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She shrugged. “I wouldn’t know. But I can feel her power brewing under the surface. If the legends are true, then it’s likely she is.”
“That means… Fuck.” I ran my fingers through my beard and turned over the information in my mind.
If she didn’t know what her powers were, it was because she hadn’t had sex. That explained her fear, despite the obvious pull between us. I hadn’t been able to resist her. I didn’t want to stop myself around her, but that fear… there was no way in hell I would ever do something to her if it wasn’t what she wanted. I was a lot of things, including her owner now, but I wasn’tthat.
“You’re attracted to her,” Uma said.
I tried to keep my face neutral when I looked at her. “She’s attractive.”
“Yeah, I guess she is. Men will feel that way about her all the time. It’s a part of her power.”
I growled. It was involuntary, but it rolled out of my throat when I so much as thought about someone else having her the way I wanted her.
“Oh,” Uma said softly. “It’s like that.”
“Like what?” I asked, aware that I was reacting in ways that didn’t usually happen.
“Do you think she’s your fated mate?”
“Excuse me?” I demanded. How had we leaped from attraction to fated mates? “Just because I think a female is beautiful doesn’t mean that we’re fated. I think a lot of females are beautiful.”
“Look, I get it. You’ve got that whole thing going on with the threat of your life hanging over your head. Maybe finding your mate isn’t on your mind, but this is serious.”
Uma was the only person besides Dagger who knew what had happened to my parents, and that the demon was still after me. She and Dagger were close, and Dagger had been with Hauser as his new beta the night the former alpha had taken me in.
“Pay attention to me, Braxton,” Uma said, her voice hard. “I’ve been doing some research, talking to some elders, reading some of the tomes that we still have around. She’s not like other shifters. If you have sex with her, and this is something she chooses, too, she’ll be bound to you whether you’re fated or not. It’s just how it works with them. It’s the curse of being a rabbit. Every upside has a downside, and this is hers.”
“So, if I sleep with her...”
“She’s yours for good,” Uma confirmed.
“And what about me?” I asked. “Will I be mated, too?”
“If you sleep with her, you’rechoosingher, Braxton,” Uma said, her words very precise. She pinned me with a hard stare.
This reallywasserious.
Thank fuck I’d backed off when I had. If she hadn’t been scared of me, scared of what sex meant, then I might not have held back when I’d been in that room. I might have fucked her and gotten myself a mate without even knowing it.
“Thanks for the heads-up,” I said.
Uma nodded. “You’re welcome.”
“Get closer to her,” I said. “Find out what you can, and help her if she needs it.”
“And report back to you?”
I nodded. “That goes without saying, but this isn’t just about me. It’s about her, too.”
“That’s unlike you,” Uma said, frowning. “You’re usually so cold.”
“Yeah,” I responded, not feeling the need to say more.
I wasn’t going to explain to her that her fear had gotten to me. I had this crazy urge to protect her, and her fear had pulled me up short. I didn’t know what it was about her, but I wasn’t going to let anything happen to her until I got to the bottom of whatever was going on. Fated, or just a bond, didn’t matter—Uma had to help me out with this one because if I was this drawn to her, and I didn’t know what she could do, we were both in trouble.
Me, because she could be my weakness when I couldn’t afford it, and Kinley, because if that demon knew there was someone else to take down with me, he wasn’t going to hold back. He didn’t have to kill my mom and the rest of my family, after all, but thanks to what my dad had done, my parents and my four siblings had all been doomed.
How long had it been since I’d heard of him? I’d lost track. Centuries. He’d found me when I’d come of age, but Hauser and a bunch of fae had fought him off. It hadn’t been permanent.
