Jacob pulled a face in my direction, clearly loving the heck out of this lecture. I forced myself not to laugh at him. Sensing that this was going to take a long time, I slid myself against the wall. Grace – who looked pretty miserable – dropped next to me, and Cardia hesitantly sat on the other side of us, keeping a reasonable space between me and her. I was glad to see she was taking the no-rush thing seriously. I slid my hand across and grasped Grace’s hand.

“You okay?” I asked, without looking in her direction. I really didn’t want her to cry or anything.

She kind of snorted before returning my hand squeeze. “Tyson and I have been playing this game for a long time now, even though he was slow to figure it out.” She paused, before sighing, her voice barely a whisper. “I’m just not sure I want to play anymore.”

Oh, I got that. I totally got it. There was only so much a heart could take, but I had to give it a shot. For Tyson.

“Don’t give up on him, Grace, Ty has a good heart, and I think you two could be happy. True mates or not.”

That was the bottom line, they didn’t know if there was more between them than just anger and raging attraction. And right now, I could see that Grace wasn’t ready to find out.

I noticed then that the quads had stopped pretending to listen to Quale. All of them were staring in our direction, like a force-of-nature smacking us in the face, strong, swift, and breathtaking. Grace and my conversation died off as we became caught in the Compass magnetism. Assholes. They sucked you in and never let go. I shook my head before flipping them off. They needed to focus on the mystics right now. With shakes of their heads, and small grins, they finally turned back to the cloaks. Tyson lingered the longest, his expression unreadable.

“I don’t know if I can walk away,” Grace said, her voice almost inaudible. “Damn, every female in Stratford would give their right arm to have a Compass.”

Despite her anger, there were still tendrils of awe from her. It wasn’t exactly the same for me, I’d always had the Compasses. I’d never had to fight for their love or attention. I was very lucky in that regard. But Grace was extra right, I was even more blessed now. True mates was a really strange and beautiful concept.

Generally when a supe stumbled across their true mate they had never met that supernatural before. So while there was an instant connection, there were also many unknowns. For me it was different. I’d known and loved Braxton for a really long time. The history and memories were already there, the bonds strong. Which meant I was feeling a tad overwhelmed by the sheer intensity of our new mateship.