Chapter 65
[ 1,144 words ]
Neither boy answered immediately. The question sat in the car like a passenger. Jason turned to Shawn. “Would you?”
Shawn’s expression faltered. His mouth opened, closed. He looked out through the windshield at nothing.
“She’s not even your fated mate, Jason,” Finn cut in, quieter now, almost gentle. “Let’s say you mark her. Then answer me this — what happens when you finally meet your fated mate? What do you imagine happens, with two women already carrying your mark?”
“I don’t care about some fated mate I’ll probably never even meet.” Jason turned back toward Shawn. “Let me ask you something, Shawn. Did your father meet his fated mate?”
Shawn exhaled and looked away, and the answer was as plain as day. His parents were not fated mates. They were chosen mates.
His father had waited years for a fated mate who never came, and eventually he had chosen Shawn’s mother instead — freely, deliberately, with his eyes open.
It wasn’t unusual among werewolves. Not everyone found the person fate had supposedly written for them. Some waited their whole lives. Some stopped waiting. Some chose someone they loved and built an entire life out of that choice, and some were happier for it.
Shawn looked out through the windshield for a long moment. “My parents are happy together.” he said at last.
Jason nodded slowly. “Exactly.” He leaned back against the seat. “I don’t know whether I’ll ever meet a fated mate. Maybe I will. Maybe I won’t. But I’m not going to spend my whole life waiting for a woman who may never come while the woman I actually love is standing right in front of me. Fate doesn’t get to have the last word on this. Not this time.”
“There’s still something you’re forgetting,” Finn said.
“What?”
“She’s human, Jason.” Finn ticked it off on his fingers, and his voice had lost all its humor.
“She doesn’t heal the way we do. She bruises, she breaks. She gets the flu and it takes two weeks. What happens the first time she’s hurt and can’t heal by morning? You know in our world, getting hurt is kinda a norm right?
And we age slower than they do — years slower. Can you bear it, standing at her grave at what looks to everyone else like you’re thirty-five? There are a hundred things at risk with her. That’s part of why your father is still furious about Vanessa. And now you want to hand him a second human.”
Jason frowned. “She’s only human…for now.”
Shawn’s eyes sharpened. “What do you mean for now? What the hell are you planning on doing?”
Jason said nothing for awhile, then turned to Shawn. “Am planning on turning her.”
The car went dead silent. Even Finn had no words —Finn, who always had words to say.
“And how,” Shawn managed at last, very slowly, “are you supposed to achieve that? You’re not an Alpha yet. You’re still an heir. You can’t turn anyone.”
“I’ll find an Alpha who will bite her and turn her.”
“Then she belongs to his pack. And she’ll be loyal to him, not you — that’s how the bond works and you know it. What the hell is wrong with you, Jason?” Shawn’s composure finally slipped.
“You’d hand the woman you claim to love to a stranger’s teeth and a stranger’s hierarchy, and you’re calling that a plan?”
“It’s not as if wolves from our pack haven’t found mates in other packs. It happens. I’ll make a deal with the Alpha — some terms and guarantees, whatever it takes. It’ll work out. Don’t worry about it.”
“You don’t know that.”
Jason went silent, and the silence admitted more than he ever would have.
Finn leaned forward, voice low and deliberate. “You keep talking as if turning her solves everything. But what if she’s not meant to be a werewolf? What if her body rejects the bite? You know what that means — the fever, the breaking. It could actually kill her.
And suppose she turns. Suppose she survives. What if the bite reveals she’s someone else’s mate? Let’s say some other Alpha’s? Or beta’s? Do you think he’s gonna let her go? Can you bear letting her go, and watching her feel for someone else the pull you’ve never felt for anyone?”
Jason stared at him. “Which is why I said that I will need to mark her first. And besides….I don’t care about anything else right now.”
“You should.Those are the things you’re supposed to consider before you gamble with someone’s life.”
Jason’s voice came out rough. “I am not losing her.”
Finn held his gaze for a long moment, then blew out a breath and looked away — and it wasn’t agreement on his face, but it was surrender.
Shawn studied his friend for a long time. The anger drained out of him by degrees, replaced by something older and sadder, the look of a man watching a friend walk a road he can’t block but can see the end of.
Finally, he sighed.”Fine.”
Jason turned to him.
“If this is really what you’ve decided, then I’ll stand beside you.”
Finn groaned. “Apparently I’m the only sane person in this car.”
Shawn ignored him and held up a finger before Jason could speak. “But you need to understand something. You can’t keep running from your father. Eventually he will find out what you’re planning. And if he finds out the same day the council does — just like Vanessa case— you won’t be dealing with one fire. You’ll be dealing with two.”
Jason’s expression remained firm. “I’ll tell him when I’m ready.”
“You’d better.” Shawn shook his head slowly. “Because ready or not, he’s going to find out. Fathers like yours always do.”
Jason looked down at his phone, his thumb drifting across the dark screen without waking it. “I just need her to hear me out. That’s all. If she understands why everything happened, maybe…” He didn’t finish it. “Maybe she’ll forgive me.”
“And if she doesn’t?” Finn asked.
Jason’s jaw tightened. “Then I’ll give her time.”
It was the answer of a man who wanted to sound reasonable. But neither Shawn nor Finn looked remotely convinced, and before either could say so, three phones chimed at once…..Ping.Ping.Ping.
The sound cracked the tension like a whip. All three reached for their phones at the same instant. Finn frowned at his notification.
“It’s a notification from Campus Pulse.”
Jason opened it. A breaking-news banner filled the screen in bold, red letters.His eyes moved across the headline. Then stopped.
BREAKING NEWS: ALEXANDER GRANT, CEO OF GRANT ENTERPRISE IS NOW THE NEW PROFESSOR FOR THE FINAL-YEAR BUSINESS ADMINISTRATION STUDENTS.
Finn’s mouth fell open. “No way.”
Shawn leaned across, reading over his shoulder. “Alexander Grant? The Alexander Grant?”
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