Noah jumped, startled as his cat’s voice came to him for the first time in ten years. You talked.
You said it yourself. If there was one time you thought I’d talk, it’d be now.
He sat up abruptly in bed, still staring at Lily. You mean…?
Yeah. She’s our mate.
Noah felt his eyes widen as he continued to stare at her. If she woke up and caught him, she’d probably freak out and call him a creep, but he couldn’t help it. He was shocked to his toes. He’d considered that she might be his mate, but he hadn’t really thought she was.
Falling back onto the bed, he finally looked away from her, gazing up at the ceiling.
Holy. Shit.
Chapter Seven
Lily took a sip of her coffee, eyeing Noah as he sat across from her in the small diner down the street from their hotel. Something was off about him and had been since they woke up. She was trying not to get a complex about it, but it was hard not to, after their talk the night before.
He glanced out the window before taking another bite of his pancakes, yet again avoiding looking in her direction, just like he had most of the morning. And when he sp
oke, his words came off stilted and unsure.
Narrowing her eyes thoughtfully as he glanced up at her and then quickly looked away again, she couldn’t help noticing that his light green gaze was still glowing, like it had been all morning. She was starting to work out that it happened when he was worked up about something or feeling an emotion strongly.
So he was feeling something strongly, and from his voice and words when he spoke, he was unsure. Of her? She wasn’t sure, but she didn’t think it was because the conversation the night before made him uncomfortable. He hadn’t seemed like it in the moment, and this felt like something more.
Setting her cup down, she looked out of the window, wondering if maybe he was hesitating because of whatever he was. She was positive he wasn’t an average human. His eyes changed color, he healed completely like he was never hurt in a devastating tragedy. Sometimes, the things he, and the other Enforcers, said didn’t add up.
She wanted to ask him, but she didn’t know how to word it. It was clear he was something more, whatever that meant, but since she didn’t know what it meant, she didn’t know how to ask.
Her lips quirked as she remembered the beginning of Twilight, when Bella realized Edward wasn’t the average human. It felt a little too reminiscent of that. Radioactive spider or kryptonite. Neither for Noah, she didn’t think. But that didn’t leave room for a whole lot else.
She’d always thought Bella was an idiot for just blindly following Edward. For how she hadn’t cared what he was, even though he told her he was the villain.
It was secretly one of her favorite book series, but she never understood that.
But she thought she might be beginning to. Because she didn’t know what Noah was, either, yet she was pretty sure she didn’t care that he was different.
She looked back over at him, watching as the early morning sun bathed him in its glow. One thing was for sure. He wasn’t a vampire. He didn’t burst into flames or sparkle in the sunlight.
Her eyebrow raised as he polished off the huge stack of pancakes he ordered. She’d been making bets with herself about whether he could eat it all, but she shouldn’t have been surprised that he did. He’d eaten a whole large pizza by himself the night before.
She guessed a man as big as he was needed a lot of food to keep him going.
Glancing up at her, he paused with his glass halfway to his mouth. “What?”
Suppressing a smile, she shook her head. If he was feeling unsure with her, she didn’t want to add to it by commenting on how much he ate. Although maybe that was more of a woman’s hang up than a man’s. “Nothing at all.”
He eyed her with clear suspicion in his eyes as he took a sip of his drink. “You ready to go?”
“Sure.” She caught him looking around for the bill and let her smile break free. “I paid it when I went to the bathroom.”
His eyebrows rose. “You didn’t have to do that. This is an Enforcer trip, so everything’s taken care of.”
Shrugging, she grabbed her purse and stood up. “I wanted to. Don’t argue.”
“Yes, ma’am.”
Huffing a laugh, she turned and led the way out of the diner, making her way to his truck. He opened her door for her and held out a hand to help her up, and she let her smile deepen as she took it. He was a gentleman when it came to most things, but he hadn’t offered to do that the day before.