Audrey leaned forward conspiratorially. “So the guys were all floored to find out that you and your uncle knew about them all this time.”
I glanced around. No one was paying us any attention, and the music drowned out her words.
“Rand told everyone?” I wasn’t sure why that bothered me a little. I guessed because Uncle Adam’s secret had felt sacred to me all these years, and then… bam! It was out there. Or maybe it was because Rand had this whole pack thing going that I didn’t really understand. I didn’t come from a tight knit family. I came from dysfunction. I didn’t have any siblings. No grandparents that I remembered. The only relative besides dear old Mom and Dad was Uncle Adam.
“I’m sorry if that was private,” Audrey said, immediately catching my reaction. “It’s just from what I’ve heard, your uncle was such a good neighbor and friend to my husband and his brothers for so many years. They were touched to find out he’d felt a connection with them and had protected their secret his entire life.”
I softened. “Yes, he did. He’d loved a member of their pack, did you hear that part? She broke his heart.”
Something twisted in my own heart saying the words. I’d been telling myself I didn’t know anything about love because my parents were such bad examples, but I realized I’d internalized Uncle Adam’s story as well. The Romeo and Juliet tragedy where the two sides couldn’t come together because of who they were.
Maybe that was why I was so daunted by Rand’s insistence that we were supposed to be together. My parents were married but were a horrible couple. Uncle Rand and the female shifter were supposed to get together because they were perfect but couldn’t.
It was lose/lose however I looked at it.
“Rand told you things have changed now, right?” Audrey asked, pushing her glasses up her nose. “I mean, if they hadn’t, I wouldn’t be mated and married to Boyd. Rob says Fate alone should dictate the rules of mating not the pack.”
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.”