Chapter 27

Selene’s pov

She shifted her weight on her feet, but now I could tell that she was invested in this conversation. "The mate bond is a connection between two souls. It's not physical—it's emotional, mental. You feel what he feels, and he feels what you feel."

My stomach twisted. Talk about him feeling my feelings—that was some serious privacy invasion, and I did not like it already. "Why does it have to be so intense?"

"Well, because it's not something you can control," Daisy explained. She leaned slightly against the table. "It's not like a regular relationship where you choose what to share. The bond forces you to share whether you want to or not."

What on Earth have I gotten into? I thought in frustration. "That's awful."

"It can be, but it—" she hesitated, "it can also be beautiful if you let it."

I frowned at her. "What's beautiful about being forced to feel someone else's pain and anger?"

Her voice was so soft now, I had to strain a bit to hear it. "Because it means you're never alone, even when it hurts. There's always someone out there who knows exactly what you're going through."

The vulnerability in her tone made me pause. I noticed how her eyes had glazed over like she had zoned out from here.

"You felt it before, haven't you?" I asked cautiously.

Daisy nodded, her eyes glistening. "My mate... he didn't feel the same about me, but I still felt him. Every emotion, every thought. I could tell he was fighting it because I... I wasn't good enough for him."

She shook her head slowly. "Even when he left, the bond didn't fade away, not immediately. Sometimes I still feel like I'm connected to him, but it's only a nothing—strong in the least. He's with someone better."

"No," I responded immediately, moving towards her. I placed a hand on her shoulder. "If he never considered you good enough to be with him in the first place, then he was never your mate. Nature wouldn't be that wicked."

"Nature plays dirty games all the time," she replied in a monotonous voice. "We just have to get used to it and figure out how the rules go so we can survive."

The resignation she showed resonated with me and my situation with Lucian. I never asked to be mated to a werewolf—it was absurd, it wasn't even possible. Apparently it was, and I had no choice. But I wasn't going to dump that on her—never beat a man when he's already down.

"You're special, Daisy, and you will find your real mate one day."

"I don't need one anymore—it was a long time ago. I'm not hurt, but I know how hard it is to live with the bond and how dangerous it is to fight it."

I frowned, letting the weight of her words settle over me. "What do you mean?"

"The bond is strong. The more you fight against it, the harder it pushes back. It does not want to be ignored," she said.

Now this was sounding like a message of doom. I let my hand drop and moved a few steps backward. I was in deep trouble that I never anticipated—how was I supposed to deal with this?

If there was danger in fighting it, then why was Lucian fighting it, and how exactly would it affect me if I continued kicking against it? Already I could see how intense it was, and honestly, it scared me.

“What am I going to do?”

Looking through my eyelashes, I could see Daisy watching me, a faint but kind smile on her face. "You don't have to surrender to it. You have a choice to keep pushing against it if it's really that terrible for you, but you can also try to understand it. It's not your enemy—it's a part of you now."

I nodded slowly. Understanding this bond meant understanding Lucian too. How would I do that when he didn't want to tell me anything about himself, when every action he took only served to make me loathe him more?

"I hope I answered your question adequately?" she asked, a bit worried.

"Oh yes, more than I could ask for," I replied. For once our eyes met, and she did not wince or tremble—she smiled at me, and I managed a smile back.

Maybe it wouldn't be bad if I had two friends here.

"I'll be taking my leave now," she said, nodding at me, and I nodded back. I watched her go, thinking of what she went through in the hands of her own mate.

From the pain in her voice when she spoke about him, it wasn't easy for her, but was her situation as bad as mine and Lucian's? At least in her own case, one person was willing to make it work. With me, both Lucian and I were archenemies already.

I had to make a choice—to fight this or to let it win. Could I fall in love with Lucian? I tilted my head, thinking of the possibility. He was arrogant, evil, with a nasty attitude and did not consider anybody. His word was law—there was no argument. He would suffocate me, trample me at every turn. But could such a man love me? Because if I was to love him, he better do it back.

I leaned back against the bed, my thoughts tangled and restless. What choice did I have? The mate bond wasn't just a connection—it was a chain tying me to him. A chain I could not break no matter how hard I tried.

But I had no guarantee that it would be reciprocated if I tried to understand it as Daisy suggested. Fighting it would certainly lead to heartbreak, and I really did not want to feel that emotion.

"Try to understand it," I whispered to myself. "Easier said than done," I thought with a bitter smile. The emotions I felt in Lucian were so raw, I doubted I could handle them, and those were just a snippet of what he was going through. Was I ready to be dragged into his world?

Certainly not, I scoffed and shook the thoughts out of my head before they could take root.