Page 31 of Sparks Flying

He shifted and looked up at me through human eyes this time.

“Dean?”

“Bailey.”

“You know who I am, so that has to be good, right?”

“I’m okay. Just a bad headache. What happened?”

“You ran headfirst into a tree and fell to the ground pretty hard. Why would you do that?”

He groaned and then scowled up at me.

“I was distracted.”

“Are you seriously blaming me for this?”

“Why didn’t you tell me?”

“Tell you what?”

“That you’re my true mate.”

I wanted to deny it. I didn’t want it to be true. It felt far too vulnerable to talk about like this.

“Bailey, why didn’t you tell me?”

“Why didn’t you know?” I blurted out, feeling the pain of rejection that I’d been dealing with since we first met.

“Ravens don’t feel the mating bond until our birds meet. Or I guess our animal spirits meet? How is this even possible? You’re a wolf.”

“And you’re a bird. So what?”

“That doesn’t bother you? I didn’t even know this was possible.”

“Oh. I mean, it’s not common, but it’s not impossible either.”

“So you know others like this? Like us?”

“Well, yeah. I mean Chase Westin is mated to a black panther. He and Jenna are great together.”

“A cat and a dog?”

“Yup.”

“That’s insane.”

“Not really. If you met them, you wouldn’t think anything of it.”

“We’re all ravens here. Until some of your kind came to town, I’d never met another shifter breed. This is all a little too crazy for me. Dogs and cats? What’s next? In the history of shifters, a raven and wolf simply doesn’t exist.”

“Maybe,” I said. I was going to have to do some research on that.

In my time interning on Westin Force, I’d learned that it wasn’t uncommon to see instances of our kind steeped in history. Some things were to distract the humans away from shifters, but others held some significance thought to be images of our kind.

I made a mental note to do some research later. First, I needed to concentrate on Dean and ensure he was going to be okay.

His words were slurring a bit, and he sounded a little delirious and talking ridiculous nonsense like those videos of people coming off anesthesia. I knew it was just his way to justify what his raven was obviously telling him.

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