Total pages in book: 192
Estimated words: 192810 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 964(@200wpm)___ 771(@250wpm)___ 643(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 192810 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 964(@200wpm)___ 771(@250wpm)___ 643(@300wpm)
Hmm.
“Freya is not my mate, demons don’t have them,” Mr. Truelock continued.
“I know.”
“So I fear I may not have any answers as to why Aleksei has retreated to this behavior after what’s happened.”
“So you think it’s a mate thing, not a shifter thing?”
“I could ask some of my shifter acquaintances,” he offered. “And some of my mated ones.”
“Do you think they might figure out that you’re asking about Aleksei and me?”
“I think they know I’ve been moved to the Palace for my protection because you’re my family, so yes. Although I’d do my best to shroud it, if they have a brain in their head, and they all do, they would likely make that leap, considering it isn’t a far distance to land.”
So that was out.
“And I can’t ask the king or queen, because they aren’t mates either,” I mumbled.
“This is true. But you could look it up on a digi-pane.”
Oh my gods.
I was such an idiot.
Of course I could.
Why hadn’t I thought of that?
In fact, why hadn’t I done it weeks ago?
Aleksei had even mentioned how poor my research was, since I got everything I knew about mates from romance novels.
“I can’t believe I didn’t think of that.”
“It’s as if you have other things taking your time and other matters on your mind,” he teased.
He was totally the best.
“Thank you, Mr. Truelock.”
“I wonder, perhaps when you become princess, if you might consider acquiescing to one of my many offers to call me Mammon.”
I scrunched my nose.
He smiled at me.
“It feels weird,” I told him.
“I suppose after all this time, it’s become somewhat of a nickname, as it were.”
“Yeah. Look at it like that,” I encouraged.
He smiled at me, then sobered. “Have patience with him. Sadly, the male gender is not good across species at dealing with emotion.”
“I’ll try,” I promised, even though I thought I was trying.
I was just failing.
And it was Aleksei’s fault (so said me).
We disconnected and I went to find my tablet.
I returned to the daybed, holed up in a corner and got to work.
I searched Male Fated Mate Reaction to Female Mate Vulnerability.
And I got a lot about volatility, unpredictability, and in some, the tendency to bait other males into a challenge. In others, though it was rare, physical abuse of their mate and/or young.
I stared hard at that one, rereading it repeatedly, until I let it go, because Aleksei wasn’t doing that, and I knew he never would. But my father definitely had.
Though I did note all the articles said that a fated mate would continue in these behaviors, with changes in the intensity depending on his ability to control it, until he sensed the vulnerability had passed. Or, until he found a release of tension, and physical activity (including copulation, which was an intriguing concept), sparring or shifting were all suggestions on how to release said tension.
It was in this search I found myself sliding down a rabbit hole, skimming or reading full articles about the psychology of mates.
This was a fascinating, but not always fun place to be.
One of the fascinating parts was that the prevailing theory of the origin of fated mates was that the Night God, Sky God, Dawn God and Land God all got together to create them for the purpose of the continuation of the species.
They didn’t explain why this was the theory, considering nature for all creatures was to procreate in the first place, but it was clear it wasn’t to keep species pure, because from the dawn of time, inter-species mating was a thing.
The next fascinating part was that there were different reactions to finding your mate, depending on your species, or if your mate was of another species, or if there was mixed blood.
Shifter beasts made it easy, because they recognized their mates instantly.
It wasn’t so easy for fae or the magical, even manifesting itself as unexplainable enmity, at first, until something happened when the mating became clear.
The not-always-fun part was an article I read (definitely in full) about how there were mates who should not be.
The article was titled When the Gods Get It Wrong.
It explained, in modern times, this was sometimes a conscious decision, say, should I have turned away from Aleksei because I wanted no part in his complicated life.
However, there were some who simply didn’t get along, couldn’t find harmony, their lives didn’t naturally intertwine, or they found they simply didn’t like each other.
And the authors of that article encouraged those mates to part and find contentment elsewhere, at the same time cautioning they’d do so feeling the loss for the rest of their lives.
Though, they assured the pain would become manageable, like a chronic illness of the past that had no cure: for instance, migraines.
In other words, the pain was debilitating, but you had no choice but to learn to cope with it and carry on, and this you would do.