His Forever Mate

by Jenny Tia

  Mom nodded at Julian approvingly. “We’re cautious skeptics too. This one”—she motioned to me—“needs a nudge every now and then, to keep him questioning whether things are truly what they seem to be at face value. He has a beautiful spirit of optimism and trust, but he needs someone to balance that out sometimes.”

  “Hey!” I protested.

  Mom held up her hands in defense. “I’m just relieved you’ve got someone keeping an eye on you and reminding you that you can’t trust everyone all of the time.”

  I glanced at Julian and caught a proud smile tugging on the edges of his lips. I wrapped an arm around his shoulders and pulled him close so I could whisper, “I told you they’d like you.”

  He chuckled and nodded, and the smile burst into a full grin. I loved seeing it, and I loved how he kept grinning as he took a big bite of his bagel.

  Dad reached for the coffee. “Now we’ve talked about other topics, can I ask? Do you have a profession? Or is Casius avoiding the topic because you’re an unemployed bum?”

  Mom scowled at him and he shook his head. “It’s a joke! The guy is obviously fine financially. He’s well-dressed, he’s got style, he’s got manners, what’s the big deal?”

  “I actually got my profession from my father too,” Julian said.

  “Oh?” Dad’s eyebrows shot up with interest.

  “I’m an accountant. Though in my case, I think I’m actually better than my dad—he’s good but he hasn’t kept up with the latest technology and it’s dragging his business down.”

  My parents commiserated with Julian as if they themselves were tech aficionados. I heard a rustling behind me and spun around to find Geronimo dragging the bagel box out of the recycling, then going for a tin can.

  “Hey!” He looked at me but kept snapping his jaws at the tin can.

  “Oh my god, Geronimo! You’re going to cut up your mouth.” I jumped up then took the can from him. He whined and wandered over to Julian before resting his chin in my mate’s lap with a heavy sigh. Julian petted him gently, and I took a moment to take in the scene before me. What a heart-warming family scene. Julian really fit in like a missing puzzle piece.

  I was feeling good about things when my phone started buzzing. It was Nic.

  “Shit, sorry guys, I have to take this.” They were so engrossed in conversation they didn’t even notice. I smiled to myself as I stepped outside and answered.

  “Hey, what’s up?”

  “Hughes needs you here immediately.” Nic sounded stressed as hell. A shock of adrenaline burst through me.

  “What’s going on?”

  “I’ve got no info for you, man. Just get here, like, five minutes ago. It’s urgent.”

  “Got it.”

  I rushed back inside and found Geronimo had taken my seat and was sitting at the table with a big goofy grin on his face and his paws either side of my plate.

  “Look, Cas. Geronimo looks just like you.”

  “Thanks, Mom.” I tried to get Julian’s attention, but he was busy scratching Geronimo’s chin.

  “What?” Dad did a theatrical double-take between the dog and me. “Casius? How are you in two places at once?”

  I growled and hurried over to the table. I kissed the top of Julian’s head and got his attention that way.

  “That was Nic.” I grimaced and my heart sank when his eyes met mine. I didn’t want to leave him. Ever. I braced myself for his disappointment, but he just smiled.

  “You have to go?” he asked softly. He took my hand and brushed his thumb over my wrist.

  I nodded. “It sounds urgent. I’m sorry, I—”

  “Sweetheart, you have to go. It’s fine.”

  “Are you sure? I could bring you with me if you want to wait around at the Supreme Mansion or—”

  Julian laughed. “No thanks. I’m happy here. If you don’t mind having me?” Julian glanced at my parents who looked shocked.

  “Obviously you’re welcome to stay as long as you want,” Dad insisted.

  “We’ll keep him here for as long as we can, and then we’ll drive him to your house once he’s sick of us.” Mom said.

  “Thank you. Give Julian your spare key to my house, alright?”

  “Then how are we going to get in and snoop around when you’re out?” Dad asked.

  I shook my head, and then pressed a kiss against Julian’s curls. “I have to go.”

  He smiled up and me. “Get out of here. We’ll be fine without you. We have your doppelgänger.” He motioned to Geronimo, and the whole table cracked up with laughter. Except Geronimo—he just grabbed a bagel from the table, leaped off the chair then sprinted to his naughty corner with his snack.

  I left behind a cacophony of laughter and half-serious efforts to get Geronimo in line, and then I drove toward the Supreme Mansion with a full heart. I knew my parents would get along with Julian, but I hadn’t expected their first meeting would go that well.

  I was still floating on the good vibes from breakfast as I approached the protectors on guard duty outside the Mansion

  “Is Alpha Hughes in his office?” I asked quickly.

  “The boardroom.” They motioned through the foyer to the big, wooden double-doors that opened into the main meeting room. I nodded in appreciation and hurried forward. Given the use of the large room, I expected to walk into a meeting full of Alphas. But as I pushed open the doors, I was shocked by how empty the room was.

  Alpha Hughes sat at the far end of the room, at the head of the long meeting table, with a tall lanky figure looming over him. They glanced up as I came in, light from the foyer streaming in across their faces. The room dimmed as the doors automatically closed behind me, and a thick tension filled the air.

  I stood at attention. “Alpha Hughes, you called for me.”

  “Come, Casius.” He motioned for me to join them at the head of the table.

  I hurried over and nodded to the character standing beside Alpha Hughes. He extended a hand and introduced himself.

  “My name is Dominic Keysong.”

  I saw a flash of amber colored light cross his beady eyes, and I felt like they were looking at a part of me I wasn’t used to showing. I shook his hand firmly.

  “Casius is my Supreme Alpha Select,” Hughes told Dominic. “He’ll need to hear what you told me.”

  “Your Alpha here asked me to keep an eye on the group of humans. I’m a hawk shifter, from the Keysong cast, which is to the north of Everglow. With the support of my fellow hawks, I was able to locate the humans and monitor them, day and night.”

  “We commend you and thank you for your hard work.” Alpha Hughes bowed his head, and I followed the cue.

  The hawk didn’t respond. “I can confirm them to be human. Their body temperature is lower than any shifter. Their behaviors are different. Their movements seem cerebral, not based on instinct. They are as I remember them, before the disease.”

  I nodded and Alpha Hughes sighed deeply. “There’s more, Cas.”

  “I have reason to believe the humans are preparing for something.” Dominic lowered his gaze for a moment. “They are preparing for war.”

  “War? With who?” But I knew the answer before I even asked it.

  “With you, young wolf. They are preparing for a war with your kind.”

  My heart thumped. I braced myself with a hand on the back of Alpha Hughes’s chair as I swayed to one side.

  “But how do you know—”

  “Sit down, Cas.” Alpha Hughes motioned to a seat beside him. I moved as though in slow motion and lowered myself into the chair. Dominic followed and sat opposite me, with Alpha Hughes to my side.

  Hughes cleared his throat and clasped his hands on the table in front of him in a gesture he reserved for the most important moments of breaking heavy news to someone. My wolf whined softly, but I could take it. If I was going to be Supreme Alpha, I needed to be able to hear the worst news imaginable.

  “What is it?” I asked.

  “A body has
been found.”

  I held my tongue and waited for more information.

  “Alpha Charles Hayden of Lemongrove… His body was found on the northern border of Everglow.”

  I closed my eyes and let out a deep breath. “Signs of…murder?”

  Alpha Hughes and Dominic glanced at each other. A heavy silence fell over them until Alpha Hughes nodded. Dominic produced a piece of paper from his coat pocket, and then he unfolded it onto the table. I looked at the crumpled note and the near-illegible scrawl on it.

  “The body was strung up on a fence… Surely to attract attention. And this was found on the body. Pinned to the chest.”

  Dominic smoothed the paper flat, and I squinted to make out the scrambled characters.

  We’ll do to you what you did to us, wipe you out one by one.

  I blinked. My wolf whined again, and my instincts went on full alert, but I had no idea what it meant. I looked at Alpha Hughes, who slowly met my eyes.

  “Do you understand what this means?” he asked.

  I shook my head, though I felt my wolf unearthing deep-seated knowledge…

  Alpha Hughes softened his voice. “I believe the surviving humans think it was shifters who created the disease that wiped them out, and now they’re out for revenge.”

  My stomach dropped. “But that’s… That’s ridiculous.”

  Alpha Hughes grunted. “Perhaps. But they’re serious. And they’re not stopping anytime soon.”

  “What do you mean?”

  Dominic grabbed a remote controller from the table and turned to the screen behind us. He pressed a button and a light began projecting onto the screen. I turned to watch as aerial photographs of the human camp came into focus.

  “I sent out a drone to capture these photographs. Here.” Dominic clicked through to a zoomed-in picture of the border of the camp, far to the west of their sleeping quarters. The ground was tarred red, and tufts of fur clung to a set of knives. My stomach roiled and my wolf growled. And the next photograph pushed a guttural grunt of revulsion from my belly.

  Laid on rocks in the sun, as though drying, were wolf pelts. Huge, shifter-sized pelts; skinned from the backs of our kin. I felt like I was going to throw up. Who the murdered wolf shifters were, we couldn’t tell. All that was clear was they’d been killed while they were in their wolf forms. It was the worst way for a shifter to die because their animal spirit wouldn’t have been able to move on—trapped forever in this world instead of being with its ancestors.

  I sucked in a sharp breath and fell back into my seat. “This can’t be real.”

  I ran a hand over my face and tried my best to stay neutral. On the inside, I was a mess. This was too much. Walking into a war with a group of revenge-hungry humans wasn’t how I wanted to begin my career as Supreme Alpha; it wasn’t even how I wanted to spend my time as Alpha Select. I had no experience with humans. I had no experience with war. I could barely bring myself to look at the image of the pelts lined up on the ground—how could I face the violence that was sure to come?

  Maybe Alpha Hughes had made a mistake. Maybe I wasn’t cut out for this at all.

  “I’m afraid it is real, Casius. Whether we like it or not, we are at war with the humans.” Alpha Hughes put a steadying hand on my back. “And now we need to decide what is the best way to proceed.”

  16

  Julian

  I was happy to have some time alone at Casius’s house to revel in the joys of finally—finally—having my first heat! The symptoms had completely disappeared after the full, rough fuck that Casius had given me the night before, but the joy of it remained. Everyone—even my own parents—had been wrong about me. I wasn’t broken!

  I strutted around the big two-story home, feeling on top of the world. I ran myself a bath, and then ate everything good I found in Casius’s fridge. It was clear he’d been living a bachelor alpha life for too long—he had plenty of cold cuts of meat, a few strange sauces and condiments, but no bread or carbohydrates to pair with them. I ordered in a pizza, kicked back on the couch, and then called Stef to tell him the good news.

  “You won’t believe what happened,” I said as soon as he answered the phone.

  “You’re in love.”

  I scowled, but the sound of it actually ignited something inside me. My heart lightened, and my spirit lifted. I took in a deep breath, wanting to smell more of Casius, even though I was already bathed in his scent by being inside his house. I wished he was here.

  “Oh my moon, you’re in love?”

  “No! That’s not—”

  “You broke up?”

  “No! Everything is wonderful. Like, amazing, and hot.”

  “You’re calling me to tell me you had sex?” I could hear the way he was scrunching up his nose.

  I laughed and shook my head. “Uh, kind of? Listen. It was really hot.”

  “Okay.”

  “Stefan. I felt very hot.”

  “Yeah, you’re a sexy guy.”

  I growled, frustrated. “Stef! This is a riddle. My skin got really hot.”

  “You know I hate riddles, just tell me what you’re trying to say.”

  I sighed, sometimes Stef was no fun. “I had my first heat,” I said, trying not to shout my joy down the phone.

  Instead, my best friend did it for me. His piercing cry shifted into a howl and back again, followed by the sound of his feet stomping on the floor as if he were jumping up and down.

  “Are you for real!” he cried from a distance, clearly holding the phone away from his face to yell at it.

  I laughed. “I’m for real.”

  “This is huge! This is huge! Can I tell everyone?”

  I tilted my head back and giggled. “Yes. Go ahead. Get it out there. Everyone was fucking wrong about me.”

  “I can’t wait to see the look on Chris’s face when I tell him. That shit.”

  “Damn, wish I could be there for that.”

  “So wait—what are you doing talking to me? Shouldn’t you be having fun with your fated mate, the very handsome Supreme Alpha Select Casius Burrows?”

  I sighed and closed my eyes. “I wish. He’s out. Work… Alpha Select stuff.”

  Stef grunted in disappointment. “So what are you doing instead?”

  “Well, I’ve been enjoying some alone time in his house.”

  Stef gasped. He knew me too well. “What did you find when you were snooping?”

  “Nothing crazy. But I didn’t look everywhere. Just the nooks and crannies that were obviously meant to be looked into.”

  “Uh-huh, it’s good to have limits. So where didn’t you look?”

  “Hm, like, his desk drawers. I figured those are too private, given his job.”

  “That’s where all the government conspiracy stuff will be. Julian! C’mon!”

  I laughed. “I know. But I did go through his closet.” I smiled to myself as I remembered the smell of it. I was so interested in him—more interested than I’d ever been in anybody—and even the variations of his scent between parts of his house were fascinating to me.

  “What was in there?” Stefan asked.

  “Calm down. I wasn’t looking for anything scandalous, and I didn’t find anything like that either. But at the bottom of his closet, in a creaky drawer, I found a stack of folded t-shirts that looked like they’d been worn out decades ago.”

  “Oh. Boring.”

  “No, it’s cute! Listen. I unfolded the first one and laughed at the faded, half-ripped cartoon on the front. I carefully folded it back into place, and then looked at a few of the others. They were all souvenir t-shirts from different towns or cities, a few school camps, and combat training workshops. They were Casius’s size, but they smelled like a younger version of him.”

  I’d smiled when I realized how sentimental he really was. I thought it was silly of him to keep them tucked away, and I wondered what else he kept hidden so he could present himself as such a macho, sophisticated alpha. I couldn’t wait for him to show me, a
nd I believed he would once we got to know each other more.

  “Okay, yeah, that is cute,” Stefan said.

  “Mm. He is cute.” My voice slurred at the end, and I barely held my eyes open. “Oh, man. I’m exhausted.”

  “Duh. You just had your first heat. You’re going to need a lot of sleep.”

  “Huh? Really?”

  “Mm-hm. Rest up. Are you coming home tomorrow?”

  In my tiredness, I felt confused for a moment. Home? Wasn’t I already home? And tomorrow… Oh god, I was leaving the next day. My heart ached, and my wolf made it known he didn’t want to go anywhere. I sighed and told Stefan I’d call him as soon as I got in, then took myself to bed.

  I hated how big Casius’s bed felt without him in it. I closed my eyes for just a moment, but the next thing I knew I was slipping into a nightmare. My mom’s hands were tight around my throat, and I couldn’t breathe—until Casius pulled me from her grasp and held me tight to his chest.

  Jolting wide awake, I felt Casius’s arms around me, and he was kissing the side of my neck. I breathed him in and sighed in relief as my whole body relaxed. I felt safe in his arms knowing he was beside me, holding me. Casius pulled back to smile at me. In the lamplight, he looked downright exhausted.

  “I’m sorry I was gone for so long, baby.”

  I rubbed my eyes and yawned, then shook my head. “It’s okay. Are you okay? You look as worn out as the souvenir t-shirts in your closet.”

  Casius barked a short laugh. “I should have known you’d go snooping. Discover anything interesting?”

  “Just that I’m even more into you than ever before.”

  “Really? Nothing incriminating?”

  I chuckled and shook my head sleepily. “Nope. Didn’t I look enough?”

  Casius just grinned cheekily. “You’ll have to try harder next time.”

  I ran my hand over his hair and down the back of his neck. “Really though, are you okay? You look exhausted.”

  “Mm. I’m fine. I’m just… It’s been a hard day.” His face fell and his voice trembled. Suddenly alert, I sat up to look at him seriously.

  “What’s going on?”