Page 40 of Iced Out Mate

MILES

I waited, continuing to massage Dyl as he thought out his answer. I didn’t realize it was such a heavy question. It had just stuck in my head since he asked, and I figured I’d bring it up. I’d always heard of fated mates and wondered if they were actually real or a thing of fluffy legends, meant to make us believe in true love and soul bonds. I’d only met one shifter couple in my life who said they were fated, but I couldn’t tell if they were just saying that or if they had really felt some deep and irrefutable connection.

“I was curious,” Dylan finally said. He rolled his head forward and groaned as I found a particularly responsive spot at the bottom of his foot. “And… oh wow, you’re really good at this.”

I moved to his other foot, looking over at his blissed-out expression. For a second I considered moving on from the subject, but something inside me held me back. “Do you believe in them? Fated mates?”

His eyes opened, locked on mine. He tensed. I could feel it down in the sole of his foot. Could see it in the twitch of his jaw and the rigid lines of his shoulders. “I, um, I don’t think I did. I thought that maybe it was some kind of fantasy.”

Past tense. “So what changed?”

His next word—just one simple, tiny word—changed everything. “You.”

I examined his face—traced over the lines of his cheeks and eyebrows, then gazed into his eyes, trying to determine if it was a joke. That he was simply teasing me. That it’d be followed up with something about how great my massages are and how that had him feeling fated with me.

Nothing followed. Only a heavy, potent silence.

You. It echoed in my head. Sent reverberations down into my chest, bouncing around my heart, settling inside it.

You.

Why did I want to say it out loud? Mirror his statement? I didn’t feel the mystical fated tug people talked about in the stories—maybe I was broken in that way—but I couldn’t deny the fact that it felt like Dylan and I were tied together in a way that went beyond simple attraction and affection. Even though I hadn’t known him long, it was like he’d been around me my entire life. I laughed at his silly jokes, I helped boost him when he beat himself up, I was interested in the shows he watched and the games he played, I loved watching him on the ice doing something he loved, the sneaky glances he’d take my way under his helmet, the ones he’d thought I didn’t notice but I did.

I’d always notice. Dyl had become the center of my focus, helping distract me from the troubles I ran from, from the tragedy that colored my past.

Could that be why…

Dylan sat up straight, crossing his legs underneath him and leaving my hands empty. I hadn’t even realized I stopped massaging him. I’d just been holding onto his foot, processing as the moment swept over me.

You.

“That’s too much, isn’t it?” Dylan asked. “Fuck, I’m so stupid. I never should have said anything. You don’t feel it, do you? Fuuuck.” His hands went to his face, covering it in shame.

I moved up the bed and gently grabbed his wrists, pulling his hands back down. His cheeks were a firehouse red. I hated when he called himself stupid. That was the absolute last thing he should ever consider himself.

I also hated how he was technically right, about me not feeling whatever it was the stories said I should feel. I’d heard it described as being dipped into an ocean of glittering, warm water, surrounded by rainbows and sunlight. Other stories described it as being consumed by flames that didn’t hurt, every cell in your body warmed, creating an invisible bond like iron strengthened in a forge.

Maybe none of that was what happened, though. Maybe I had felt it and just wasn’t aware. Maybe I wasn’t as in tune with my own soul. “What was it that you felt? When you knew?” I asked him. If the stories weren’t reliable then I’d get a firsthand report right here, from the man who lit up my world with his smile, who could melt me to a puddle with his kiss. The man I’d been trying so hard to ice out, only to have him consistently break through.

Was that not the definition of a fated bond?

“It happened when we first met. In the woods. During the rain. I picked up your scent and followed it. My body went into autopilot. I didn’t know what it was, I just knew I would run for miles to chase your scent down. Then, when I got closer, and your scent grew stronger, I remember feeling this sense of… I don’t know, rightness. This feeling like everything was going to be all right. I remember breaking through the trees and seeing you in the clearing and it was like my world flipped upside down.” He looked away from me, his jaw flexing, head shaking. “Then when we shifted, when I had fallen in your arms, time stopped. The second you touched my skin, my entire body felt like it’d been replaced with sunlight. It sounds crazy, but I felt warm all over, in a way I don’t think I ever have before. Inside and out. It was wild.”

And it was just like the stories said.

Although I had also felt a spark upon first meeting Dylan on that rainy day, I couldn’t lie and say I had felt such a visceral reaction. Maybe I’d been too in my head? A little too self-conscious to open myself up to him like that? He was incredibly attractive and I sometimes closed myself off to men I thought were leagues and above my own.

I grasped at straws. There had to be a reason for this discrepancy. I just couldn’t figure out what it was.

And, at the end of the day, did it truly matter? Did I need to experience the same exact physical sensations Dylan had to know that we were meant to be?

“You know,” I said, starting to speak what was on my heart, what I’d been wanting to open up about for a while now. “I think that my mom and dad were fated mates. Neither of them were shifters but from the way my dad speaks about her, I think that they truly were meant to be, and that when they were together it was them against the world. Two people who created warm memories and built a beautiful life in a sometimes chaotic and cruel world. My dad couldn’t have felt what you’re describing, but I know that he thought my mom was everything and more. That they were soulmates.”

Dylan must have sensed the sorrow in my voice. I tried to hide it, my emotional scars weren’t part of the point I was trying to make, but it didn’t matter. Dyl reached for my hand. “What happened?”

It was my turn to stay silent. I composed my thoughts into a semi-coherent message, picking up the words and sentences through a raging river of pain and guilt.

“She died giving birth to me.” The words went through me like bullets from a machine gun, each one shredding open a new wound. I rarely spoke those words aloud. Only ever to my closest friend and to the different therapists I’d seen throughout my life. Even with twenty-nine years separating me from the tragedy, the words still hurt, the reality continuing to stab me in the heart.