Page 11 of Mated to Fenrir
Surprise flitted over his face. "You know more about the gods than I'd have expected."
"My friends are dating gods. They've told me a lot of what they've learned."
"Which is how you know that immortality is an option," he said.
"Yes. I see we still got onto that fairly fast," I joked. "But yes, that's how I know."
"Can I ask your thoughts on it?" He picked up another fry.
"You can. But the answer is that I don't know how I feel about it. I think I've always seen it as depending on the person I built my life with. If they were immortal, then it wouldn't sit well with me if I wasn't, but if they were mortal, then I wouldn't want to outlive them for the rest of my life. And now you know my non-answer."
"It's a good answer," he promised.
"I'm glad you think so." I looked over at him, wondering about what all of this meant. Could my wolf be right and this betherelationship?
I could feel her within me, anxious to get me to act on her desires. It was hard to think straight when she was trying to control me.
"So, where do we go from here?" I asked. "We've come for a milkshake, but what next?"
"Another date," he said. "And then another, and go from there."
"Ones with low romance?"
"Anything can be romantic," he pointed out. "But for the first few dates, I think it's probably wise for us to be in public spaces. It's easier to keep the wolves at bay that way."
"True. We don't want to rush into a mate bond."
He nodded. "It's a commitment, and one I want to make sure we're ready to make when we do."
"I get it. I've been burned by the mate bond before." I sat back in my seat and drank the rest of my milkshake. It was good, but if I was honest, I barely cared. It wasn't just my wolf who was captivated by the man opposite.
"What happened?" Fenrir asked.
I took a deep breath. I knew I'd need to talk about my past if I wanted this relationship to work, but it still felt like it revealed a lot about me, and came with an amount of vulnerability that I wasn't necessarily used to. I supposed he'd already told me about what had happened when he'd found his fated mates, so it was only fair that I told him the same. "I imagine the normal things that go wrong with mate bonds. When my wolf responded to them, something about them fit and matched me, but by the time the relationship was over, things had stopped working."
He nodded but waited for me to continue rather than saying anything else.
"For my first couple of relationships, I would say that it was definitely my fault that they didn't work. I knew in theory that having a fated mate bond wasn't enough, but I didn't realise what that meant. I was young and unaware that it wasn't as straightforward as having a bond. I really thought that was it."
"I was the same when I was a young wolf."
"Though I imagine that was a lot longer ago."
"A little bit," he admitted. "But I think it's just something that all wolf shifters go through at one point or another."
I shrugged. "Maybe so. I think we get lulled into a false sense of security that fated mates means that we don't have to put anywork in." I set my empty glass down, but still toyed with the stem while I thought about the conversation.
"It does sound like the kind of thing that should just be perfect as soon as it happens," he agreed.
"And yet it isn't."
"It makes sense. People change and grow as they get older. Our wolves think we're perfect for one another now, but if only one of us grows over the next decade, it won't be a good match any more."
I nodded. "That was the situation with me and Todd. He was the last person my wolf thought was my fated mate. I felt like he didn't want to grow. Every time we talked about it, he'd say that we were fated, so what did it matter."
Fenrir grimaced. "It always matters."
I sighed. "I know. But I stayed for longer than I should."
