Destiny United by Leia Shaw Page A

for
immortals. But explaining that to a human was nearly impossible. Mates were
together forever - as in eternity. And for an immortal, that was a really long
time.
    “You say boyfriend, I say mate.”
    “Sounds so animalistic,” she said with her nose still scrunched.
    He smiled devilishly. “And what’s wrong with
animalistic?” The image of taking Erin on all fours from behind popped into his
mind. Someone really should smack him.
    Her brows descended as if she’d never thought of it
before. He wondered if she was a virgin. Surely not, as
beautiful as she is.
    “So…” she said sidling closer with a sly smile. “Do you
have a mate?”
    He raised his brows, a smirk forming on his lips. Curious, is she?
    She rolled her eyes. “Don’t assume anything. I’m just
making conversation.” She acted casual enough but a slight blush spread across
her cheeks.
    How to answer her question? Technically, mate pairings
were a chemical attraction driven by instinct only occurring in the
supernatural world. Natalia had been his wife in the human world, so she wasn’t
his mate…exactly. But she was still his wife. At least in his mind. As for
Natalia, since he hadn’t seen her in more than eight hundred years, he couldn’t
know. He’d wondered, throughout time, if she’d met the true death. But he’d
been too close on her trail to believe it.
    In the last few centuries he’d learned a great deal about
his wife. The Huntress, they called her. She hunted werewolves, brutally
murdered them without mercy. No one knew why or who she worked for. Rumors
flowed through the werewolf packs and Marcelo had been surprised to find them
afraid of her. Her fighting skills were legendary. Some said she had unnatural
abilities that made caging her impossible. Some even claimed no amount of
silver could hold her. He’d spoken with a Scotland pack that’d had her in
custody just before Marcelo had arrived.
    “The bounty is high on the lass,” the Alpha had told him.
“But holding her is like trying to seize the wind.”
    She was wanted alive by every werewolf pack across the
world. She was to be tried then burned to death for the crimes against
werewolves. Natalia had always been fierce and strong, but a murderer she was
not. He wanted to believe it. He wanted to hold out hope.
    “Do you?” Erin asked again, pulling Marcelo from his
memories.
    Marcelo decided to tell the truth. “I do not have a mate.
But I do have a wife.”
    Her little forehead creased and he found himself wanting
to kiss the spot between her eyebrows. “But I thought –”
    “Natalia was my wife when I was human.”
    Her eyes widened. “God, wasn’t that, like, a thousand
years ago? You have to be over it by now!”
    He smiled without humor. “Eight hundred and forty three
years ago. And if she was human, and dead, then I would be ‘over it’. But she’s
not. She was turned before I was. Then she disappeared and I haven’t seen her
since.”
    Erin’s expression changed from shock to understanding to
pity. Aw, hell . He hated being pitied.
Now he wasn’t sure why he’d told her about Natalia in the first place. In eight
centuries he’d never spoken about her with anyone else. Did this insignificant
little wisp of a girl have some sort of mind control trick?
    He rose from the bed and peered out the hotel window
before closing the drapes. It was almost dawn. “Sharing time is over,” he told
her. “Do not bring up this subject again.”
    ***
    Erin watched Marcelo strip off his shirt, revealing
smooth, golden skin. Muscles flexed and relaxed with each graceful movement.
She had trouble tearing her eyes away.
    Just stop it! Stop staring! But his pants are so low his hip
bones are showing!
    She squeezed her eyes shut. I
have a boyfriend. I have a boyfriend. I have a boyfriend . When she
opened them again, two deep brown eyes stared back with a haughty smile.
    “What are you looking at?” she snapped, annoyed more with
her reaction to him than his