Page 24 of Claimed By the Bookstore Alpha
He stared at me like I'd lost my mind. "Are you having that breakdown you talked about?”
"Maybe a little." I wiped my eyes because I was crying and laughing at the same time.
“Clark, some shifters, not all, have a fated mate, one that the universe connects them with, whether that person is human or shifter. You are that for me.”
I took a moment to process what he’d said. “I have no idea if this is fate or the universe, but in my heart, you are the only onefor me.” It was true. That was why I’d been drawn to him and his store. And why I almost lost my mind at him rejecting me.
Flynn kissed me and despite the life-altering revelations about shifters, everything was right in my world.
"Do you know how many paranormal romance novels I've read? How often I've watched movies about werewolves and vampires and thought ‘Wow, that would be cool'? And here I am, living in an actual fairy tale."
I looked at Flynn, my Flynn, who also happened to have an animal inside him, "I'm a little scared,” I admitted. "And overwhelmed. And I have about a million questions. But I'm not going anywhere."
"Even if..." He took my hand and rubbed it against his cheek. "Even if you're pregnant with a shifter’s baby?"
The pregnancy tests. In all the supernatural revelations, I'd almost forgotten about the reason we were here in the first place.
“Whatever happens with those tests, whatever comes next, I’m not going anywhere and we’ll figure it out together."
His eyes filled with tears. "I thought I'd lost you. I thought once you knew what I was..."
"You thought wrong." I reached for him, pulling him to sit beside me on the forest floor. "I'm going to need some time to adjust to the whole werewolf, sorry shifter thing. And I definitely need to know more about the implications for any potential baby."
He pulled me into his arms, burying his face at the base of my throat. "I love you and I’ve been in love with you since the day you walked into my store."
"I love you too.” I meant it with every fiber of my being. "Even though you are a supernatural creature who probably has a bunch of shifter rules I'm going to have to learn."
Flynn's shaky laugh told me there were rules. “There’s more. The scars. You ran your hands over them when we slept together but never asked me about them.”
I guessed he was about to tell me how he got them.
“Though I wasn’t part of our pack leader’s family, I was designated his heir.”
I put a hand over my heart because I didn’t want it to break when he finished telling his story.
“There was an omega who the pack thought should be my mate.” He paused and explained the omega wasn’t right for him, they weren’t true mates. The omega pined after another alpha and when that guy returned after being away for months, he attacked Flynn. The alpha was banished and the omega left with him. And my Flynn gave up his place in the succession.
It was a lot to take in. “So are you estranged from the pack?”
“Not really, no. Me leaving removed any link to the former troubles. And now I return a few times a year. It’s in the past mostly. And they’ll love you.”
Him saying “mostly” worried me a little. “I guess there’s no way around meeting them, is there?”
“Nope. Even if I never return, I need Alpha’s approval to mate.”
I pulled back to look at this man who'd turned my world upside down in the best possible way. “Going forward, we have to be honest with one another.”
“Agree. Hmmm do I have to admit I dance on tables during a full moon?”
“What?”
“Kidding.”
I was going to mate a shifter! Everything I'd ever written about magic and wonder and impossible love had been preparing me for this moment.
ELEVEN
FLYNN
