“They did,” Samantha said. “It’s nice to see the place being used as a home again.”
“Yeah, it is. I think Grandma and Grandpa would approve, by the way.”
“Me, too.”
Samantha glanced at Trey to see him loading two plates full of food over by the grill. Even as Trey fixed a burger for her, he kept looking her way every few seconds. She smiled again and waved at him.
“Well, while you and Trey were up in Homer, I checked on the progress of those samples you gave me a few weeks ago, figuring you’d be eager for more info on them, but they weren’t there,” Loralei said. “The results I’d already collected are gone, too.”
Samantha didn’t say anything. She’d wanted to slip into her sister’s lab the day after they’d all escaped from Louis’s demented lab, but she and Trey had been too busy getting ready for the first trip up to Homer with Kyson and Shaylee, so they’d waited until they’d gotten back. It turned out that Trey was exceptionally good at breaking and entering. Knowing all of her sister’s computer passwords had helped, too. Within minutes, they’d taken everything Loralei had come up with.
She and Trey had quickly flipped through the results detailing what kind of prehistoric wolf DNA was blended so perfectly with his and the parts of his DNA strand that were no longer human at all. It was exactly the kind of stuff Louis would have drooled over.
It was also the kind of stuff she’d spent two years looking for.
And they’d burned it all. Every single piece of it.
“Don’t worry about the samples,” she told her sister. “Don’t worry about any of it. In fact, I want you to act like it never happened, okay?”
Loralei was quiet for a moment. “You broke into the lab and took everything, didn’t you?” she asked incredulously. “You know how crazy that is, right? What you’ve uncovered could change the world. Hell, it could make you famous.”
“You’re right. It would make me famous. Probably rich, too,” Samantha replied. “But it would also destroy the life of someone I love. So I’m begging you, Loralei, let this go. For me, please let it go.”
There was more silence, then a heavy sigh. “Okay, I’ll let it go.”
Samantha released the breath she hadn’t known she’d been holding. “Thanks. You don’t know how much I appreciate this.”
“You’re my sister. You know I’d do anything for you,” Loralei said. “But are you ever going to explain to me what this is all about?”
“Someday,” Samantha said. But only if Trey felt comfortable sharing his secret with her sister.
Telling Loralei she’d call her later, Samantha put her phone away, then headed over to join Trey at the table, at the space he’d saved for her in front of an overloaded plate of food. There was no way she could eat that much. Of course, she’d already learned that Trey was always up for eating anything she couldn’t.
“Everything okay?” Trey asked as she sat down beside him.
She smiled and nodded, leaning her shoulder into his, picking up her cheeseburger and taking a bite. It was juicy and perfectly cooked. Connor definitely knew his way around a grill.
She was so relaxed and comfortable among the Pack that she didn’t realize someone had asked her a question until she glanced up from her plate to see everyone at the table regarding her expectantly.
Oh crap. What did I miss?
“What?” she asked to the table in general, not even sure who’d been talking to her.
Beside her, Trey looked a little panicked. Hopefully, it wasn’t anything embarrassing.
On the other side of the table, Hale gave her a knowing smile, like he thought she was trying to come up with a way to delay answering. “I asked what you thought about being The One? You never talk about it.”
From the corner of her eye, she caught Trey making a shushing motion in Hale’s direction with his hand.
“The one what?” she asked.
The whole table went silent. Everyone at the two tables closest to theirs went just as quiet. It was like Samantha had cast aspersions on the Super Bowl lineage of the Dallas Cowboys. That was when she realized they weren’t staring at her but Trey. And some of his pack mates—Trevor and Hale in particular—looked kind of pissed.
“You haven’t told her?” Connor demanded, his voice flat but his expression making it clear he was stunned. “Are you frigging kidding me? You’ve had weeks!”
Samantha looked from Trey to Connor and back again. Damn, she hated being on the outside of anything that everyone else obviously knew about.
“Tell me what?” she asked.
No one answered. Not even Trey. She was one the verge of getting a little annoyed when Trey stood up so quickly that he practically flipped over the bench she and everyone else was sitting on.
“We need to talk,” he said, his voice calm but edged with tension. Reaching down, he took her hand, urging her up from the bench. “Let’s take a walk.”
She fell into step beside him as he walked toward the far end of the compound. It was obvious that he wanted a little privacy and that scared the hell out her. Whatever he had to say must be bad, especially if he hadn’t wanted to tell her.
Samantha was practically hyperventilating by the time they reached the far end of the compound’s obstacle course, tears gathering at the corner of her eyes. Everything was so good between them. She couldn’t bear the thought of anything messing that up.
“We’re soul mates,” he said softly, turning to look at her. “Being The One means that you’re the one person in the world who I’m supposed to be with. The only one who can ever accept me for what I am.”
Soul mates? Things like soul mates belonged in romance books and fairy tales. But then she remembered there weren’t supposed to be werewolves, vampires, and monsters. Look how wrong she’d been about that.
Her head suddenly started to spin. After everything she’d learned over the past few weeks, hearing they were soul mates still threw her for loop. She couldn’t help it. The implications were…scary.
“What are you saying?” she asked, all too aware that every werewolf at the compound could listen in on their conversation if they wanted to. “That the two of us were destined to be together from the day we met? That we didn’t even have a say in the matter? That everything we’ve done—falling in love with each other and moving in together—wasn’t our choice?”
“It’s not like that,” Trey said softly, taking her free hand in his other one. “Fate—or whatever you want to call it—may have put us together, but there’s nothing predestined about it. We could have ignored what was right in front of us.” His mouth quirked. “And considering the fact that we danced around each other for almost two years, I think it’s safe to say we both did our best to screw up what fate was trying to do. If you chose to walk away from me after you found out I was a werewolf, there would have been nothing stopping you. Even after I said I love you.”