Evelyn stared down at her hands and worried the matching platinum bands her son had never seen her without. “Jonas, the problem with our kind has never been that we don’t feel the mating instinct the same way as other shifters. The problem for many years was that we felt it too deeply. Too violently. Back in your grandparents’ time, it wasn’t uncommon for some grizzlies to become so jealous and possessive they would kill anyone who they so much as perceived to be a threat to their mates. And yes, I used the word. I called us grizzlies, because for most of our history, we behaved that way.”

She sighed and shifted, but Jonas made no move to rush her. He had too much to do just digesting all of this. It went so contrary to everything he’d ever thought that he couldn’t quite make any of it make sense.

“By the time I was a teenager, it seemed as if our kind had lost all control. We might walk on two legs, live in houses, and work in businesses, but when it came to emotion, our animal sides had completely taken over. And it cost me the life of my best friend. My older sister.”

Jonas had almost forgotten his mother had ever had a sister. He’d never known her, and Evelyn never liked to talk about her. She kept no photos of the other woman, and had a habit of changing the subject any time her childhood was broached in conversation.

“Jeanine was eight years older than me. Not unusual for our kind, but it was unusual that we were so close. She didn’t ignore me the way most siblings would with such an age gap. She liked spending time with me, teaching me things. Brushing my hair or helping me with my homework. She was sweet. When I was fifteen, she met her mate.

“This was in Alaska, where we grew up. There are a lot more brown bears up there. Grizzlies. Peter was from a neighboring clan. They met in town when they had both gone in to see a movie. It was the only theater for miles. They knew instantly they were meant for each other, but not everyone saw it that way. There was a girl in Peter’s clan whom he’d been dating casually. He knew they weren’t mates, but the girl—her name was Gloria. Gloria was . . . unbalanced. She had convinced herself that she was Peter’s true mate, and when she found out about Jeanine . . . well, she behaved very much like a grizzly.”

Evelyn paused, and Jonas could see her struggling to swallow, to hold back her tears. He laid a land over hers and squeezed reassuringly. She managed a small smile.

“It was grisly. How is that for the irony of homonyms? Gloria lay in wait for my sister in the forest where Peter and Jeanine used to meet to run together as part of their courting. Peter came to our territory, so she waited until he left and tracked Jeanine on the path back to our parents’ house. She tore her to pieces. When my father found her, he cried like a baby. I’ll never forget that.”

Jonas plucked a handkerchief form his pocket and handed it to his mother. She wiped her eyes delicately and pressed her fingers to her mouth until she was able to continue.

“All of us were devastated. Our entire clan was. Everyone loved Jeanine. When they discovered who was responsible for her death, we immediately went to her kin to demand she be held accountable. And she couldn’t understand why anyone was upset. After all, she had only been defending her mate. Or that’s what she said. What she told herself.”

A sick feeling rose inside him. All of his life, Jonas had known he lived with a predator inside him, an animal capable of killing—to feed itself, to defend itself, or to defend its den or its family. But he couldn’t image doing what his mother had described, killing a rival for his mate and having no regrets for his actions.

His bear hummed. Couldn’t he? Jonas’s human side might consider Gloria’s actions to be murder, but his bear saw them from a different perspective. It considered what would happen if another male tried to lay claim to Annie, and bellowed in fury.

Never. No other would ever lay a single claw on what was theirs. It would kill or die to prevent it.

“Jeanine’s death changed everything for me,” Evelyn continued. “For my entire clan. I became obsessed with keeping control of the animal, and I insisted that everyone in the clan do the same. Bloodshed was no longer tolerated, not for any reason, and my father backed me up. He’d felt the same sort of horror and rage that I had. Clan members who lost control were punished, and I made it my mission to instill human civility on a population of shifters. When it came time to take a mate, I insisted on the same from my prospective husband. I wouldn’t join a clan who didn’t agree to operate according to my notions of proper control and behavior.”

Her mouth quirked. “Your father did.”

“But you didn’t know him before the wedding?”

“I didn’t meet him until a few days before, but we corresponded for several weeks before that. We knew we had certain things in common, beyond a desire to see a stop to the senseless violence. We enjoyed the same books and films, and we respected each other’s minds and morals.”

Jonas nodded. That made sense to him. That was the kind of relationship he’d always believed his parents had. One based on mutual interests and shared respect.

The quirk morphed into a full-blown smile on his mother’s face. “But none of that would have mattered if we hadn’t looked at each other and recognized that we were meant for each other.”

And there she went, careening off the rails again. “You really mean that? You’re really telling me that you think you and Dad were destined to be mates.”

“Of course we were.” She turned her hands until she had grasped his between them. “Jonas, my darling boy, do you honestly think Edward and I would have remained together for forty years if we didn’t love each other passionately? If we weren’t true mates? Maybe some humans can maintain fond respect for decades, but our animals won’t allow us to settle for anything so tepid. Not for the long term. They would lash out, or just wander off without a matebond holding them together. Are you really so thick in the head that you’ve never worked it out for yourself?”

“But I’ve seen members of the clan get married and then divorced a few years later. That’s no matebond I’ve ever heard of.”

“No, it’s not. I insist that the members of my clan not let their animals control them. I never said they couldn’t let their human sides have that power. Some people don’t want a true mate. And some get impatient after waiting for one who never appears. Some of them settle for a human-style marriage, and sometimes that marriage doesn’t work out. I don’t live the clan’s lives for them, Jonas. I just provide some basic rules they have to follow if they wish to be part of North Lake.”

Jonas really wished he had a reboot switch on his brain, because he felt as if his operating system had just crashed. The rules he had thought made the world around him spin had all suddenly changed. In an instant. One minute up was up, but now his mother had just explained it was really sideways.

How was he meant to deal with all that? And could it possibly begin with a very large bourbon?

“Okay.” He took a breath and tried to force his brain to stop spinning. “So, what you’re telling me is that the woman I told you about, the wolf, Annie, she might actually be my true mate? My bear was right all along?”

She patted his hand. “I can’t tell you if the girl is your mate, pumpkin, but I can tell you that the reaction you described to meeting her certainly makes me curious. Do you think I could meet her before your father and I leave for Germany? We have a couple of hours before we need to be at the airport.”

“No.”

The word came out with a bit more force than Jonas had intended. He faked a cough to cover the slip. Evelyn treated him to another mom look.

“What I mean to say is, I don’t think she’s speaking to me at the moment.”

“It’s hard to blame her for that after the way you behaved.”

Thirty-six years old and his mother still called him “pumpkin” and scolded him like he’d tracked mud onto her kitchen floor. And to think people called him leader of his clan. If they only knew.

“Mom . . .”

“Never mind.” She released his hand with a final squeeze and rose to her red-soled heels. “We’ll stop through when we get back next month. You can introduce us then. In the meantime, come help me pry your father away from his toys so we can take our time getting to the airport. I hate when he drives too fast.”

Dutifully, Jonas followed his mother out of his office. If anyone said it aloud, he’d call them a filthy liar, but he couldn’t wait to get his parents back on the road. The sooner he rid himself of the distraction, the sooner he could come up with a plan to launch a new approach to his pissed-off wolf.

He had the impression it would need to be a good one.