“I never noticed anyone following me or anything,” Chantal told him. “My family was lost to me years ago, and I don’t tell anyone. My mother always warned me to protect what I am from everyone.”
“Was she one too?”
Chantal shook her head and smiled at Knox. “It doesn’t work that way. We inherit this from our dads, who inherit the latent gene from their mothers. We are always a generation removed from the last. My father’s mother was of the hidden. My mother knew, my grandmother had prepared her for my eventuality.”
“I see.”
“Is that why you told the prospect he would have girls who would also be shadow cats?” I asked.
“That’s why I told him he would, yes.”
“You’re going to fill me in on that later,” Knox told me before leaving the room. I was finally, once again, alone with the woman who would become my mate.
Chapter Three Hundred Seventy-Eight
“Does it bother you that I chose you?” Chantal asked quietly after Knox and the men left.
“Why the hell would it bother me?”
She shrugged her shoulders. “This is an alpha led world, even in your little band of biker misfits. You may have many species here, but you still hold a hierarchy. Usually, men such as yourselves do not like to have their choices removed.”
“You said my choice wasn’t removed, only that you had made yours,” I reminded her.
“Yes, but some have a hard time resisting the pull once they feel it. It is rare for one to turn down the hidden when they reveal themselves and choose. The uncertainty of possibly never finding your own true mate makes the temptation worth it for most.”
“I’ve thought about that,” I told her truthfully. “Am I doing this simply because I’m tired of looking, but then I feel the pull too, and it’s the same feeling I would get either way, correct?” She nodded her agreement. “How do you resist what’s right in front of you for something that you may never find?”
“Fate usually makes sure one finds the other,” she insisted.
“Usually, but not always. This way, another soul out there who lost that chance gains another while I still get a bond as strong as any other.”
“Stronger, usually.”
“You need me, and you’re here. That weighs a lot in this too.”
“You don’t know me though,” she insisted.
“That’s not how things work in our world, and you know it.”
She chuckled then. “That’s all too true.”
“Why was your family lost to you?”
“When we come of age, it isn’t safe to stick close together. If we did, it would be easy to find us, manipulate us into choosing…” she explained without really going into it. “I have two sisters out there.”
“You mentioned three to the prospect as well, three daughters.”
Chantal nodded. “I did, because we come in threes. We’re triplets. We do not live anywhere near each other or have contact any longer, because it would be too easy to see us for what we are that way.”
“But you grew up together?”
“For a while, until a few men passing through town caught sight of us. We were sent to be scattered to the winds then by our parents. I went with my grandmother for a while. She kept me with her and my grandfather until they died.”
“Let me guess, it wasn’t natural causes?”
She shook her head. “It was one of those men who noticed us. I guess at least one of them followed.”
“My little moonbeam, that is important to know. It could be the same man who is behind this.” She shook her head.
“It’s not. I didn’t recognize his scent, and I know that now. I lost my family ten years back when I was just 16. Lost my grandparents when I was 19. I haven’t seen or heard from anyone in all that time. I’ve been hiding in plain sight away from everyone ever since. I put myself through college, behaved like a human, and I only let my shadow cat out in a light-tight room, no windows, no way for anyone to see.”
“That has to suck, babe.”
“It does, but it means survival. We’re not safe until we’re claimed.”
“Okay, but if you get to choose, why not offer yourself up before now instead of being worried all the time?”
“I never saw anyone worth giving myself to,” she told me. “I was in a bad place with being on the run so long and losing my family. Honestly, I planned on never allowing myself to be claimed by another shifter.”
“Then there was me, and you were desperate?” I almost laughed at the thought that the woman had to feel completely desperate and helpless to want me to claim her. She bit into her plump bottom lip and nodded as she glanced up guiltily through her thick lashes. “What if I had been with them? With your attackers?”
She shrugged her shoulders then. “I hoped you weren’t. You didn’t smell familiar, and even if you had been. Chances are that you wouldn’t have allowed it to continue if you thought I was your mate.”
“You could have been stuck with an evil bastard for a mate,” I admonished.
“Lucky for me that I chose you then, hmm?” There was a fire in her eyes this time when she glanced up at me. I knew the heat in my own gaze matched hers. “Are we doing this?” she asked in a breathy voice as I gently pushed her back to the bed.
“Your injuries?” I asked, unable to hide the husky quality of my own voice at that point.
“We can be careful.”
“Would you show me first, before you change? Are you able to do that? It will help with the healing if you’re able to shift, right? That works the same for shadow cats as any other.”
A knock at the door kept her from answering any of my questions. “Gray, we have a doc here,” Knox announced before turning the handle and opening the door.
I could sense the greed coming off the man who stepped through the door
