Page 30 of A Thousand Lifetimes

“I assume since you’ve turned, the two of you have…been intimate?” He looks properly embarrassed, and I wonder what he would have looked like if he could blush.

“Yes,” I answer.

“Was there…a blood exchange?”

“Yes,” I bite out.

“Good. The mate bond is sealed, then.”

“What now?” I cock my head to the side.

“Once the mate is turned, the bond is there, but it’s weak until it’s sealed with a blood exchange. If you’ve done that, then the bond is sealed.”

“Why haven’t you ever told me that before?”

“I honestly never expected you to take a mate, Ezra,” my mother answers, slipping her hand out of my fathers and folding them together neatly in front of her.

“You wanted to go to Hawaii,” I grumble.

“You’re such a wonderful boy.”

“I can hear his thoughts,” Declan blurts out. “Is that normal?”

My mother raises an eyebrow and shoots a quick glance at my father. “In some instances.”

“What does that mean?”

“It means there’s different degrees.” He waves his hand in the air with a small flourish. “Sometimes the bond between mates is stronger, more solid.”

“Like soul mates,” my mother supplies.

“Soul mates?” I ask

“What else is there?” Declan speaks over me, and my parents ignore my question for his.

“It’s a list,” my mother laughs. “It varies, I think. Some of it develops over time, some never. Like William said, it varies.”

“What kinds of things though?”

“The bond varies, boys. Sometimes it’s a flimsy thread, sometimes it’s shackles. On rare occasions, it’s more like a convergence. Two souls that have been searching for each other made into one. It transcends everything, the mental and the physical…the sexual.”

My mom smiles and looks over her shoulder coyly and I’m hit with a flash of the woman who lured me into her bed over two hundred years ago.

“I don’t think that’s appropriate dinner conversation,” I tell her.

“I’ve had dinner.” Declan shoots a challenging look across the table.

“We’re not going to discuss our sex lives,” my father interrupts.

“So, it really is a sex thing?”

“Declan,” I hiss.

“It’s fine. We’ll figure it out.” He shrugs.

“A soul mate bond is more than reading thoughts,” my mom gives Declan a dazzling smile. “You’ll be able to feel emotions most likely, too.”

“I can,” I tell her. “I can feel his. I can blank out his thoughts for the most part, but I didn’t know the feeling thing was coming.”