Hearing Cal echo Teri’s millennial-speak in his deep, thoughtful voice was unexpectedly funny. Lillian stifled an inappropriate giggle and instead said, “She has some idea about shifter—connections, I don’t know. Something about what happened with her and Zach. I tried to tell her that the situations are different, but—”
“No,” Cal interrupted. “No, she’s right.”
Lillian stopped. “What?”
“She’s right.” Cal drew her over to sit down on the couch. “I should’ve told you this right away. I thought it might be better to wait until the situation with the mountain lions was taken care of, but that was a mistake. You deserve to know.”
“Deserve to know...what?” Lillian had no idea what he might be leading up to, and it was making her nervous.
Cal took her hand in a gentle grip, then put his other hand on top of hers. “Shifters don’t just have relationships and marriages like humans do. Some of us—the lucky ones—have what we call true mates.”
Mate. That was the word Cal had used before to talk about a partner. “What’s the difference?” Lillian asked cautiously.
“A mate is more than a husband or wife. There’s a...connection. Some kind of instinctive bond between the two of you. You feel it as an attraction first, but after you—uh—” Cal coughed, “spend the night together, the shifter knows it for certain. That relationship is meant to be permanent, and supposedly the existence of the mate-bond means that you’re...suited to one another. As partners.”
Lillian could hardly understand what this might mean. Unless he meant...but surely that was impossible, wasn’t it?
“You’re speaking very impersonally,” she said slowly. “Is this—relevant to us somehow?”
Maybe Cal had a mate, somewhere, and he was telling her that nothing else could happen between them because of it. If that was the case, though, he wasn’t the man Lillian had thought he was. And she was sure he wasn’t the type to cheat. It just didn’t make sense.
But what else could it be? Surely not...
Cal’s hands tightened on hers. “It is. Because you’re my mate, Lillian. You and I are meant to be together.”
“But I’m not a shifter,” Lillian said blankly.
“You don’t have to be a shifter,” Cal said. “Shifters can have human mates.”
“But—but—” She tugged at her hands, and Cal immediately let them go. She stood up, taking a few steps away and staring blindly out the window.
It seemed, she thought a little hysterically, that all she did in this house was flee difficult conversations.
“But that doesn’t make any sense,” she said finally.
“Why not?” Cal asked. He was staying on the couch, she could tell without even looking. He wouldn’t want to crowd her, she thought.
God, he was so wonderful. Which made this even more strange and painful. That he would say something like this to her, when it was just—it was just impossible.
“I’m not—this sort of thing doesn’t happen to me.” As she said it, she was aware of how silly she sounded. But it was true.
“It’s not happening to you,” Cal said. “It’s happening to us.”
Lillian turned around. “But how can there be an us? We just met yesterday.”
“That’s how it works,” Cal said. “The mate-bond doesn’t need time. It knows.”
Lillian shook her head. She couldn’t seem to come up with any other objection, but...it couldn’t be real. Not for her.
Cal stood up, and came slowly over to her. Watching her carefully, she thought, looking to see if she tensed or startled.
“Let me ask you a question, Lillian,” he said. His eyes—how could she have ever thought they were hard like iron? They were warm, warm and silvery-soft.
“All right.” Her voice hardly trembled at all.
“Do you want to be with me?”
So simple.