AllFreeNovel
Share Us
I pushed myself off the mattress and gave her a look. “What are you talking about?”
“Don’t play me. I know something has happened between you and Kai. I haven’t spent basically three years watching you pine over him tonotnotice there was definitely a change.” She leaned in, her eyes flashing not with psychic power, but with obvious intellect. While I appreciated that she trusted me with that side of her, life really would've been easier if maybe Darla wasn’t so keen.
I’d already gotten into enough trouble for lying, and yet that’s exactly what tried to slip out of my lips. “I think you’re just—”
Suddenly Darla’s finger was pressed against my mouth. Not flirtatiously, either. Instead, I felt like a young child being shushed by an older sibling.
“I’m gonna save us both some time and let you in on a little secret.” Oh? “I can sense a fated mate connection between lots of different cryptid types, and the two of you are practicallyradiatingit.”
My eyes went wide, but Darla kept right on trucking.
“Honestly, I don’t know how I didn’t fully suss it out earlier. It all makessomuch sense now.” She let out a dramatic sigh. “Oh, well. What’s done is done. At least now the two of you can finally fall in love and have a whole litter of cute little pups.” She paused, seeming to consider. “That’s what your babies are called, right?”
“It depends on which region a shifter’s from, but it’s pretty common around here,” I said almost by heart, my mind still reeling from the revelation that Darla didn’t just know about fated mates, but she could also sense them as well. I didn’t know that was even possible.
I felt put on the spot, my mind spinning its wheels for how best to handle the situation. Not for the first time, I was grateful for the amulet that kept my thoughts from Darla. I'd a feeling if she could freely root around in our heads at the fort, we’d be living in a real time version of a soap opera.
“It’s, uh, it’s not really that simple, and I’m not trying to think about it right now.” I wanted to leave it at that, but then my mouth went off. “I really don’t want to cry again.”
At that, Darla’s jubilant, gossipy mood cut itself off. “Wait, why were you crying?” But then her eyes narrowed. “Wait twice… you actually let yourself cry?”
I got defensive at that. “What do you mean by that?”
“Well, you usually have all of your emotions on such lockdown. That’s why I’ve become such an expert in reading all of your micro-expressions.”
“Huh, is that what you’ve been doing?”
“You bet your lily-white ass I have.”
I rolled my eyes, but the phrase did draw a small chuckle from me. It wasn’t quite enough still to heal my mood.
“Hey, since you’re a mate now, did you want to share this room with Kai, and I can go crash in the den? I imagine the two of you want to spend as much time together as possible.”
“No, I think this is fine.” Honestly, I actually wanted a touch of distance so I could unwrap all these twisted and tangled thoughts. I was just so exhausted and sore, and everything felt so damn impossible. “Would you mind if we just went to bed?”
True to Darla’s upbeat personality, she smacked on a smile. “Do you mean that I’m going to finally be getting my bestie sleepover moment?”
“You’re going to be insufferable about this.”
“Considering that I’ll wait until you’re fully rested tomorrow to have our mandatory pillow fight, I wouldn’t not say insufferable, no. In fact, I might even use the wordselfless.”
I shoved her ever so slightly, not enough to push her off the bed, but enough to knock her over. “Shut up, and let’s go to sleep.”
“Fine,you wet blanket.”
Despite her teasing, Darla was happy to get under the covers with me and settle in. It was pretty unusual to have someone sleep next to me, but after the lovely cuddle I’d shared with Kai the day before, it was nice to not be alone.
It was nice to have afriend.
So, it was curled up together, completely platonic in our positioning, that we both finally rested.
Waking up and having breakfast was a relatively easy affair with the Blairs, though their little one was painfully cute when she played host, dutifully serving everyone “tea” from her plastic play set. Naturally, we all pretended to drink it, as it’d have been incredibly rude not to.
Once the food was settling, and the Blairs gave us an update on their day, our group headed out to see if we could search the tree line for Irina and Tristan. If the three of us were able to make our way there, then maybe the others could, too. That was the hope.
Things were strained between Kai and me. He was always sweet, of course, and he still smiled at me, but it felt like his guard was always up. I really couldn’t blame him for that considering he’d just found out I was cursing him without his permission for several years. That was a pretty big violation of his bodily autonomy, but I'd really thought I was doing the right thing by him.
Naturally, that wasn’t really something we could talk about in front of Darla, meaning it was just awkward between us.
