Saturday that Marcus and I are mates, but I still don’t really understand what that means.” He turned to the young people sitting in front of him. “I think it’ll be useful for you to hear from humans about being mated to shifters because first, you may mate with a human one day, and you need to understand it’s different for them than it is for you, but also because—” He glanced at the human woman. “I’m sorry, what’s your name?”
Everyone chuckled as she smiled and extended a hand to him. “Janice.”
He shook her hand and turned to her mate. She smiled and leaned forward. “Melissa.”
“It’s nice to meet you both. I assume you already know tall, silent, and dreamy here?” He jerked a thumb at Marcus, grinning when he heard Marcus huff. When they both nodded, he turned back to the group. “So Janice and I and any other humans mated into the pack come into things without any idea of what it means to be someone’s mate. Humans grow up with the concept of soul mates, sure, but it’s not the same as what your fearless second-in-command over there was trying to describe to you.”
Bennett grunted behind him, but Robson ignored him.
“The closest we have is love at first sight. You all watch movies and shit, right?” When more laughter and nodding happened, he leaned forward on his knees, really getting into the groove. “So that’s all we have to go off of. We don’t have your instincts or your sense of smell or anything like that, so when we’re, let’s say, pissed as hell about someone breaking the law and a giant redhead is staring at us in a borderline creepy way, that doesn’t instill a sense of true love.”
He paused while everyone chuckled, shooting glances at Marcus like they weren’t sure if it was okay for them to laugh at his expense. Smiling, Robson leaned back and reached over to snag Marcus’s hand, threading their fingers together and winking when Marcus looked at him in surprise.
“But there was still something about him that I couldn’t get out of my head,” he said softly, not taking his eyes off Marcus’s green ones, inexplicably pleased when he spotted the tip of Marcus’s tongue peeking out to wet his lush bottom lip. His beautiful mouth was now framed by days’ worth of scruff that was quickly becoming a short beard, and Robson wanted to feel it rubbing against his skin more than he’d ever wanted anything before.
“Ahem,” Bennett said, stepping up and leaning between Marcus and Robson. “As you can see,” he said to the group watching with surprised and amused faces, “there’s still mutual attraction even if one of you is human.”
Nico cackled behind him as Robson covered his burning face with his free hand. “Ay, Dios mío.”
When Bennett stepped back, Robson chanced a glance over at Marcus to check his reaction to being teased by his superior in front of a group of people and was surprised to find Marcus smiling at him gently, though his cheeks were tinged a light pink. Marcus squeezed Robson’s fingers and turned to their audience.
“The night I met Robson, I wasn’t expecting to find my mate,” he said calmly but not like he was hiding his discomfort like he usually did. Robson was beginning to learn the signs and read the subtle cues in Marcus’s face and body language, and he was happy to see Marcus actually seemed at ease. “And because he didn’t know about the pack—and was very suspicious of us—I convinced myself my wolf was mistaken.”
Bennett grunted behind them. “I did that and my mate’s a shifter. I think that’s a more common reaction than people think.”
“Not me,” Melissa piped up, smiling widely as she bumped her shoulder into Janice’s. “The moment I laid eyes on her, I knew she was meant for me—I just had to convince her. My old pack didn’t allow us to tell humans under any circumstances—their way of being prejudiced without explicitly saying we weren’t allowed to mate with humans—so I wooed her the human way.”
Janice laughed. “It’s true. I’ve never received so many bouquets of flowers and boxes of chocolate as I did when we first started dating. By the time we left Seattle, I still didn’t know about shifters, but I knew I loved her more than life itself.” She grimaced at Robson. “Though it was still quite the shock when we unloaded our moving truck at our brand-new house in