Page 350 of Love Bites

That was reason enough to eat the whole lot. I took a bite of the cookie. Sweet, crisp, slightly fruity—the cookie was an amazing feat of baking. It was also practically a piece of my mate. I could almost taste her in the almond flour, smell her in her filling. No wonder I kept catching whiffs of her throughout the hall—she’d left her scent on the cookies. I wanted to gorge myself on the macarons to hang on to whatever part of her I could. I also wanted to flip the table the cookies sat on and chase after my mate. Such a strange reaction to a cookie.

“They’re delicious,” I said, staring at the display of pink circles in confusion. Devour or destroy. Devour or destroy.

“You trash those cookies, and Coco will kill you.”

Decision made. I tore my eyes away from the display, catching Misty’s wink. “You sure do seem to have my number, fox.”

“I’ve seen enough wolves meet their mates to know exactly how stupid they get about them.”

Mate. My mate. Whom I’d failed. Well, fuck, the fox might want to skin me alive once I admitted my failings. Time to man up. “I didn’t tell Coco that she was my fated mate.”

Misty didn’t look surprised in the least. “Yeah, I figured that out when Nico was able to get under her skin so easily. She has no idea how serious you are about her because you chose not to tell her this vital piece of information that affects the rest of her life.” Misty’s eyebrow raise might as well have been knives slicing through my heart. “You should have told her the first day. What’s wrong with you?”

What was wrong with me? I’d spent a hundred years alone, growing older in my appearance as my mated brethren stayed young. I’d assumed the fates had forgotten about me, had chosen not to give me the gift of a mate. I’d seen matings go right and so very wrong, and I was terrified I’d screw up mine now that I had finally found the woman meant for me.

But that was a lot to admit to a woman I didn’t really know, so I stuck with something she could understand. “She’s human.”

That earned me an eye-roll. “And she’s lived in a shifter town her whole life. She knows exactly how these things work. She was also raised with shifters as family members—the man she calls uncle is the Kinship Cove pack alpha, for crying out loud. She’s seen exactly what happens when a shifter meets their mate, and you didn’t do any of the things she would have expected. You kept this huge revelation a secret from her to protect her but ended up hurting her instead. Right now, she’s dealing with an intense pull to be with you, the fact that she might have ruined any chance with you because of her past, and the assumption that you’re going to leave her behind when you meet your fated mate. Because that’s happened to her three times.”

Oh, my poor Coco. “By the fates.”

“Exactly. You need to tell her the truth. That you’re her mate, that nothing else matters but your bond, and that you’re not simply going to vanish one day when someone better comes along.”

There would never be anyone better. Not for me. “I’ll tell her all that. Everything. The second I see her, I will lay my heart on the floor. There’s just one problem.”

Back to the raised eyebrow. Just one. “What’s that?”

“She won’t talk to me.”

Misty’s lips turned up in a wicked sort of grin. Just what I’d expect from a sneaky fox. “That’s where I come in.”

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