Page 26 of Destined Prey
“He knows what you are? He’ll know what all of us are.”
“I put everyone at risk,” Ben admitted. “I’m sorry. I fucked up, I know, but I can’t—there’s this part of me that can’t walkaway from him, that can’t—I don’t think I can live a normal life without him, Case, and I don’t know why. I…I…Ineedhim and lying to him just wasn’t possible. I need him to want me, to accept me, all of me.”
“Even though you’ve put our asses on the line?”
Ben sucked in a sharp breath. “He won’t hurt us. He’s a good man.”
“Youthinkhe’s a good man,” Casey corrected. “You don’t know.”
It was time for another admission. “I do know. I can hear him, well, I can hear some of his thoughts, and feel his emotions. And the same goes for him. He picks up mine, too. That’s what made him pass out earlier today. He heard me, in his head, when I thought something while I was in my coywolf form. Case, we’re bound together somehow, I just know it.” The truth of it thrummed under his skin. Not romance. Not fantasy. A pull that felt older than language.
“Are yousureyou hear each other?”
Ben didn’t even have to consider the question. “Yes, without a doubt. For instance, I know he had to tell Rhett about us, and they’re on the way to the shop because Rhett doesn’t believe him. Er, I guess Rhett saw Jack letting me out of the house.”
“When you were shifted?”
“Yes.” Ben sighed and steered around a deep rut in the dirt road. “Case, I’m sorry. I mean it.”
“But you’re going to the shop anyway, and you’re going to show Rhett that you’re a shifter,” Casey said.
“I think I have to.” Ben tightened his hold on the steering wheel until his knuckles ached. “I can’t lose Jack. I’ll tell them it’s only me.”
“But you can’t lie to Jack.”
“I can lie to Rhett,” Ben clarified. “Tell them it’s just me, that I’m adopted or something, because they’ll find out about youand the others somehow. Then I’ll get Jack alone and tell him the truth. I want him to accept me, accept my family.”
“But you want him to lie to his family.”
“Can you stop with the buts?” Ben asked. “I mean, I could use some support here. I’m trying to do the right thing by everyone, and that part of me that craves Jack is clamoring for me to make peace with him, to do whatever I have to for him to be mine, and you keep throwing roadblocks in the way.”
“Nothing is ever simple, Ben. You know that. Would you be able to keep a secret like that from me? Like you’re going to ask Jack to?”
“I could for him,” Ben answered without thinking, going right with his gut. And it startled him, that declaration. “Oh. Shit.”
Casey exhaled. “Do you know why our parents mated?”
Ben was utterly confused. He turned onto the paved road. “I don’t know where you’re going with that.”
“Just answer me.”
“How would I know anything, Case? They died when I was six. I don’t remember them being around together much before then, and they sure didn’t give me a sex talk.” Ben wished he had more memories of his parents, but they hadn’t lived together. He’d rarely seen his father. Casey had twelve years on him, however, and had more memories and knowledge of their parents.
“Right. Well, Mom told me the reason they’d joined together was because they were mates, and they couldn’t keep away from each other. Mates, as in, they were drawn together despite being two different breeds of shifters, two species that were normally enemies. Before they knew each other’s names, they were sneaking away from their respective packs to breed.”
Hope flared so bright it hurt. Then fear doused it: mates hadn’t saved their parents. Wanting wasn’t the same as surviving.
“Can we skip that part?” Ben requested.
“The point is, Mom told me this right before she died in that trap. She said destined mates had all but disappeared from the wolf and coyote shifter world. Then it happened, to her and Dad, and they couldn’t resist. Didn’t want to. Neither could they live happily ever after, because their packs wouldn’t allow it. I don’t know what happened, why Dad wasn’t around much or how he died. I only know what Mom told me.”
Ben wondered what else Casey was keeping from him and their siblings, though he supposed he didn’t have the right to demand anything of Casey. If their mother had told Casey things, then she’d trusted only him with those things and to be angry at Casey over that was a waste of time.
Still, Ben had to wonder— “What’s the point? Are you saying Jack and I are mates?”
“Destined mates, maybe, if what you’re telling me about hearing each other’s thoughts and emotions is accurate. Mom said that’s how she and Dad knew, and that it was a rare gift. I wish I’d asked her more about it, but… I didn’t, and then she was gone.”
“You didn’t think maybe the rest of us should have known about this possibility?” Ben had to ask.
