Seventeen

As if suspecting that I haven’t finished saying all I wanted to say, he waits. He’s right. In the short time I’ve been here, with him, I’m finding he can read me better than people who’ve known me— lived with me—for years.

“One day a girl is going to turn up, and she’s going to tell you that she’s your mate. No. She won’t have to say a word. You’ll lock eyes with one another, and you’ll know. And then I’ll wish I hadn’t stayed. You’ll wish I hadn’t stayed.”

“Not all shifters find their mate.”

“No, they don’t.” I concede, but sometimes the universe wills it.

Sometimes it flings two people together just as it did me and Shane.

“But that doesn’t mean you won’t find yours.”

I wait for him to admit I’m right because I know I am. A second passes before he says what I was expecting.

“No, I guess it doesn’t,” he says.

With my gaze fixed on the ceiling, I nod, all while bracing myself for him to tell me it’s in our best interests for me to leave sooner rather than later. Before these feeling