“Yes, that’s fine.” Allie set her own bags there even as he did. She then opened the first bag and started to retrieve the items inside, very aware that Magnus was hesitating to leave.

“I was not sure which shampoo you would like but that one smelled pretty. If you prefer a different kind, I can return it and get another.”

Allie glanced to him with confusion, and then followed his gaze to the bottle of shampoo in her hand and realized she’d been staring blindly at it for a couple of minutes. Shaking her head, she turned and set it on the dresser. “No. It’s fine. Thank you. I just—” Whirling back, she blurted, “You can’t read me because we’re possible life mates.”

Eleven

Magnus stared at Allie for a moment, and then turned to close the bedroom door. It would seem they were going to have the conversation he’d been agonizing over during the last two hours as he’d shopped. He’d worried about how to broach the subject, along with where and when, but it looked like it was happening now and here.

Taking a deep breath, he faced her and opened his mouth to begin the speech he’d come up with on his shopping trip, only to close it again as she asked, “That’s true, isn’t it?”

He nodded.

“Stephanie said Liam will be able to read and control me in the next year or so. She said that he’d use that against me. Not on purpose,” she added quickly in the boy’s defense. “But he wouldn’t be able to resist controlling me if he wanted something bad enough, and then it would become just what he did.”

“More than likely,” Magnus agreed, sorry to have to say so, but it was true. He suspected there wasn’t a child alive who could resist using such an ability.

Allie glanced down at the bags on the bed. “She said once the others realized this was happening, he’d be taken away from me. Because I couldn’t be an effective mother.”

Magnus hesitated and then said, “It would be no reflection on you, but immortal children need parents who can—”

“I don’t want to lose my son,” Allie interrupted in a voice so quiet he might have missed it if his hearing wasn’t enhanced.

Magnus hesitated, unsure what to say.

“But you could turn me, couldn’t you? Then Liam couldn’t read or control me and I wouldn’t lose him.”

“I could,” he allowed slowly, beginning to worry that she would ask him to do just that, no strings attached. If she did, he wasn’t sure he wouldn’t agree. Stephanie had said he had to use the boy to get her to agree to be his life mate, but it just seemed so heartless. She was his life mate—how could he deny her?

“But you’d want me to be your life mate.”

Her words didn’t sound accusing or resentful, and that fact alone almost had him sagging with relief, but he held himself straight and merely nodded.