Beth
In fairytales, the princesses always start out single. Maybe that’s why I didn’t feel anything like a princess. Heck, I didn’t even feel like I was in a fairytale. If anything, it had only taken a few seconds for my life to turn into a horror movie.
When I left my house, I had been driving to Mount Edge to see my best friend. As I got closer it was like something else took over me and I needed to be there. When I stepped inside Quinn’s house and met my soulmate’s gaze, I understood why.
And I wanted to make a run for it.
Which of course I didn’t do.
“Callum, are you okay?” a girl’s voice called from upstairs.
“I’m fine.” My soulmate called back.
So his name was Callum.
It fit him perfectly.
He was gorgeous. Tan and strong, with dark red markings shimmering up and down his right arm while pitch-black ones covered his left. With dark hair gelled up like artwork and a white t-shirt that fit him perfectly, he was exactly the kind of guy I’d read about in a romance novel.
Or he would’ve been, if he was a little taller. Romance novel guys are always at least 6’2”, after all, and he was probably somewhere around 5’9”.
“What’s your name?” he asked.
I didn’t respond, my mind still spinning with the consequences of having a soulmate when I was dating someone else. And I wasn’t just dating someone else—I was living with him. Garrett and I had been together for five years, and even though he had a real shot at winning the “World’s Worst Boyfriend” award, we were still dating.
He started coming toward me, and I glanced at my best friend, Quinn, and her wide eyes before I spoke up.
“Can we do this somewhere else?” I hurried to ask before anyone else saw anything. Though I didn’t know how I knew, there was no doubt in my mind that Callum was my soulmate.
Callum’s eyes flicked toward the stairs, and my friend, and he nodded.
“Are you alright with going to my place?”
I answered with a nod. If he was a serial killer, I was done-for anyway. He had a Beth-finder in his brain. Male shifters could find their soulmates anywhere, and that meant he could find me wherever I went.
Plus, since he’d been in Quinn’s house, it was safe to assume that he wasn’t a murderer. My best friend had made plenty of questionable choices, but she didn’t hang out with murderers.
Neither of us said anything as we left the house and got into his car. It wasn’t anything fancy, but it was shiny black on the outside and clean on the inside, with an air freshener that smelled like cinnamon. It was a nice contrast to Garrett and his beat-up truck with baseballs rolling around the floor and a trunk full of bats and other gear.
I waited a minute after we left to finally answer his question. He’d been waiting his whole life to meet me, so he at least deserved to know my name.
“I’m Beth Jolly—Elizabeth, but no one’s ever called me by my full name.”
“I’m Callum Ellison.”
“That’s a pretty last name.” I said, before I realized that it was a super weird thing to say to your soulmate. “Sorry, that was weird. Pretend I didn’t say it.”
On second thought, what wasn’t a weird thing to say to your soulmate? I hadn’t exactly thought about it before.
The corners of his lips lifted.
“It wasn’t weird. My last name is yours too, now.”
My body stiffened with his words.
Being soulmates with a shifter was the legal equivalent of being married to them. What was I supposed to tell Garrett?
“Sorry, that was weird.” His lips twisted up into a smirk, but it wasn’t a cruel sort of smirk. “Pretend I didn’t say anything.”
When I realized he’d copied my apology, I laughed.
“Okay, so this is awkward for both of us.” I reached up to play with the small, rose gold infinity necklace that had rested at the base of my throat since I was fifteen years old. “But there’s something you need to know.”
He turned onto a dirt road like the one that led to Quinn’s house, and I looked around for a second before reminding myself what I needed to tell him.
“I’m dating someone, it’s really serious. We’ve been dating for five years and living together for three.”
I watched him for a reaction, but however he felt, he didn’t reveal it.
He just stopped in front of a large, old house where three other cars were already parked. The house was nestled between a bunch of trees, but we’d passed by a bunch of others on our way so it wasn’t secluded at all.
And then he turned to me, his eyes piercing through me.
Still, he didn’t say anything. He just offered me his hand.
“If you touch me, you’ll become a shifter and you’ll officially be my soulmate. If you’re not ready, I’ll take you back to Cody and Quinn’s house right now and leave you to go home to your boyfriend.”
His offer shocked me. Quinn had done everything she possibly could to get Cody to leave and he hadn’t ever budged. Now Callum was giving me an out?
“You would let me walk away?”
His Adam’s apple bobbed before he nodded once.
“If you do, I’ll come and find you every year to see if you’re ready.”
My hand fisted around my necklace.
“Can you just drive around for a few minutes so I can think?” the words sounded shaky in my ears.
“Of course.” He pulled away from the house and drove slowly down the dirt road that led further up the mountain
“I just need to call my boyfriend.” I apologized, lifting my phone from my lap and pressing the button to call Garrett.
He didn’t answer, not that I should’ve expected him to. It had been months since he’d bothered answering my calls, or even calling me back. He would text to ask what I needed and make sure I was okay, but he didn’t call.
I called again, and again, and he still didn’t answer.
The fourth time, I left a message.
“Garrett, I really need you to call me back. Something big happened. Just… Call me back.” I hung up the phone and looked over at the stranger beside me.
He was gorgeous.
And he was my soulmate.
And I had no idea how I was going to break that to Garrett.
“He’ll call me back.” My voice came out sounding scratchy and weak.
I wasn’t surprised that it did. After all, I’d just been told that I had to decide between the boyfriend I hadn’t been in love with for a year but who I’d been with for five, or the soulmate I’d just met who I felt drawn to in a way that I’d never felt with Garrett.
Garrett wasn’t going to answer his phone to help me decide, and the chance of him calling back in the next week was slim. That left me to make the decision alone, and I’d always been terrible at making decisions.
“What kind of shifter are you?” I asked.
I needed more information about my soulmate if I was going to choose, since Garrett wasn’t going to answer. I could call and ask Quinn for advice, but she’d been telling me to break up with Garret for more than a year so I already knew what she’d say.
“I’m a panther shifter.”
“Can you tell me more about yourself?” I asked, hoping he’d say something that would make it easy for me to deny the way I felt like I belonged with him.
“I’m a tattoo artist, I run the only tattoo shop in Mount Edge. I live with a bunch of friends in a house that was built for my aunt who died, so rent is free but there’s never any peace. I’m the youngest of two, and I’m pretty close to my parents.”
So that only made him sound even better.
I’d always wished Garrett wanted a simple career. I’d told him so on many different occasions—which was a source of contention in our relationship, one of many. He was determined to make it to the major leagues in baseball, and spent all of his time trying to make it happen.
“What do you like to do?”
If he said he liked to go to the gym or play baseball, it would be an easy no again. I’d had enough of Garrett’s working out and baseball.
“I spend a lot of time in the forest in panther form.” He admitted. “But other than that, I like to read. It’s kind of weird, but my mom writes paranormal romance books so I’ve been reading those since I was ten, among other books.”
My jaw dropped and I spun to face him, sitting sideways in the seat.
“Your mom writes paranormal romance? I love paranormal romance. I think I’ve read every single one on Amazon—well, except the dirty ones. They make me so uncomfortable.” My eyes widened. “Crap, she doesn’t write the dirty ones does she? What name does she write under?”
Callum grinned and shook his head.
“She doesn’t write the dirty ones. Her penname is Savanna Elle.”
My eyes just about popped out of my head.
“No way, she’s one of my favorite authors!”
“Mine too.” Callum winked, and I just about choked on my tongue.
What was I doing? Questioning him, like he would say something that would be more of a red flag than every single thing Garrett had done in the past year? Callum was my soulmate, he and I were two halves of one soul. He couldn’t be anything but perfect for me.
I’d been trying to find a way to break up with Garrett for a long time, so I already knew that I didn’t want to be with him. Besides that, I’d watched Quinn’s life transform as she and Cody fell in love. I had wanted that for myself—that kind of love, and that kind of life—before I’d even known Callum existed.
So why would I ever turn him down?
One of his hands was on the steering wheel and the other was resting on the side of the chair, since we were driving along the dirt road so slowly it didn’t take much effort.
I reached over and grabbed his hand.
When pain seared up my arm, I screamed and yanked my hand away. Callum swore, slamming on the breaks. We stopped in front of a random house, Callum swearing while I gawked down at my arm.
It was throbbing in pain, but I watched the blood-red markings slowly appear on my skin. They started out looking faded, and then got brighter and brighter.
When the marks were solid and shimmery, the pain gradually disappeared, but I was still just staring at my arm in shock. It was one thing to feel that I was soulmates with Callum, but it was another to actually see a magical tattoo racing up and down my arm.
“Sorry, I would’ve warned you if I knew it was going to hurt like that.” I apologized.
“You don’t need to apologize.” Callum’s lips started to curl upward. “I guess you made your choice.”
“I guess I did.” I met his half-smile with one of my own, trying to ignore the fact that I was going to have to find a way to tell Garrett.