Chapter 12 Ruby
Ruby
“Ineed coffee for this.”
I pulled away from Cassie, ignoring the flash of hurt on her face, and practically stumbled to the counter to pour myself a cup of coffee. Grabbing a carton of almond milk from the fridge, I returned to the table to doctor up my drink, ignoring my bodyguard’s penetrating gaze.
“Let’s back up,” I said after I took my first sip of coffee. “I want to separate fact from fiction. Tell me exactly what it means that you think I’m your fated mate.”
Even as I said that, I somehow knew it was true.
Five minutes ago I couldn’t have explained this sense of closeness, of connection, of peace that I had when I was around Cassie.
I’d beat myself up last night after I went to bed, trying to figure out what had gotten into me to kiss her the way I did.
But now that she’d named it, now that she’d mentioned fated mates, it was all making a lot more sense. But I needed to know more.
Cassie looked thoughtful.
“When you’re a supernatural kid, you hear these stories about finding your fated mate.
It sounds like a fairy tale. There’s one person in the entire universe who was born to be with you.
Your perfect match. The other half of your soul.
You see someone for the first time, and you know immediately whether or not they’re your mate. ”
“How?”
“I think it depends. Definitely your inner being, the vampire or wolf or whatever you have, knows right away if you’ve met your mate.
It starts freaking out, instinctively wanting to bite the person to seal the bond and join their souls together forever.
Then there’s the smell. Your fated mate has a distinctive scent, it’s hard to describe but it’s like the best thing you ever smelled in your life. ”
“I was all sweaty the first time you met me,” I said suspiciously.
Cassie shrugged. “The scent of your mate still comes through. It’s like, you know how you get close to someone and you can smell the coffee on their breath, but you can also smell their shampoo or cologne or whatever?”
“Yeah.”
“It’s like that. And then there’s the touch test. When you touch your mate for the first time, skin on skin, it’s like touching a live wire. There’s a surge of energy which is the initial creation of the mate bond.”
“I thought that was just lust,” I said, almost to myself.
“That too,” Cassie laughed.
“You put all that together… the wisdom of the other part of you, the scent, the zip of electricity, and suddenly you feel different. Like all your priorities have shifted and your mate is the most important thing in the world now. Some people describe it as finding a soulmate or finding some part of you that you didn’t know was missing.
Whatever it is, you meet your fated mate, and you know.
You know that they’ll never be another person for you again, even if you don’t end up together, because no one else exists for you now, in a romantic sense. ”
“But not all supernatural beings have a fated mate?”
“No. In fact a high percentage of us don’t. It’s more common with shifters to find their mates compared to vamps and the fae or some of the other nonanimal beings. Most supes simply find someone they’re compatible with and fall in love the regular way, just like humans do.”
I thought about this for a few seconds.
“What about your parents? Were they fated mates?”
She huffed out a bitter laugh that I didn’t understand.
“No. My parents settled for each other, or at least my dad settled for my mom, and he never let anyone forget it.”
There was a world of meaning behind those words, but somehow I knew not to pry.
I had the strongest instinct that I should comfort her.
Deciding to go with it, I walked around the table and put my arm around her shoulder, pulling Cassie into a one-armed hug.
She stiffened, then almost instantly relaxed, leaning her head back against my shoulder with a small sigh.
We stayed like that for a few seconds before I returned to my chair.
“What does this all mean for us?” I asked, deciding that I shouldn’t press her about her parents. It was obviously a sensitive subject.
“My number one priority right now is to keep you safe. That has to come before anything personal. Lois has already put a second agent on this project to ensure that I don’t get distracted.”
“Wait, your boss knew I was your fated mate before I did?”
“Yeah, I’m obligated to report to her anything that could impact my ability to do my job. In fact, knowing what you know now, I should give you the option to work with another close protection agent.”
She looked miserable, like the words were causing her physical pain.
“You want someone else to be my bodyguard?” I asked in surprise.
“No, not at all, but I’ll always put your needs and desires ahead of my own. You’re my mate.”
“That doesn’t sound right,” I argued. “Why should my needs be more important than yours? Shouldn’t this mate thing be a partnership?”
Cassie looked confused. “I guess?”
“Well, I don’t want a different bodyguard. I’m not sure how I feel about all this mate stuff, but I know I feel safer and more… at peace I guess, when you’re around.”
“Okay.”
We drank our coffee in silence for a few minutes before I spoke again.
“Do I have a choice in this mate thing?”
“Of course you do,” Cassie said quickly. “I don’t, but you do.”
“No pressure,” I joked. “Let’s say I agree to be mates, what does that mean? From a practical perspective?”
“Well, official mating would involve me biting you,” she said. “Briefly, just enough to seal the bond and leave a mark that all other supes would see and understand as a claim. I don’t totally understand how it works, supes say the claiming is magic.”
I winced. “Will you drink my blood?”
“Not the way you’re thinking, no. I will likely ingest some of your blood when I seal the bond, but that would be minimal.”
“And then we’ll be what? Married?”
“Mating is similar to human marriage,” she explained. “But there’s no divorce. Once we’re mated officially, once I bite you, neither of us will ever have a desire to leave the other. And we’ll be able to sense each other’s emotions in a way that you can’t do as a human.”
“And are you going to age? Like am I going to be some wrinkled eighty year old woman and you still look like this?” I asked, waving a hand in her direction, my eyes taking in her unlined skin and perky breasts. Looking at her now, you’d never guess that Cassie was ten years older than me.
“My kind ages a little slower than humans do, but we do age.”
“I’m going to need some time to think about all this,” I said. “Figure out what it means.”
“The only thing you need to think about right now is staying safe.” Her voice was firm, her expression more serious than I’d ever seen it.
“It’s not you, you know,” I said softly.
“What’s not me?”
“It’s not that I’m unwilling to commit to being your mate.
But I need time to process. I mean, I passed out watching you drink blood.
That’s not really an auspicious start to being a vampire mate,” I explained.
“And I need some time to get to know you. We’ve known each other less than twenty-four hours. ”
“I understand.” Her voice was sad.
“You know, I was never one of those girls who grew up dreaming of getting married someday. I always dreamed of being a soccer star. Soccer takes all of my time and energy right now. I just don’t know if I’ve got room for anything else in my life, especially a serious relationship.”
Maybe it was weird that I didn’t want a long-term relationship, at least not at this point in my life.
I’d grown up with two parents who were very much in love and still were totally into each other.
Maybe seeing their perfect love had made me scared to take a chance, because it was hard to imagine any relationship I had measuring up to the relationship my parents had.
Then again, I’d never given it much thought either way.
I mean, I dated. I’d had a few girlfriends, but never for too long.
I liked having a date for events, and I certainly loved having sex on the regular.
After all, I was a healthy thirty year old woman.
But soccer was my whole life. It had been since my parents enrolled me in a pee wee league when I was three years old.
Thinking about adding a life partner was a big change, and it wouldn’t be an easy one.
If my words bothered her, Cassie didn’t show it. “We don’t have to make any decisions about anything today. Finding your stalker is our first priority. While we’re working together, we can get to know each other, and if, when we’re done with this case, we both agree, we can date and go from there.”
“Date?”
She shrugged. “Humans like to date. Even though they feel the pull of the mating bond the same way we do, it’s not as strong and you’ve all been so conditioned that love at first sight is just a fairy tale, you don’t trust it.
But I’m not going anywhere, Ruby. I can be patient.
Wait for you to decide how much – or if – you want to see me again after this. ”
She winced as she said if, her arm banding around her stomach. “Are you okay?”
“Yeah,” she gasped. “My vamp is clawing at me.”
“Does that happen a lot?”
She shook her head. “No, we’re usually very much in sync, but me saying that you might not want to see me again upset her. She wants me to let her take control so she can bind you to us before you get away.”
I looked in her eyes, and maybe it was a trick of the morning light, but I could swear I saw something staring back at me. Something not quite human.
“I’m not going anywhere right now,” I said softly. “Be patient.”
I could tell by the way Cassie sagged back in her chair that my words helped.
“What do you have to do before your game tonight?” she asked.
“Mandatory yoga class,” I answered. “Then we’ll watch game tape and strategize for how we beat Vancouver. They’re one of our biggest rivals.”
“Okay, I’ll follow you around under the guise of writing my article,” she said. “Then after the game we’re going out with the wolf, correct?”
I rolled my lips in to keep from laughing, Eleanor’s words last night about Cassie wanting to make sure she didn’t steal me away suddenly making sense.
“Eleanor and I have been good friends for years, but she doesn’t have a single lesbian urge,” I said. “Believe me, if she wanted to make a move on me, she’s had plenty of time and opportunity over the years.”
“It’s in our nature,” Cassie explained. “All supes feel possessive when an unmated being is around our mates, at least until the mate bond is completed and we know our mates are locked down.”
“So if you and I officially become mates, you won’t feel jealous anymore?”
Cassie winced. “No, I totally will, but it will be less intense than it is now, especially if you’re around someone else who’s mated.”
“Y’all really are governed by animal instincts, aren’t you?” I teased.
“You have no idea.”