RACHEL’S WORDS ECHOED through my head while I wandered the village, saying a few quick hellos to old friends and acquaintances as I passed. I kept my conversations brief and didn’t answer any questions about where I’d been, or why I’d gone away.
Rachel thought that Reid and I were... mates.
It wasn’t an impossibility. Nobody knew why the “fated mates” attraction happened. It didn’t happen to every shifter, but it was common enough for our kind that plenty of tales were told of it.
I had heard many, over the years.
They were spoken of around the campfire on lazy summer evenings. The elders told the stories, and the smoke above our heads framed image after image of love, death, and war. Women who had run away from home after pack-meets to chase after the shifter men that they couldn’t ge
