“Come down,” Nina called to him. “Please come down.”
Slowly, Joel padded down from the rock. He walked across the forest floor until he was standing in front of Nina and Alethia.
“I need you to talk to me.” Nina stared at him, willing him to shift and explain what had happened. “Joel. I need to hear what you’re thinking.”
There was a long pause...and then Joel shivered and shifted, rising up from his position on all fours to stand as a human in front of her. He was already as familiar to her as her own self—broad shoulders, messy dark hair, troubled silver eyes.
Nina wanted to throw herself into his arms. She wanted him to wrap her up and swear to her that she’d always be safe.
Instead, she stood where she was, and breathed. Joel, her breath seemed to say.
“I’ll leave you two alone,” Alethia murmured. “Remember what I said, Nina.”
Nina nodded. Alethia shifted, and slipped away.
“I’m sorry,” Joel said immediately, before Alethia was even out of earshot. “I’m so sorry I left.”
“Where did you go?” Nina demanded. “Why did you go? I thought you wanted me to leave town, but Alethia said no...”
“No!” Joel took a couple of steps forward, then seemed to force himself to stop.
Nina wrapped her own arms around herself to keep from reaching for him. She didn’t need his embrace. She needed his explanation.
“So why, then?” she repeated.
“I woke up and I knew we were mates,” Joel said in a low voice.
Nina nodded. “So did I. But you don’t want to be mates. You said last night how much you hated the idea.”
“Because the mate-bond compels us.” Joel sounded angry, now, even though he wasn’t any louder. “I don’t want some bizarre genetic force, or mystical force, or whatever the hell it is, keeping us leashed to each other. I can’t stand the idea of something forcing you to stay with me.”
Nina flinched. This was hard to hear. "But what if it's—" She couldn't quite bring herself to say what we want, because it was looking more and more like Joel didn't want it, after all. "What if people want to be together anyway?"
"Then they can be together!" Joel said. "Because if they do want to be together, then they don't need some crazy compulsion making them, do they?"
"But what do you want to do, then?" Nina asked helplessly, despair building inside her. "Since we have the crazy compulsion no matter what."
Joel's shoulders slumped. "I don't know. But for now, I think we should stay away from each other.”
An awful feeling pooled in the pit of Nina's stomach. "Stay away," she said stupidly.
Joel nodded, his mouth set in an unhappy frown. “Maybe if we keep away, it’ll lessen somehow, and let us think for ourselves. Decide what we really want.”
What we really want. Because Joel didn’t want the mate-bond, didn’t want her. The knowledge hit her like a knife to the heart. She wanted to melt. She wanted to run away.
She breathed instead. Like Alethia had said. Breathe in, hold it, breathe out. Breathe in, hold it, breathe out.
And after that, she knew what she really wanted.
"I don’t want to," she told Joel, lifting her chin.
He looked startled. "What?"
"I don't want to keep away from each other." She took a deep breath and forced her voice to stay steady. "But if you can't stay—if you have to try and get away—I can't make you and I don't want you to be unhappy."
The idea of Joel leaving hurt more than almost anything she could think of. But the one thing that was worse was if he stayed and hated it.
"So if you have to leave, leave. If you have to try and—and lessen the bond, I can't stop you. But I want you to stay, Joel!" Her voice was rising. "I don't want you to talk about this like it’s something to run away from! That feels like—like—" She couldn't think of a comparison awful enough.