“I definitely believe in fated mates.” Skylar drank from her champagne glass.

“Why?” Riley asked. “You always have. As long as I can remember. Since we were little.”

Skylar smiled sheepishly. “Maybe I think it’s romantic.”

“Have you met yours?” Emma asked, playing along. “Your soul mate?”

Skylar frowned. “I’m not sure soul mate and fated mate are the same thing.”

“I think it depends on your background,” Riley said.

“Okay,” Emma said. “Have you found your fated mate?”

Skylar sighed. “No. But…” She held up a finger. “I have an idea about that. I can’t tell you until I get all figured out, but I’m working on it.”

Riley shrugged and turned back to Emma, seemingly unimpressed. She must be used to Skylar’s ideas. “Emma. It’s difficult to explain. For me it’s always been Tyler, from the moment I saw him in seventh grade. I’d never tell him that though. His head would swell up too much. But we dated in high school. We dated until he learned some… things about me that he couldn’t handle back then. So I left. But I never forgot, and I never let go. I thought about him all the time. Probably every day. And now I know we were meant to be. And even though there are things about me that he couldn’t handle back then, those thing don’t bother us anymore.”

“What kinds of things?” Emma asked.

“Well.” Riley glanced at Skylar. “My mother was from Bhutan, so my heritage was a little different.”

“Does that really matter when you love someone?”

Skylar’s face brightened. “Exactly!”

“Come on,” Riley said. “We’ve tortured Emma enough already.”

Skylar sat back and pouted.

“She and Aiden will figure things out themselves. On their own time.”

Emma looked from one to the other. There was something they weren’t telling her.

“So you changed your mind?” Riley asked.

“Yes.”

“We’re not going to do it?”

Skylar shook her head. “No. Aiden would shoot both of us.”

“What are you two talking about?” Emma asked.

They both picked up their glasses of champagne and hid behind them.

Emma got it that Skylar and Aiden would have a bond unique to them, despite never having experienced it for herself, but she didn’t understand how Riley and Tyler fit into the picture.

Whatever it was, they were right. She and Aiden would figure things out.

And this moment seemed to be the perfect time for her to get away. “I’m going to step outside and get some air.” She announced.

Walking slowly on her ankle, Emma went outside and stood on the back porch of the lodge and let the solitude calm her. She sat on a chair away from everyone else.

Her ankle hurt less today, but she wouldn’t be doing any hiking any time soon.

It was funny that she and Aiden both had injuries – her ankle and his wrist.

His wrist.

When they had gotten up this morning, he was no longer wearing the bandage. In fact, his wrist seemed to have healed. Maybe he’d just been ignoring the pain in an effort to impress her.

No one could possibly have healed that quickly. She would ask him about it when he got back.

She leaned her head back against the chair and closed her eyes. Her head was swimming in confusion. What were Skylar and Riley talking about? It was almost like they were talking in some kind of code. There was something they didn’t want to tell her. Something Aiden would have to tell her. Maybe he had some kind of disease. A little ripple of panic shot through her. No. Surely, he would have told her that already. After all, they’d spent the night together in his bed.

It was something else. Something she couldn’t quite pin down. Whatever it was, though, Emma really didn’t care at the moment.

All she cared about was the way he looked at her and made her feel like she was the only woman in the room; maybe even the only person.

Even now, she missed him. She looked toward the mountains and saw two riders in the distance. It was too far to tell if it was Aiden and Tyler, but there was a dog running beside the horses, so she made an educated guess that it was them. She would have liked to have gone with them. She was the wildlife biologist after all. It wasn’t like she couldn’t help them with things like wildlife.

What if they encountered a bear or a mountain lion? They may live here, but Emma was the specialist. She knew what to do if an animal was hurt.

If an animal was hurt.

An image flashed through her mind of the bear with the injured paw. No one had said anything about the bear.

Instead, Aiden had come in the cabin with a fractured wrist. And the bear had been forgotten.

Now Aiden’s wrist seemed to have healed.

What was it that speaker had said at the conference last spring? There’s a theory that shifters heal faster than humans.

Humans.

Emma felt lightheaded. What if Aiden was a shifter? What if she’d just spent the night making love to a man who could shift into a bear?

She put a hand over her eyes. No.

No. She couldn’t wrap her mind around that. Shifters were fine in theory, but to fall in love with one? That was something else entirely.

“I have to find Aiden. I have to talk to him.” She said the words aloud.