. “Maybe I like trouble.” Especially if it was shifter-shaped trouble.
A man was ordering enough donuts to feed the small army of children he was explaining were having a slumber party at his house for his daughter’s birthday. It was such a normal conversation to listen to after their charged one in the truck.
What was Trina? If she wasn’t human, what kind of shifter was she? He’d pegged her wrong, and that was a first for him. But…just like he kept his monster a secret, she had every right to live her life looking like a human. Maybe she was a swan. Her submissive personality and curious nature would back that one. Or a rabbit perhaps. Something smaller. Probably not a predator shifter.
“You don’t smell like fur,” he pointed out, unable to help his curiosity.
“And neither do you,” she said with a wink.
Hmmm. Did she know what he was? Most of him hoped not, but a teeny tiny part of him hoped she did.
“I don’t smell like anything you would recognize or guess at,” she said quickly as the worker behind the counter approached them to take the order.
Trina started ordering, and now Nuke was staring at her pretty profile like a creeper. What the hell was she? Besides gorgeous, and plenty capable of getting under his skin with zero effort?
“Oh, and two of the chocolate frosted bear claws,” she finished up. “My friend looooves bears.”
Jerk. He hid a smile because she didn’t need to know how amusing her needling was.
He leaned into her and murmured, “I have to eat a lot.”
She nodded and without hesitation, she asked the friendly teen if they could have another dozen of the exact same ones and two orders of donut holes.
Huh. He liked that he didn’t have to explain the amount of food he needed to consume to make the monster drowsy. She didn’t even blink when the boy told her the total. Just pulled out two twenties and talked easily while he made her change.