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I scoff.
She gives me a sad smile. “Yeah. I know how weird that sounds now. But then I saw you again. Because I broke the rules and spotted you for just a minute after I drafted a potion that let me be invisible to you. Then the next time I saw you, I was in the supermarket in Drowsy Hollow. And you were so gorgeous and smiling and there was banter with some of your relatives and you were just so… everything. Fast forward a year to a couple days before my twenty-first and I came here upset because that guy cheated on me and I was angry and crying and driving to see Aunt Lyrica and get away for a couple days, but then got to that main strip of town and there you were. I saw you in the street holding the door open for an old lady with a walker. I drove into that fire hydrant and… and we met.”
She swallows and takes a lungful of air before resuming. “Then I had this sense something was wrong, so I left instead of getting a banana split and something was very wrong. Aunt Lyrica was unconscious. So I got my aunt to the hospital, and I was upset at that and at Devon and Tawny, a former friend and… anyway, I drank the wine in Aunt Lyrica’s fridge not knowing it was spelled. Then I went for what I wanted. Because the wine gave me the nerve. And seemed to turn off my common sense, I guess. I went for what I wanted. A man who’d be sweet and kind to his family and to old ladies. Who’d never cheat on the woman he loved. I thought wolf shifters chose a mate for life, I didn’t know they were mates that fate chose. I tried to insert myself as yours, which was really, really wrong.”
“But it was the truth,” I manage.
“But I didn’t know that at the time, or I could’ve waited. I would’ve even if it was hard. But there we were, and you were telling me stuff about you, and I was sobering up realizing what I’d done and feeling bad about the spell I cast because I wasn’t fully trained yet and wasn’t supposed to cast spells. Not to mention I was fucking with fate and when I made that call because I was supposed to pick my aunt up from the hospital, I got told off, told I was mucking around with fate – that what if you had a real mate out there somewhere and what if I just robbed her of her fate and created a ripple effect? And that’s not who I am. I might’ve wanted you for myself, but I wouldn’t have taken you from someone else if it was supposed to be that way. You know?”
She waits.
And then she shakes her head. “I guess you don’t know. Then really realizing what a mess I’d made because they knew what I’d done – because Vivi got a vision and a witch from the council did, too, and Vivi’s freaking out because I broke a bunch of rules and ripping me a new one, telling me they’re about to combine their powers and spell me out of there because I’m in huge shit and absolutely can’t let you mate me. I have to, no matter what, find a way to get out of your sight before you go all feral alpha and mate with me anyway. I was told I had to prevent you from seeing them spell me out somehow, so I panicked and when I felt the energy buzzing around me and knew I was about to be spelled out of there. I didn’t know what to do, so I stepped off that cliff.”
There’s silence for a minute and I’m sure we’re both remembering that moment.
“But Riley, I never landed in that water. Because they pulled me into Aunt Lyrica’s covenstead. We were told to wait there. A council member who helps oversee the covens and is all-knowing, all-seeing and frankly a tyrant lent some of her and another witch’s power to pull me out. We had to sit there until they got there, and I was arrested. Actually arrested, made to wear this necklace that stops me from using my powers, and put on a plane and sent to Eastern Europe. They put me in a cell for a week. They put me on trial and then I found out the truth. That I was your fated mate, which was why I was drawn to you so much. But it wasn’t our turn.”
A tear flows down her cheek. “We’d get our turn. Or we would’ve if I hadn’t fucked up everything.” She wipes her eyes again.
I grind my teeth and press my fingers to my temples.
