ARINA'S MATE (Shifters of the Bulgarian Bloodline Book 2)

by Dalia Wright

  Despite my life growing up, I felt that I was a fairly normal person up until the age of thirty-four, even though I knew I wasn't like most girls, in that I never really got lonely or needed to be in a relationship. Now that's not to say I hadn't been in love before.

  I had been extremely in love four times prior to this point and they were, for the most part, good experiences of my life with great guys. I never felt like any of them were "the one" though, and I certainly did not know that soul-mates really existed or that I could even love someone deeper than I had. I wasn't even a spiritual person and, even though I was a happy person in general, nothing in my life suggested that I was destined for miracles....all of that changed upon meeting Patrick.

  ~Chapter 1~

  The Encounter That Changed My Life

  (The Floodgates Have Opened)

  One Friday night about seven years ago at the age of thirty-four, a friend of mine talked me into going out to a few lounge clubs in San Francisco. We ended up at a place that I rarely went to, and I wasn't going out with the intention of meeting anyone but wasn't opposed to it either. I saw an attractive guy standing with his friends and our eyes met briefly. As I passed by him, I told him that I would love to talk with him when I returned. My friends were split between two clubs, so we were jumping back and forth. When I returned, he came over to where I was sitting and we talked for a long while. The conversation flowed easily and comfortably. It wasn't love at first sight or anything, but I knew there was interest on both of our parts. It was obvious since everyone around us seemed to fade away while we were talking. We both asked for each other's numbers and said good-bye.

  I hadn't heard from him after few days went by so I decided to contact him. I had no attachment to seeing him again and was simply saying hello out of boredom, really. He told me that he was moving back to Paris in a week and he wasn't sure if we should go out because there would be no point in getting close. I suggested that we go out as friends and simply have a fun night.

  So we went to a sushi bar that turned into a little club afterwards and I remember we ended up talking again for a long time. All of the music and noise of the crowd seemed distant and I felt this very intense automatic closeness that I had never experienced before. The energy REALLY shifted when we both naturally kissed each other on the dance floor. I felt like I had known him forever and the feeling could not have been more right. I could sense that he felt the same.

  When we got back to my place the energy got more and more intense. We were staring into each other's eyes the whole time while kissing and talking to each other. Now, this was something that never felt comfortable for me, to lock eyes with someone for long periods of time, but this felt so natural and compelling that I never wanted to look away. I could see his soul through his eyes and I knew he could see mine. There was also a tingly, buzzing energy on my lips when we kissed and in my hands when we touched, hand to hand. I had never experienced any energy like this before and certainly never felt as if I could see a person's soul through their eyes. I also felt like he could read my mind and vice versa. We ended up spending the night together just holding each other soooo tight and being face to face with each other. We were really tired since it was almost daylight and we didn't want to end the experience. Whenever one of us seemed to be asleep, the other would gently kiss the other's lips and there were loving moans escaping our mouths until we couldn't fight the sleep any longer.

  We saw each other again a few nights later and had a typical date-night with eating out and renting a movie afterwards. I'm not quite sure what I had expected to happen since I knew he was leaving, but I knew I wanted to experience the same feeling with him as much as I could before he left. He told me it would most likely be the last time we would see each other before he left for Paris. Anyway, everything was the same as before with how close we were. It was like a feeling of coming home. We ended up having sex and I remember it as average, but I felt it was average because we needed to get to know each other in that way for sex to be amazing. It didn't matter to me though because of the way I felt with him, although it did seem a little odd that with a connection like that the sex wouldn't be mind-blowing from the start.

  We ate out the next morning and he wanted to come back to my place to be with me for a while more before he had to go. We ended up sitting on the couch in a hugging embrace for about a half an hour, just holding each other as tight as we could. There was no kissing, just hugging like we never wanted to let go of each other. This feeling was new to me and I didn’t know how to express it. I told him that I really liked him and he said he felt the same, but I knew that he and I were feeling more than that. I also knew he could read my mind, and that I was feeling pure love. He kept asking me if I had something else I wanted to say to him, and I knew that he wanted me to tell him I loved him, however I just said nothing. It wasn't something that was easy for me to say, especially since I knew he was moving. It was all such a whirlwind for me and I think I didn't quite process it at the time that he was really leaving.

  I walked him to the door and we ended up in another long embrace. As he walked out and stood on the walkway he just stared at me and stood there for a while until I said goodbye and finally, reluctantly closed the door.

  We contacted each other that night through text before he left and we both expressed the strong connection we had towards each other. He said that he would call me in the morning as he was boarding the plane.

  I eagerly awaited his call but to my disappointment there wasn't one. I was devastated. It was like God had sent me an angel and then took him away.

  ~Chapter 2~

  The Aftermath

  Before Patrick left, I had no expectations with him other than maybe seeing him if he visited family here again or in the future if we were meant to be, then the universe would bring us back together when the time was right. He said that he would keep in touch when he arrived and got a phone, so I at least thought that with a connection like that, he would have followed through.

  I always thought I had such good intuition and I could spot dishonest people easily, which is why I usually ended up dating guys who treated me so well. Also, with Patrick, every part of me told me that he was such a genuine person, so when the calls went silent and I had no way of getting in contact with him, I started to doubt my intuition.

  At first I thought that something had seriously gone wrong and he had gotten hurt or lost my number because none of it made sense to me. Like I stated before, I never needed a relationship to make me happy but I felt lost, as if I had no closure or understanding of what happened to him.

  I was desperate to find out if he was ok or if he’d lost my number, since I didn’t even tell him my last name. So I found an email address on a person finder and an address to his parent's house in SF and I wrote both of them saying that I just wanted to make sure that he was alright and to make sure he had my info if he had lost it. I wasn't even sure if the information was for him or another person with the same name but regardless I never heard anything back.

  I even saw a psychic and basically all she told me was that he was a soul-mate and that I would find him on a social media site. This baffled me because I had already looked on the usual social media sites.

  So to backtrack a little, from the moment I met him until about a few weeks after he left, I had this buzzing energy going from my hands and up into my arms. It was like he pushed a button in me and awakened something. My hands literally had energy running all of the time. Along with this energy and the spiritual experience I felt when I was with him, I felt like there was a reason for it.

  So I ended up taking reiki classes, meditating, and attending various healing classes. I felt so motivated to learn everything that had to do with manifesting one’s desires, healing others and myself, and connecting to spirits and source energy. It was all so exciting!

  My life changed dramatically in such a short time and all of these amazing miracles happened. Things like seeing and having full c
onversations with my spirit guides, creating huge vortexes in my room, turning myself into white light and even doing psychic readings in a clairvoyant school. This will have to be another whole book, but in short, I went from seeking out healers, teachers, and info to people coming to me for guidance and healings. It was all very exciting but overwhelming at the same time.

  By this time, about nine months had passed since meeting Patrick. I still felt confused and sad about his complete disappearance but I was soooo grateful for having had the experience because I knew that it is an extreme rarity to experience that kind of soul/spiritual connection. I also knew without a doubt that I had met him so my path would shift in the direction it had.

  One day I decided to look on FB again and HE HAD A PROFILE all of a sudden, just as the psychic had predicted! Well, he was alive and I was glad that nothing had happened to him but as I looked through his information my heart sank. It said that he was married with a toddler. I really had felt like I couldn't trust my intuition at all and I even started to doubt if the connection we had even happened. It really bothered me because it seemed like my whole amazing life transformation was based on something false. So I decided to briefly write him in a cordial manner, because I really just wanted verification that he felt what I had, even though deep down I KNEW he did. It was brief because I didn't care to ruin anything in his life, even though I felt I had been wronged.

  It simply stated that I always wondered what had happened to him and how he could've disappeared that easily after our connection. I also said that I hoped he wasn't married when we spent time together but I really just wanted to know that the connection was real for him. I desperately needed to trust my intuition!

  Shortly after this...I received a rather weird response from him, asking when we had dated because he had forgotten. Then I got a message from another person's profile and it said that it was Patrick writing through his friend. He said that the person I was writing and who wrote me back was his wife, who had created a fake profile as him to see if he was cheating. He kept repeating in caps not to let her take his kid away and that I could call him at a number so he could explain everything. At this point, I didn't know what to trust and I really didn't want any part of breaking up a marriage or dealing with someone who was acting so different and heartless, so I just ignored it and figured he would have to deal with his wife on his own. I didn't want to know the details. (See the “Afterword” at the end of the book for the story that followed with me, Patrick, and his wife.)

  I did, however, not trust my guidance system at that moment and I had desperately called out to my guides and begged them to at least give me a sign that the connection I felt with him was real and that all my miraculous experiences weren't based on something I had conjured up in my mind that he hadn't felt.

  The NEXT day, I experienced another soul-mate connection that was even more intense than the first one!!!

  ~Chapter 3~

  Answered Prayers

  Validation, validation, validation! My guides had answered my prayers....but I should have been more careful about what I wished for. In retrospect, I should've asked them to show this to me when the timing was right, but I insisted that I wanted answers right then!! More on that later.

  The funny thing was that this experience was similar (at first) to how I met Patrick and how we first hung out.

  I had met a guy named Alex at a day party through some friends of mine. He also had a very genuine, sweet, and down to earth way about him. He was a little taller than me, had dark skin because of his Latin descent, and was really cute. He seemed very humble to me and I liked that. We also did not immediately have a super strong connection but after a short time talking, for some reason, we ended up in an embrace outside of the club for ten minutes or so. We were just hugging each other. It wasn't intense or anything but felt really natural.

  We decided to see each other again. I hadn't expected anything from it and really thought it might just end up being a friend thing. He came over to my place the day after my plea from my guides.

  Soon after he got there I started to recognize the energy. It got really intense and powerful very fast and was immediate validation for me that the first encounter wasn't my imagination. The difference this time though, it was another level of intensity!!

  There was the same energy buzzing when our hands and lips touched and our eyes were locked into each other's, but this time there was a VERY strong pull, literally exactly as if both our heart chakras had a magnet in them that were meant for each other and literally pulled our bodies together. This caused us to not want to let go of each other and it somehow attached our heart chakras together. When this happened, an energy (source energy, God, whatever you choose to label it) came into my crown chakra and into my heart, which then caused an opening of the two hearts, and unconditional love poured through us. It was pure love from creator and it caused me to start crying because it was so amazing and unexplainable.

  Through all of these experiences, Alex verbalized what he was feeling without me asking him anything. I wanted to make sure I knew he was experiencing the same thing, even though it was obvious that he was. The look on his face with each experience was one of complete shock and surprise that it was happening and one of instant unconditional love for me as if our souls were just reconnecting again in this lifetime. I always explain it as a coming home feeling, and his eyes...I cannot even explain it in words other than to say that I knew them. It was like ecstasy looking into them. They were so big and beautiful and excited to see me again. His smile was also familiar and if we weren’t kissing then we were both smiling sooo big that my mouth started hurting. We couldn’t wipe the smiles off of our faces.

  There were also so many synchronicities and signs while we were together. The most profound one was that I had mentioned the number 444 for some odd reason in our conversation and we looked at the TV right after. The TV was on but we weren't paying attention to it until after I said that number. The number 444 was displayed all over and all across the screen in columns and each number was flashing! We just looked at each other in amazement, especially because it was not a commercial or part of a program. It had come out of nowhere like it was placed on my screen by our guides or angels! I later found out that 444 means that your angels are there and miracles are happening.

  Another thing that happened was that time literally skipped ahead. It wasn't that time went fast because we were having fun. We both thought that a few minutes had passed but hours had gone by. We were so confused and baffled by this. It was like we had not experienced time because we were together.

  We ended up holding each other all night and I felt like I was in heaven once again. In the morning he talked about seeing where this could go because he had never experienced anything like this before, but then he asked me if I was already seeing someone. I'm not even sure what made him think to ask that but he could tell by the look in my eyes that I was.

  This is where the bad timing comes in...

  I had just started to see someone again that I had been on and off with for years but neither of us were really ready to commit to a relationship; he was more hesitant than I was, so I had ended it even though I was in love with him. Honestly, it was love that was mainly because of the addicting sex. I really cared about him but the sex definitely had power over me. He randomly came back into my life and things were totally different. I could tell that this time, we were headed towards being together officially and feelings were more evident between us. Two weeks into it we had the talk. He said he had felt differently this time as well and wanted to see where it would go, but wanted to make sure he didn't mess things up by not rushing into it too fast. I specifically asked him if we were together and he said no. So to me, that meant we were free to do whatever we wanted until he was ready to be exclusive, and I wasn't holding my breath because I had already spent time with him in previous years and it had gone nowhere.

  So back to that morning with Alex. I explained to
him about the situation with the other guy, Juan Carlos, and how I'd always been in love with him and I hadn't really felt like he was ready to be with me because of the conversation we had. I also told him that I really hadn't expected to meet anyone else, especially not a soul-mate! I told Alex that Juan was not a soul-mate but I had always wanted to see where things could go if we had actually been able to commit. I also told him that although we have the soul-mate connection, I really didn't know him well and I was scared to trust my judge of character after the last soul-mate experience. So I told him that I needed to get to know him better in order to decide what to do. He was totally understanding, or at least he appeared to be at the time.

  I even told Juan about the situation and he THEN, of course, said that he was ready to be exclusive, but I told him that I needed time to make the right choice. So BOTH guys were waiting for me to decide what to do. It was CRAZY! I felt as though my guides or the universe were playing a dirty trick on me! Either way, I was going to hurt someone and I was terrified of that and of making the wrong choice.

  I thought that maybe if I had sex with Alex, I would then be able to figure it out because that's a HUGE part of a relationship! Well, what happened was beyond anything I could have imagined.

  We were having sex but we couldn't pry our eyes apart. We could see each other's souls by connecting our eyes. Suddenly our souls and our energy started to combine into one and expand outward into the whole room. We never disconnected from our eyes and both of us kept saying, "Oh my God, what's happening?!" We were crying with tears pouring down our faces and the words "I love you" were coming from both our lips. I didn't even really realize that we were physically having intercourse because it was so intense and felt as if our energies weren't condensed into a body but were spread and intertwined together all over the room. We had become one soul.