being melodramatic? She had always longed to be a shifter, and maybe she was just jealous and bitter that Roger, who already was one, would treat it so cavalierly and think that he should just shop around for a new animal form since he was bored with the one he had.
It wasn’t until Cooper spoke up again that she realized that she’d missed what he had really been trying to tell her.
“That’s the only other time I saw that kind of scar,” Cooper said. “And it’s the only other time I ever heard about a transformation attempt failing without the bitten person dying.”
It took Gretchen a second to fully process what he was saying, and then her heart seemed to skip a beat.
“But there’s a lot that I don’t know,” he said. “Just because I haven’t heard about—”
“You think I’m a shifter,” Gretchen said.
For one long, horrible moment, she thought he was going to laugh at her. It was her biggest, oldest wish, one that she’d spent years trying to bury, and for it to come back up again now—it was like suddenly having someone imply that you’d been wrong all your life, Santa Claus was real. It had to be a joke.
Except he wouldn’t tell that kind of joke at her expense. He wouldn’t tell it at anyone’s expense. He was too kind for that.
And his green eyes were calm and unmistakably sincere.
“Yeah. I can’t be sure, but I think it’s possible.”
“Just because my sister couldn’t turn me?” It seemed like too little evidence—too flimsy a hook to hang such weighty hopes on. “I got a lot sicker than a few sniffles.”
“But you were young,” Cooper pointed out. “Your shift form hadn’t even manifested yet, so it hadn’t gotten strong enough to fight off an invading form without breaking a sweat. It had to struggle tooth-and-nail to stay with you. The lynx-bite came close to winning, but whatever was in you put up too good of a fight, and you stayed you.”
Whatever she was. “That’s not a whole lot to go on. I could still just be a fluke.”
“But it’s not just that. There’s more.”
He propped himself up on one elbow, and Gretchen realized, belatedly, that they were having this conversation completely naked. The sheet had slid down the length of his naturally-sculpted muscles, showing off a long segment of extremely touchable skin. The fact that that could attract her even as distracted as she was right now was saying a lot. He really was irresistible. Even her lifelong dreams couldn’t compete with him.
“The cold hurt you,” Cooper said, “and sure, it hurt you more than it hurt me, and it took you a little time to recover. But once you woke up again, you were fine, Gretchen.”
He was right. She’d been too distracted last night, for obvious reasons, to think about it too much, but she had gone from a freezing, unconscious heap to a would-be seductress very quickly.
She could attribute that to him—if he was hot enough to inflame her passions, why shouldn’t he be hot enough to thaw her? That was cheeky and made her smile, but she knew that it was a joke, not the reality. He had taken good care of her. But no amount of good care should have been enough to turn her from ice to live wire in a matter of hours. She should have been weaker, more rundown. Instead, she’d never felt better or more alive. Hadn’t she just been thinking that before Cooper had woken up?
Cooper said, “There’s something else, too,” and for the first time, he sounded nervous.
He’d sounded calmer and less jittery when he was getting ready to face down gunfire.
“What?”
“I don’t have to tell you what mates are,” he said.
If her heart had skipped a beat before, now it seemed to just switch off entirely. There was nothing inside of her but an immense, waiting stillness, a silence ready to be broken by whatever he was going to say next.
He held out his hand like he was pressing it to some imaginary pane of glass between them.
Her hand met his without her even realizing it, and then their fingers were pressed together. She could almost feel his pulse against hers.
“You know we are,” Cooper said. “Don’t you?”
Light was pouring into her, chasing away every shadow that had ever been cast over her soul. She was warm inside and out, and almost incandescent with joy and relief.
“Yes.” She was smiling so widely that her cheeks hurt. “Yes,