He’d honestly thought he could erase everything that had happened to them during their strained… whatever they had… relationship? Relationship was a good word for it. He thought she’d forget how he treated her, how he begrudged her for being a witch… how she’d gotten herself involved with another man… all because he told her to?
Well, he thought wrong.
“Look. I know the Goddess has put you in my path for some reason. I haven’t figured it out these last couple of months, but there it is. I can’t deny that we’re tied together, either. When you get hurt, I feel it.”
Colton winced. “I don’t want you to. The bond’s not supposed to work that way. My brother’s doesn’t. At least,” he added, “not before he was completely bonded to his mate and she could sense him. And you and me, we’re not fully bonded—not yet.”
“Evangeline?” Shea asked, interested despite herself. And, okay, because she was gonna pretend he didn’t tack that not yet on there like that. “I thought she was a human.”
“She’s not.”
Really?
She could’ve sworn—
“Is she like me?”
“A witch? No. She’s not a witch, either. She’s… different.”
Shea bit down on her bottom lip, confused. “I don’t get it. Paranormals are Paras. Humans are humans. As far as I know, the only way a human can be turned is by drinking vampire blood—that’s how we got Nightwalkers in the first place.”
Colton looked even more uncomfortable. “System has her as Para.”
“Right. That’s how it works with the bonding license. Somethi
ng about the Claw Clause… the bond classifies her as paranormal because of her mating. That didn’t change her or turn her or something like that. Did it?”
He shrugged. “Ever since she accepted my brother’s bite, I guess she changed a bit. Small things, really. Her hearing’s better. Vision and nose, too, though she can’t shift. So she’s human, but not. And, well, sometimes Maddox can sense when she’s hurting, just like you do with me. I don’t know what it’ll do to you to have my bite, but it’s something to look forward to.”
At least the part about Maddox knowing when Evangeline was in pain made sense to Shea. While she was doing her research, she discovered anecdotal reports that proved Colton didn’t know what he was talking about when he said she shouldn’t have felt his pain. Maybe not so soon, since she hadn’t even known what she was to him when Cilla attacked Colton, but it happened. Pain, high emotions like terror or fear, even contentment... it all traveled the lengths of the invisible tether that stretched between them.
Until she found a way to end this hot-cold, will-they-won’t-they crap by finally just snipping it in half. Thank the Goddess her renewed shields kept her feelings locked up tight. Shea would die of embarrassment if Colton knew how damn tempted she’d been to throw herself in his arms and give him the kiss he so casually offered.
But then he brought up his bite.
His bite… which only meant one thing.
Shea knew the basics when it came to mating a shifter. Unlike the vampire blooding, when Julian had to explain what exactly it meant to be his betrothed and how she would become his blood-bonded partner, Shea had gone out of her way to read up on shifters.
Sure, she had done so shortly after her discovery that she was tied to Colton, but she’d made a point to stop when Colton made it obvious that he had no intention of following through with his mating instinct.
One thing she did learn? It wasn’t a certainty. Each shifter received one true mate, the person that was made for them, chosen by fate, and the only one they could mate and have children with; as a biological quirk, a mate ensured that the bloodline continued. But, as Colton proved again and again, it wasn’t guaranteed.
At least, he let her believe that. But if he was talking about a bite?
Shifters only bit their mate during the actual claiming. In the case of a male shifter, if he released his seed inside of his mate at the same time as he bit her near her throat, the bond was cemented. That was it. You might as well get a bonding license signed and notarized because, like the third blood exchange finalized a blood-bond, they’d be fully bonded mates from that moment on.
She had to make sure she heard him right. That this wasn’t just months of wishful thinking messing with her head.
“You… you want to bite me?”
His eyes suddenly lightened, the icy blue sheen rolling over his pupils. “You gonna let me?”
After what he put her through? For months—months—Shea fought her own feelings, fought her own attraction, doing everything she could to separate her life from his before he did further damage to her self-esteem—and her heart.
She couldn’t answer him. Mainly because she was afraid that she would.
“You know,” she mused, the words coming before she could think better of them, “when Julian took my blood, there was no biting involved and he’s a Nightwalker.”