EIGHTEEN
Elliot had puthis house key on my keychain at some point, which I realized when I went to open the door and found it locked. Of course, I was glad he had locked it—I liked knowing that my baby was safe inside, with him.
My mate.
Not just mate; soulmate.
It was strange to think of him that way.
I hadn’t particularly believed in soulmates after what happened with SD. If my soul really did have another half, so to speak, why would it have been a bastard like him? I was no saint, but I wasn’t awful like he was. It took a truly evil person to abuse a woman the way he had abused me, and I didn’t believe there was any way for him to come back from that.
On top of what he’d done to me, he’d come back to my house to try to hurt Evan too. I’d had to choose him or my baby, and I made the decision in a heartbeat.
I would never regret that.
But I did wonder whether or not it really qualified me for a soulmate. Who made those decisions? Who chose whether someone like me would get paired with an evil bastard like SD or a good man, like Elliot?
I was lost in my thoughts as I stepped inside the house, shutting the door and locking it behind me. Elliot was waiting at the kitchen table, his laptop open in front of him. His eyes were sleepy, but they brightened when he saw me, and my heart burned a bit.
“Do you believe in soulmates?” I asked him, spontaneously.
He shut his computer. “Of course.”
“How? I was paired with SD, first. He was my soulmate, wasn’t he? How could I be his, and then yours?”
“Your wolf never agreed to be his, so your bond was never technically completed.”
“But he still looked at me, and his eyes still changed, and he still called me ‘mate,’” I pressed. “How could you and I be any more of soulmates than he and I were?”
“I guess that depends on the way you view fate,” he said simply.
I blinked, waiting for more of an explanation.
He didn’t give one.
I dropped my keys on the table and sat down in the chair across from his. “What do you mean?”
“Does fate make decisions for us?” he asked.
I blinked again. “I don’t know.”
“Personally, I think fate lets us choose for ourselves what kind of people we want to be. Fate makes rules and determines certain things, but not everything. And fate pairs all werewolves with a soulmate. SD was a bastard, but he was still a werewolf. And his wolf still needed a mate.”
I was mostly following what he was saying. “Alright…”
“We don’t know who he was before you met him. Maybe he wasn’t a bastard before, but chose to be one after meeting you. Or maybe he was wicked to his core, but his wolf was still good, and needed a mate. Or maybe the wolf himself was just as bad as the man. Regardless of the reasons, fate lets people make their own decisions. Fate didn’t choose to hurt you; SD did.”
I let out a shaky breath, but nodded. “So you think fate paired me with you to give me a second chance because of the decisions SD made?”
“I don’t know for sure.” Elliot shrugged lightly. “But I don’t think fate’s cruel.”
Honestly, after the way things had started working between me and Elliot, I didn’t either.
“What about Ryder’s situation?” I asked.
“Fate pairs people, but it doesn’t force them to like each other. It doesn’t force them to choose to fall in love. It doesn’t make anyone do anything. It just sets us on a path, and lets us make decisions.”
“I guess that makes sense.” I bit my lip. “I hate SD, but sometimes I feel bad about that. He still made it possible for me to have Evan. I am who I am today because of him, and because of what he did, and because of what my parents did to me.”