Chapter 3
Destiny
A t Hal’s cabin, Destiny took a hot shower and changed into clean clothes from the stash of assorted clothing in the attic for the use of any shifters who’d gotten unexpectedly naked. After Ethan had taken his turn with the shower and emergency clothes, they all converged in the living room to sit by the fire and listen first to the story of Ethan and Destiny’s adventure (leaving out the part where they’d intended to get it on in the woods), then to the story of how Ellie and Hal had met. Destiny had heard it before but not in much detail, so she didn’t mind hearing it again.
Despite the loss of her car, her dress, her gun, her purse, and even her shoes, she felt strangely happy. She and Ethan had put away the very last of Nagle’s gang and so protected her friends, and she’d just met a man whom she felt very confident was going to become much more than a friend. With any luck, and if Hal and Ellie fell asleep soon, tonight.
“…and there she was, sitting in the police station,” Hal was saying. “But her head was down so I couldn’t see her eyes. I introduced myself and she looked up, and when our eyes met—”
He broke off, shaking his head, his expression alight with what Destiny could only think of as glory. “It nearly knocked me backwards. And my bear roared, ‘Mine!’”
“You were a bear?” Ethan said. “In the police station? A talking bear?”
Ellie burst into giggles.
“No, no,” said Hal. “When you’re a shifter, your animal is always with you. When you’re human, it’s a voice in your mind. That voice is the part of you that is the animal: your deepest, most instinctive, most primal self. And it’s the part of you that recognizes your mate.”
“Your mate,” Ethan echoed. “What does that mean?”
“Your true love,” Hal replied without a trace of embarrassment. “The person you’re perfectly compatible with. The person you’ll never fall out of love with.”
Perfectly compatible, Destiny thought. Sounds like me and Ethan.
They had so much in common, with their similar sense of humor, taste for excitement, cool under fire, even their shared love for dancing. They’d both been in the military. Even though they’d only just met, they had worked as well together to protect each other as if they’d been teammates for years. And, of course, there was their absolutely sizzling sexual chemistry.
Could Ethan be the one? Destiny wondered. My one true mate?
For an instant, she was filled with certainty and joy. Of course he was. He had to be. It felt so right.
Then Hal spoke again. “People who aren’t shifters can have mates too, of course—I’m Ellie’s as much as she’s mine—but they have to fall in love the regular way, over time. Shifters recognize their mates the instant their eyes meet.” He snapped his fingers. “Like that.”
“Like that,” Destiny repeated numbly, not even aware that she was speaking until she heard the words leave her mouth.
Hal nodded, then chuckled. “And, of course, my bear kept growling stuff like ‘Protect our mate! Take her to our lair! Feed her nuts and berries! Catch her a nice fat salmon! Only the best for our mate!’” More seriously, he added, “But yeah, I knew then and there. It was absolutely unmistakable, the instant I looked into her eyes.”
Destiny forced her glance at Ethan to seem casual, as if she was looking out the window at the stars rather than meaningfully staring into his eyes. But she did look into his eyes.
Nothing happened.
She felt like she’d been kicked in the gut. And then she realized something that made her feel even worse. She’d looked into his eyes before—she’d looked into them plenty of times in the short but eventful time since they’d met—and nothing had ever happened.
Well, no—not quite nothing. That first time they’d met, she’d felt a sort of jolt. And she was sure feeling a whole lot of things right now. But that jolt could have just been a whole lot of sexual chemistry, or the force of a strong personality. And her attraction could be because he was exactly her type: a gentleman and a soldier, sweet and funny and hot as blazes, and because they got along so well and they were so compatible…
But her tiger hadn’t said a word. And she was the one who would know.
Maybe she’d been snoozing.
Hey! Destiny gave her inner tiger a mental shove. What do you think of Ethan?
Her tiger tilted her head, a big cat’s equivalent of a shrug. He seems nice.
Nice, Destiny thought. Ugh. Nice is for best friends and bosses and brothers, not for fated true loves.
But she wasn’t going to let her tiger off the hook that easily. She tried again. Could he be my mate?
Her tiger gave her that head tilt again. Your mate? I don’t know. How am I supposed to tell?
Weren’t you paying any attention to Hal’s story? Destiny asked, frustrated. Do you get a ‘mine’ feeling when I look into his eyes?