The Awakening Aidan - By Abby Niles Page 0,19
how you want it.” He motioned toward the porch swing.
As he sat down beside her, she pinned him with her stare. “That kiss should never have happened.”
He clenched his teeth. “Are you going to enlighten me on why? You’re my mate, Jaylin. It’s as simple as that.”
“No. It’s not.” She sighed. “I made a decision a long time ago that will affect your life permanently.”
He really didn’t like the direction this conversation was going. “Which is?”
“I will never bond myself to a shifter…ever.”
He swallowed, not expecting that. “Never is a pretty strong word, don’t you think? Especially considering you’re half shifter and you’ve seen how beautiful the connection is.”
“There is nothing beautiful about it. Just look at Liam. The Fewshon destroys.”
“How in the hell can you say that? Our Dea has given the gift of love for eternity, Jaylin, how does that destroy?”
Her lips pursed as an irritated look crossed her face. Had she really thought she could drop that bombshell and he’d just accept it?
“She’s given you and every other full shifter this gift.” She said the word gift with such contempt it shocked him. “It’s not a gift, and I’m so thankful our Dea had the sense to grant the woman the choice of reciprocating the bond. I have no desire to ever experience the grief the Fewshon creates, and I won’t unless I bond myself to a shifter, and since I won’t ever have an instinct pushing me to do so, I’m safe.”
He stifled a groan. “Is that how you see it? A gift of choice? Do I need to give you a biology lesson?”
“I know how we’re made,” she said through clenched teeth.
“Really? Doesn’t seem so. You say the Dea gave you a choice. I say the only reason you’re not bonding to me right this minute is because you don’t have a beast, therefore no Drall. Hell, Jaylin, none of the women we bond to have a beast or a Drall, they all have a choice. Shouldn’t there be a shitload more rejected shifters out there? But there’s not. Because the Drall brings the shifter together with his true mate. You’ve awakened the Drall in me, Jaylin. We are meant to be. You know that.”
“I also know what I’ve seen, spent years witnessing.” She sighed. “I didn’t decide to take my clientele to strictly human without reason. I specialize in Fewshon grief and have seen the destruction it causes. I don’t want that for you and I sure as hell don’t want it for me. I’ve told you from the beginning that I wasn’t interested, and that still stands.”
That she had, but he never expected this to be the reason. “Who do you expect to Fewse with, then?”
“No one. As a female half shifter I do not have the capacity to open the Fewshon in a human man, like you can in a human female. I don’t have an instinct driving me to bond. I don’t have to Fewse like you do. I can…will marry…a human. Their grief is horrible, but it’s not life-crippling like a shifter’s. If I marry a human male and something were to happen to me, he could, hopefully, find love again after he’s able to cope with my death. A shifter waits for death to rejoin his mate. What kind of life is that?”
“It’s not like that, Jaylin. Not at all.”
“Oh, really?” She gave a brittle smile. “My very human mother lost my shifter father when I was twelve. She was thirty-eight. In the prime of her life. It’s been almost twenty years since he died. If she’d married a human instead, she could’ve found love again. But no, she reciprocated the bond, Fewsed her soul to his, and what has she been left with?” She paused. “Loneliness. Twenty years of living alone in a huge house, never dating, never kissing, never being held again, just waiting for her time to be back with him in Anavrin.”
At least that gave him more insight into her thought process, but she was seeing it all wrong. “That’s the way it’s supposed to be. The bond is eternal. Have you ever talked to her about how she feels?”
“Of course I have.”
“Has she ever said she regretted her decision?”
She averted her gaze. “That doesn’t matter.”
“It does matter.”
“No. It doesn’t.” Her eyes locked with his again. “She doesn’t regret her decision, but I’ve seen the life she’s lived since his death. I do not want that. For God’s sake, I’ve had clients who lost their