Page 48 of Stealing Sloane

Quinn’s gaze ping-ponged between the two of them. “What the heck is going on? What are you two whispering about?”

Selene huffed out a breath. “For a smart man, you can be pretty dumb.” She smiled at Jacob. “Sloane is?—”

“My True Mate.”

His heart pounded with excitement, now that he’d actually said it aloud. But she had to be, all the signs pointed to it. His attraction to her, his wolf’s obsession over her. If anything, Gunnar’s cryptic words had almost solidified it. Growing up, he’d heard about his cousin’s magical side of the family, that they could supposedly see the future. No one would confirm it, and he couldn’t blame his cousin for keeping it a secret. Knowing the future was a dangerous skill after all.

“Is she pregnant?” Quinn asked.

“No, we haven’t … you know.” He shifted uncomfortably because he did not want to talk about his sex life in front of his parents. “While it’s the only way to be sure, I want to give her a choice.”

When he started having an inkling she might be his True Mate, the urge to confirm and get her pregnant was his first instinct. His wolf urged him to make them truly theirs. However, he faced a dilemma: if he was right then he couldn’t just have sex with her to make her pregnant, not when he knew the risks and she didn’t.

“I understand.” Selena glanced at her husband. “Your father did something similar. Of course, even though he wasn’t sure, he had to announce that I was his True Mate to my entire coven,” she added wryly.

“When you about to get engaged to another man,” he growled.

“You told everyone we were ‘banging with?—’”

Jacob sighed. “Guys, can we focus here? Okay, great. Please, don’t say anything yet. We’re taking it slow, and if there’s a chance she is my True Mate, then she should have a choice in the matter.”

“And what if she’s not?”

His mother’s question weighed on him. There was that possibility as well, and perhaps that’s why he hesitated about having sex with Sloane. He just couldn’t answer her.

“Maybe we can talk about this another time?” his father said, probably sensing his hesitation. “We do have more important things to talk about. Like why we came all the way down here.”

“Yeah, why are you guys here, by the way?”

A serious expression crossed his father’s face. “Killian asked me to speak with you. He thought it best if I did it in person. It’s about Ronan Forte.”

Fuck.From the look on their faces, Jacob guessed it wasn’t good news.

“Sloane should be part of this conversation too,” Quinn added.

“All right, we’ll come down and meet you in the living room.”

Jacob really hoped they would at least have the next few days until this Ronan business came up again, so he could find the right time to tell Sloane about his suspicions about them being True Mates. He almost told her, too, right before his parents interrupted. As he sat on the bed and waited for her to come out of the shower, he contemplated it.

Talk about shit timing.

He should have told her the moment he suspected, but it had sounded crazy, even to him. What was he supposed to say?Hey, Sloane, we hardly know each other, but I think fate thinks we should be together.That would probably have sent her running for the hills.

And perhaps that was the crux of it. He could feel her hesitation, her doubts. It irked him, even though he had his own. Physically, they were compatible, but everything else …

“Hey, are you okay?” Sloane asked she stepped out of the bathroom, drying her hair with a towel. She looked so lovely, and yes, she had a hot body, but it wasn’t just that. His heart did a little flip at the sight of her merely standing there, and he wanted her with every fiber of his being. She looked so soft and inviting, the sunlight bathing her naked body with an ethereal glow.

“Yeah … my parents need to talk to us. About Ronan Forte.”

The entire atmosphere in the room changed when he said the name. She dropped her hands to her side, the damp towel falling to the floor. “Let me get dressed, and we can go.”

Her movements were robotic as she changed into her clean clothes. The tension in her only grew as they made their way downstairs to the living room, where his parents sat on the worn floral-patterned couch that had to be older than Jacob.

“Sloane,” Quinn began as he stood up to greet them. “We met briefly the other night, but I’m Quinn, Jacob’s dad. This is my wife, Selena.”

“Nice to meet you,” his mother greeted, her blue eyes darting to meet Jacob’s, as if to reassure him that his ‘secret’ was safe with her. “Though I wish we had come under better circumstances.”

“Thank you for coming just the same. Now, what’s happening with Ronan?” Sloane’s tone was brusque and business-like as she sat down. “Did the Lone Wolves confess?”

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