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It was a day later, and I’d never felt such shock in my life, never felt like something so profound had happened in me, taken root in my soul, and changed the very makeup of who and what I was.
But I could say with certainty and crystal clarity that if I ever thought my life was fucked-up before… I hadn't experienced anything yet.
Because now I was somehow dropped into a nightmare, maybe a Twilight Zone episode… or maybe this was some really cruel joke by whoever or whatever had created everything.
Either way, I was scared shitless after everything that had transpired in the last couple of hours.
The man who’d looked at me through the phone as if he knew me. As if I’m his.
This strange pull I felt toward him, as if I, too, knew him down to the very cellular level of what made me up, even if I’d never seen him before.
The insane things Darragh had told me, things that should have been between the pages of a fictional book or in a Hollywood movie and not something that played out in real life.
Lycans, shifters, vampires… fated mates?
I groaned and closed my eyes, tears of frustration and confusion, and of course fear of the unknown pushing through and making a physical appearance as thick droplets sliding down my cheeks.
I tangled my hands in my hair and braced my elbows on the table, staring at the wall in front of me. At first I’d laughed at what Darragh told me.
Supernatural creatures? Being mated to a Lycan… a creature who turned into a werewolf? Creatures of myth and lore were actually real?
For fuck’s sake, what in the hell was going on in my life lately?
I laughed so hard after she told me everything that tears streamed down my cheeks. Now my tears were for another reason, because when there’d been silence on the other end, when I heard the sincerity in Darragh’s voice, I knew she wasn’t joking.
Then I assumed she'd been brainwashed, of course, or at the very least he’d drugged her. Surely that had to be the answer, because it just wasn’t feasible to think any of that was real.
I video called her right then and there, because I needed to see her face, her eyes. In my mind I convinced myself that she was being held at gunpoint and forced to tell me this insane fantasy story. That had been the only logical explanation for any of this.
And once the video connected, I’d seen she was alone, her expression clear, her eyes unclouded, and her expression so fucking serious my breath had caught in my throat. And then she told me all over again, and I pushed away the amusement I’d previously felt and let her words sink in.
Even hours later, I was still trying to convince myself it wasn’t real, that this was an insane and crazy joke. But it wasn’t. Because the more I thought about it and the stranger everything seemed, a part of me that was buried deep down asked, how could this not be true?
Life in itself was crazy and unpredictable. Hell, we hadn’t even explored all the oceans on earth, the depths of vastness of space. When I really thought about what Darragh said, it really wasn’t so unbelievable that there were other species, supernatural creatures out there, living among us.
But then, on top of all that fucking insanity, Darragh had dropped the craziest bomb of all right in my lap, a personal warning that I felt down to the very sequence of my DNA.
The man I’d seen in the video chat, the one she called Cian, was also a werewolf shifter. He’d recognized me as his mate, the same way Darragh said she was Caelan’s. I closed my eyes and remembered how it felt like I’d known him, how he’d looked at me like he knew me… personally and intimately.
He looked at me like he had some kind of claim over me. Fated mates.
Can all of this be reality? Darragh actually mated to a werewolf shifter, one of three sons of the Scottish Lycan king? The man—male—whatever the fuck they call themselves, says I’m his, and I have no choice in the matter?
I wasn’t keen on being somebody’s property and didn’t believe in love at first sight. I didn’t believe this man had some kind of proprietary ownership of me simply because his species were forever searching for their one and only females.
And the last thing that kept reverberating inside my head before I disconnected the call so I could have a proper mental breakdown was one sentence that Darragh said.
“He’s coming for you, Evelyn, and these males will never stop until they get their mate.”
Now I was at the stage where I was freaking out, feeling like I had been dropped into some kind of crazy book or movie. Maybe this was all a simulation, a slice of the Matrix.
“And now I’m going right down to crazy town like Darragh.”
I remember mumbling that I was going off the grid, although at the time I hadn’t known what I meant or why I even said it. Hell, I didn’t even know where I was going to go. But I knew I had to get out of here, out of the city, far enough away where I could clear my head and sort things out. I didn't know if Cian really was coming for me, but I sure as hell wasn’t going to stick around and find out. He’d lose interest when he saw I wasn’t around. He couldn't search for me for the rest of his life.
Right?
Feeling the strength and resolve fill me, I stood and mentally categorized all I had to do before I left the city. I didn't know where I’d go first, but I’d always wanted to see the mountains, so that was as good a place to start as any.
