SOULDATED Chapter 1
Hey guys, happy Tuesday! I hope you're loving SOULWAITED!
It's Teaser Tuesday so here's a peek at the first chapter of SOULDATED, coming on or before March 1st!
Teresa
For the rest of my life, the happy birthday song would remind me of my soulmate. My soulmate, the loaf of banana bread with candles in it, and catching my hair on fire.
It was my 20th birthday, and I knew it was going to be my last day of freedom. The next day, every eligible gentleman in the pack would be at my door. As a girl who was equally human and bear, I was a grizzly shifter and that came with responsibilities and expectations that I had no choice but to accept.
“Come on, guys.” Lyssie called out. She was a panther and the only other unmated female shifter I knew. “We’re singing happy birthday!”
Sometime just after I was born, shifter women stopped giving birth to females. They could pop out men by the dozen, but there were no lady shifters that I knew of born after me. That made me unique, and it also took away my choice when it came to my soulmate.
Our roommates gathered into the kitchen, one of them my little brother. Zane was bigger than me, a lot bigger than me, and only ten months younger so we had been the same age for the past two months. He was my best friend, and the only person who knew how much I was dreading my birthday.
Besides me, Lyssie, and Zane, there were two other guys living with us. Jace and Layton were brothers, and both were chimp shifters.
All four of my roommates gathered around, and started singing.
“Happy birthday to you...”
They sang and I smiled, up until the second that my cotie (that shifter marking on my hip) began tingling.
My smile vanished and I turned to Zane with a panicked expression, and then turned again when the front door swung open.
A man stepped inside, tall and blonde with eyes so blue I could see the color from the four feet that separated us. His skin was tan and his body muscled in a way that I could tell had taken a lot of work, but not lifting weights.
He was the most beautiful man I’d ever seen.
When his eyes landed on me time seemed to slow down.
“Happy birthday to you.”
They finished singing, but all I noticed was the man in the doorway.
The man who I knew, with certainty, was my soulmate.
“Teresa, your hair!” Lyssie shrieked, and I looked down as she yanked me away from the cake and smacked me with a kitchen towel to put out the fire.
Zane leaned over and blew out my candles, all twenty of them, but my eyes were already back on the man.
My man.
“Is that your—“ Lyssie started, but I didn’t let her finish.
“Yes.”
I steeled myself for the most difficult conversation of my life as he walked toward me.
“Hi.” He held out his hand, ignoring the audience in the kitchen, all watching us silently.
“I’m not going to touch you.” I saw his forehead wrinkle. “I’m sorry, but I can’t be with you. We’re soulmates, but there can’t be anything between us. Go home.”
I stepped around him and went up the stairs and into my room, abandoning both my cake and my friends.
Downstairs, I could hear Lyssie making excuses and telling Garrett to wait a minute, and when I heard footsteps coming my way I knew that she had sent Zane to figure out what was going on. She had no idea that he knew as well as I did that I couldn’t be with my mate.
“Geez, T.” Zane sat down at my desk chair as I pulled my window open as wide as it could go. “Could you have been any harsher?”
“What, did you want me to sugar-coat the fact that I have no choice but to marry whichever guy the pack chooses for me?” My words were dry as I sat on the ledge of the window.
“Yes, that would have been better.” He folded his arms. “You can’t seriously expect your soulmate to accept that answer. He’s a human, not an idiot. The connection he feels to you isn’t something he can just ignore.”
“I know.” I pulled my hair into a quick ponytail to get it out of my eyes.
“Now you’re going to run from him? You do realize that he can find you, wherever you go. His brain is practically a GPS programmed to find you.”
“Thank you, Zane, for assuming that I’ve forgotten everything about my own species.” I rolled my eyes. “He’ll know where I am, but he can’t shift and I doubt he’s about to chase me through the forest in the middle of the night in human form.”
Turning, I grabbed the windowsill and lowered myself down as far as I could before I let go.
I shifted as I fell, landing with an “oomph,” as a 1500 pound grizzly bear.
Lyssie yelled my name as I took off into the forest, leaving my brother to get rid of my soulmate.
His face lingered in my mind as I ran, and the bear inside him called out to me. It took every ounce of willpower to stop myself from turning around and running back to him.
Happy reading!
-Sara Summers
