“Wh-why are you telling me all this?” I asked, pushing my glasses up although he couldn’t miss the way my hand shook.
“You’re Boyd’s true mate.”
“He never said that.”
“Did he say you were his, that he knew all along, from the very first, that he wanted you?”
I nodded, tears lodged thick in my throat.
“He didn’t use the word mate because he couldn’t share about his wolf. His wolf chose a human, for whatever reason. You. And while that’s generally against pack law, I would never presume to know better than the wolf instinct. Nature always knows best, right? I know Boyd, and he’s a stubborn bastard. There’s no way he would accept any female but you. So if you refuse him…”
I finally picked up what Rob was putting down. A giant sticky guilt trip. “He’ll go moon mad.”
“Right.”
I needed to be alone. I needed to think things over.
And yes, I might need to read those letters.
So I swung the door shut.
“Just think about seeing him?” he called out, just before I shut the door in his face. On the alpha. Of the Wolf pack.
I didn’t answer.
My head spun.
Or was that the room?
Whatever it was, I needed to sit down. Or maybe I needed an oxygen mask. Yes, an oxygen mask would be perfect right now. I sank to the floor and gathered the letters up in my lap.
An oxygen mask, or maybe a letter that I had a feeling had every answer I’d wanted for the past two days.
Marina: Call me or I will drive there and track you down.
Marina’s text got me off the floor. Well, at least from lying on the floor with Boyd’s letters strewn around me. I pushed up and leaned against the couch and grabbed my cell. It had been two hours since Rob left—not that I gave him any choice with the front door in his face—and I’d read through Boyd’s letters over and over.
I knew his heart now. I knew… everything. He’d written long letters, telling me how he felt about me. What it meant that his wolf had chosen me. That he wanted to mate me… for life. He explained how a wolf marked his mate. What it would mean for me, as a human. He said the pack would accept me because his brother would. I held the letters to my chest, letting it all reverberate there. It was so much. It was everything.
Yet I was still sitting here. Alone.
Marina: Now.
I dialed, and she answered on the first ring.
“What’s wrong?” she asked right away.
“I’m in love,” I replied, then burst into tears.
I heard Marina laugh, but I couldn’t stop crying. I had no idea how long I cried, or why my sister stayed on the phone listening to me gasp and sniffle, sob and blow my nose. When I finally stopped, she said, “Are you crying because you’re happy or sad?”
“I don’t know!” I wailed.
“Is this about the guy with the weird name who ordered you lamb?”
“Jett? No, not him.”
“It’s the rodeo champ, right? Please say it’s the rodeo champ.”
“It’s the rodeo champ.”
She screamed, and I had to pull my phone away from my ear.
“Why are you crying? Did he hurt you? I’ll come up there and beat the crap out of him.”
Marina and I looked nothing alike, but she wasn’t any bigger than me. In fact, she was the same height, but had the slim build of a dancer. A strong wind would blow her over. Not that Boyd would hurt her, but she couldn’t even reach his throat without a step stool to punch him there.
“I’m crying because he loves me, too.”
I realized that I couldn’t tell her that he was a wolf. She’d think I was mental, first off. Then she’d come up here to have me committed. I wanted her in California, in college, where she belonged. I could understand why Rob wanted to ensure their being shifters remained a secret. Keeping Marina far from Montana would ensure she didn’t learn the truth. She’d have to come here someday, but I’d worry about that then.
“Then what is going on? I don’t understand why you’re so upset.”
“We had a… falling out.” I told her about Karen, skipping the fact that she was a shifter. “I shouldn’t have believed her spiteful words, but it’s hard not to. You should see her. She looks like a Victoria’s Secret model.”
“Yet Boyd loves you.”
“Yeah, he does.” Having Marina say it somehow made things shift inside me. Rob had said the exact same thing earlier, yet I’d felt just as bad. Just as heartsick.
Boyd loved me. Boyd loved me. He didn’t say the words aloud. He hadn’t had to. I saw how he felt for me in everything he did. In how he protected me. In how he touched me. How he spoke to me. Fucked me.