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Lucius didn’t like leaving Sidney, but he had some stuff to attend to.

He left her on a bench outside the security office and said, “I’ll be right back.”

“I’ll be here,” she said, taking her sketchbook out of the crossbody bag and pulling a pencil from its leather roll.

He paused and looked at her. So freaking gorgeous.

His lion was already falling for her.

How could he not? She wasn’t just beautiful, she was funny and sweet and he couldn’t wait to get to know her better.

He now understood why males didn’t like being away from their soulmates, because he didn’t want to leave her side. But he had to make some arrangements quickly, and the security office was the place to do it.

“Hey,” he said, as the door shut behind him.

Jupiter stood at the desk and was talking to Justus, one of the bears who worked with the security team.

“How’s it going?” Jupiter asked.

“Awesome. I need some help, though.”

He handed the flash drive to Lori, who handled the printing of the souvenir books, and then leaned against the counter. “I need an apartment set up right away. I’ve also got a date and need an escort to the steakhouse in town.”

“You thinking of bringing her back here?” Jupiter asked as he lifted his phone.

“I just want to be prepared.”

“Jenni didn’t go into the paddock today,” he said. “So she and Devlin could grab clothes for you and stock the apartment with food and toiletries just in case you bring her back here.”

“Congrats, man,” Justus said. “I can’t believe the email coupon brought a soulmate here.”

“Me either,” Lucius said.

“It’ll give hope to so many of our people,” Jupiter said with a nod, then looked up from his phone. “Okay, Jenni said they’ll get right on it. We’ll put you in apartment three. You can use your swipe card to get into it.”

“Perfect. Thanks.”

“What time did you want to go for dinner?”

“Six?”

“Sure, come to the employee lot,” Jupiter said. “Javan and Xavier will follow you.”

The park alphas had a rule that no one went anywhere alone, and that included dates. He and Sidney could be in the car alone, but they’d be followed by Javan and Xavier, who’d keep their eyes on them. It was always better to be safe than sorry, and the few times the park had been targeted by shifters wanting to take over, they’d been caught off guard.

“It’ll be an hour, hon,” Lori said from the little room where she printed the pictures and assembled the photo albums.

“We’ll be back, thanks.”

He rapped his knuckles on the counter and turned to get back to his soulmate. Just at that moment, he had the strangest feeling of sadness mixed with anger wash over him.

He moved to the door and saw through the window that Sidney was on the phone, pacing and gesturing angrily with her free hand.

He realized he’d been catching a hint of her emotions because they were soulmates, even though they weren’t mated yet.

She must be extremely emotional for him to pick up on them at this point.

He wanted to go to her and comfort her, but he decided to give her time to finish her call without intruding.

“I’m just going to hang for a minute,” he said, turning back to his friends.

“Sure thing,” Jupiter said.

Lucius tried not to listen, but even inside the security building, his excellent hearing thanks to his shifter genetics allowed him to catch most of Sidney’s side of the conversation. He had a feeling that Sidney was going to be very upset when she got off the phone. Hopefully, she still wanted to go out tonight because he didn’t want to be done spending time with her, but if she needed to leave, he’d understand.

His lion let out a grumble and he mentally shushed the beast.

Her happiness was the most important thing to him now.

She was the most important person to him.

“I just wanted to let you know that I’m going to be late tonight,” Sidney said after she’d waited a couple minutes for her mom to answer the phone at the salon.

“What?” her mom practically screeched. “I thought you were just going to be gone for the afternoon.”

“I was planning that,” she said. “But I also told you I was taking the rest of the day off. Which I think is pretty dang fair since I never get to take any time off in general.” Hell, Sidney couldn’t even recall any actual vacations she’d taken in the last year or two, not even a long weekend to do something fun. She couldn’t believe that a trip to a safari park seemed like a vacation. How pathetic was that?

“Well, I expected you back before the end of the day to help close.”

“Why? I told you I was going to be gone.”

“It shouldn’t take that long to go on a stupid safari. Honestly, Sidney, you need to get your priorities straight.”

“Priorities?” Sidney asked, standing from the bench to pace because she was getting agitated and couldn’t sit still. “You mean the salon? That’s your priority, Mom, not mine. I want to draw.”

“Your doodles? That’s hardly going to turn into a career.”

Doodles? “Why can’t you be supportive of me? I’ve been supportive of you.”

“I could ask you the same thing.”

“What? No, you can’t.”

“Well,” her mom said with a grunt, “then why do you keep dreaming about something that will never get you anywhere? The salon is the family business and I need you to be here to help me.”

“What if I don’t want the life you chose?” Sidney slashed the air with her free hand as anger and sadness twined inside her. “You want me to answer phones at a job I don’t like my whole life?”

“You could have gone to cosmetology school.”

“Mom! I never wanted to cut hair for a living, I want to be an artist. Your dream for me was for me to be a stylist, but that was never my dream. I’ll never really be happy trapped there.”

“Trapped?”

“Yeah, Mom. I feel trapped. You don’t pay me enough for me to move out on my own, so I’m stuck living in the apartment with you, and you constantly make demands of my time with the salon and belittle anything that I do with my art. Do you know that I’m good? That people buy sketches from my online store on that craft website?” Tears pricked Sidney’s eyes and she hated that she wanted to cry.

Her mom was so quiet that Sidney had to look at the screen to make sure the call hadn’t disconnected.

“Well,” her mom said finally. “I guess I’ll see you tonight.”

Sidney sighed. That was her mom in a nutshell. She would just shut down instead of finishing a conversation if it got confrontational. But the sucky part was that nothing would change. Come Monday, her mom would expect her at the front desk working hard and wouldn’t want to discuss this argument.

But Sidney was really tired of the status quo.

“I’m not done talking about this,” Sidney said. “We can talk tomorrow.”

“Well, I really don’t think there’s anything to say.”

“I do. There needs to be some changes. I…need to be able to live my life for myself however I want, and you need to do what you promised me when Dad died and hire a replacement.”

“I’ll see you tonight,” her mom said with a clipped tone.

“Don’t wait up,” Sidney said.

The call ended and she stood a few feet away from the security building that she’d been pacing in front of. Her heart was heavy. She hadn’t meant to get into an argument with her mom, but when she’d turned her phone on after Lucius went inside, she’d seen her mom had called and texted numerous times, wanting to know when she’d be back, so she’d decided to deal with it.

She and her mom were in some kind of dysfunctional relationship right now and her mom couldn’t seem to see that it wasn’t good for either of them. But Sidney coming to the park and meeting Lucius had given her a chance to examine herself and she’d seen the truth: she was locked up in a situation where she didn’t have any peace or happiness.

Even though she’d just met Lucius, she sure as heck felt peaceful and happy with him.

The best thing that had ever happened to her was getting that tour coupon in her inbox because it brought her and Lucius together.