The Awakening Aidan - By Abby Niles Page 0,55
be ruined anyway.
Rafael walked into the kitchen, wearing a pale blue tank top, khaki cargo shorts, and flip-flops. He stopped when he saw her. “Sorry to intrude. I was just coming in to start dinner.”
“Don’t let me stop you. Your cooking is excellent.”
Smiling, he started opening cabinets and drawing out spices and oils. “I’m glad you think so.”
As he reached for a bag of flour, the tank top shifted and revealed the edge of a bruise on the top of one of his shoulders. Her eyes narrowed. Another movement and she got a glimpse of a complete purplish circle about the size of a thumbprint: the mark of a bonded male. There would be a matching one on his other shoulder.
“Rafael, can I ask you something?”
“Yes, ma’am.”
“Please, with the question I’m about to ask, call me Jaylin.”
He stopped rummaging in the cabinets and looked at her, brows knitted together. “Okay, Miss Jaylin, what would you like to know?”
Inhaling, she tried to find the courage to verbalize her worries. She ended up just forcing the words out of her mouth. “Are you not afraid of your mate dying?”
Rafael was silent for a moment. He crossed his arms over his chest and studied her. “Of course I was.”
Was? Jaylin blinked. It wasn’t possible he’d lost his mate. Looking at him, he didn’t seem like any Wydow patient she’d ever advised, or even like her mother, for that matter. He looked…happy. Content.
“I—I don’t understand.”
“My Willa died three years ago.”
She opened her mouth, realized she had nothing to say, then closed it. Rafael took mercy on her and said, “Which parent did you lose?”
Startled, she glanced up at him. “What makes you think I lost a parent?”
“You don’t think I haven’t gotten that look before? My own daughters don’t understand. Think I’m lying when I say I’m happy. They worry because they believe I’m holding on to a ghost, not living my life. I can assure you I have lived since Willa’s death, and will continue to do so until it’s my time to join her.”
“Doesn’t the limitation of the Fewshon make you angry, though? You were left behind with this bond that makes you incapable of loving again. All you have to keep you warm is a promise of one day seeing her again, which could be twenty years from now.”
“Or it could be tomorrow.” Rafael sighed and sat on the stool beside her. “Why is it easier for our human other halves to accept our bond than women made of our own genes?”
“Humans have no clue what they are in for. The male explains what the bond is and it’s romanticized, glorified into this wonderful thing it isn’t. Half shifters have lived it, witnessed what the true bond does.”
“Do you really think you know what it is?”
“Of course I do. I’ve spent years counseling Wydow patients. I’ve watched my mother for the last twenty years. The effects are crippling.”
“And what of the years she had with your father? Were those crippling?”
She blinked at him. “That’s an unfair question. You know as well as I do those were the happiest years of her life. That’s not the point. What happened to her after he died is. A part of my mother died the day my father did, and she has never been able to get it back.”
“You see what you want to see.”
“I see the truth, Rafael. My mom changed, and not in a good way. All my patients changed. They were left alone with no hope of ever finding companionship again.”
“That is a very dark way of looking at it.”
“How else am I supposed to see it with everything I’ve witnessed? I had a young woman who bonded to her mate and he died the next day. They failed to breed. I counseled her for three years and finally our Dea took mercy on her and sent her to be with her mate. But what if she lived another fifty years? Fifty years that she would’ve pined for death, never remarrying, never having children. She would’ve been alone.”
“That would’ve been a very sad circumstance indeed, but those fifty years are five minutes compared to the time she’ll spend with her mate in Anavrin, together, forever.”
Jaylin swallowed, his words unnerving. Her mother had said something eerily similar, had always insisted that Jaylin had a skewed opinion that was nowhere close to the reality. Even though her mother had claimed she was happy, Jaylin had never seen it. All she’d seen was the fun-loving,