dates with humans, I can tell you that they don’t,” I assured him.
“You’ve dated humans?” he whispered as if this was some unbelievable feat.
“Well, not dates that my family approved of, but yes.” The polite smile became just a little sharper.
“Well, you’re a brave one, aren’t you?” he marveled. “I don’t really go on dates unless my aunts set them up. I’d never hear the end of it.”
I stopped, tilting my head as I stared at him. While the girls in my family were badgered about their plans for courtship, their ticking biological clocks, the boys were pretty much left on their own. It was just assumed that my male cousins would eventually find someone —even though my cousin Vance was approaching thirty-five and hadn’t been on a proper date in years. It struck me that things probably worked differently in other packs, that the guys I was being pressured to date might be going through something similar. Suddenly, I felt really bad for Donnie. And all of the other male werewolves I’d assumed had it easier than I did.
It didn’t make me want to marry and/or reproduce with Donnie, but it helped me see him as something other than an obstacle for me to jump over into some other way I’d rather be spending my evening.
My appetizer arrived, and Donnie’s plate of eggs deviled with bacon and pimento. We stopped talking while the server set the plates in front of us.
“Did I say somethin’ wrong?” Donnie asked.
“No, I just never thought about it from your side,” I said, shrugging. “My aunts stick to hassling the girls in my family.”
“Oh, no,” Donnie said, shaking his head. “Everybody my age gets the guilt trips in my pack. I hear it from the minute I wake up to the minute I go to sleep. My parents, my aunts, grandma, even a couple of my uncles—When are you gonna find a nice girl and settle down? It’s not like you’re gonna meet someone new, we know all the werewolves around here. What are you holding out for? Who are you to be so picky?”
“Yeah, I hear that one a lot, the ‘picky’ one,” I said, raising my hand. “I also hear, ‘you’re not getting any younger’ and ‘if you wait much longer, you’re going to be the spinster aunt that everybody feels sorry for.’”
“Dang.” He recoiled from the table. “That one has to smart.”
“You’re telling me,” I snorted, slicing into the crisply-breaded tomato. Yes, I liked tomatoes in that form. I was a werewolf with layers.
“So, is dating humans a rebellion thing?” he asked around a mouthful of egg.
“Oh, I haven’t done that in years,” I told him, carefully omitting my recent dates with a vampire. Just because I’d managed to exchange a few sentences with Donnie didn’t mean I trusted him. “And it wasn’t so much about rebellion as wanting something uncomplicated, you know? Something for myself? Going out with someone I liked, instead of someone I was told I had to go out with.”
I paused. “That was a really rude way to put that. I’m sorry.”
He laughed. “No, I get it. I really do.”
He was staring over my shoulder again. I turned and saw a slim, pretty girl sitting at the bar. She pivoted suddenly on the stool, pretending she hadn’t been watching us. I realized Donnie hadn’t been watching the game. He was watching the girl. She turned again, and couldn’t seem to look away from our table. She couldn’t have radiated heartache any more clearly if she’d been carrying a sign that said, “My heart has been run through a paper shredder.” And he wasn’t looking at her like she was a stranger. I could feel their sadness stretched between them like a string. I didn’t want to be the one to make it snap.
“Is she human?” I asked quietly.
He shook his head and whispered. “Mountain lion shifter.”
“Really!” I gasped, making him jump. His expression changed from defensive to intrigued by my absolute glee.
Much like humans throughout Kentucky claimed to see mountain lions—which never seemed to be substantiated by photos in this camera phone-infested world of ours—every werewolf I knew claimed to have met a mountain lion shifter. But somehow, they never showed up to the shifter meetings. It made sense looking at her, the tawny golden eyes, the feline grace even as she shifted uncomfortably in her seat. I gave her a little wave, which made her frown. She looked caught between wanting to cry and rip my