by Regan Ure
I was still stunned by the slap and the realization that I’d found my mate. Scarlett stood unmoving as I watched her struggle with the emotions coursing through her.
My cheek hurt. As small as she was compared to me, she’d slapped me hard. Anger flowed in me and I struggled to keep it under control. Slapping an alpha was never a good idea. We had tempers and that type of action would set us off without thinking.
“Fuck,” Blake said and I noticed him standing beside Scarlett. He grabbed her wrist and yanked her behind him.
Even though logically I knew he was protecting her from me, I couldn’t stop the jealousy that stirred in me at the sight of his hand on her wrist. A possessiveness I’d never felt before took over and I wanted to rip his hand off of her. She was mine.
“Get your hand off her,” I warned in a deadly tone, fisting my hands to stop myself from attacking my best friend for touching my mate. He was my best friend, but she was my mate. She outranked him—hell, she outranked everyone. To me she was the most important person.
Knowing I was about to lose it, Blake released her wrist and held up his hand to show me that he wasn’t touching her.
I watched as Scarlett stared back at me. She was mine and I needed to touch her again. With my eyes still on her, I took a step toward her, but Blake refused to move.
“Calm down and I’ll get out of your way,” Blake tried to reason with me, but he didn’t understand. It was the fact that he was in my way that angered me.
I closed my eyes for a moment and took a shaky breath to try and control the anger building up inside.
“I won’t hurt her,” I whispered, meaning every word I said. I opened my eyes and fixed them on Scarlett.
She was mine and he couldn’t keep her from me. I wanted to reach for her and pull her close. I wanted to touch her so bad that I felt a physical pain at not being able to. She looked at me the same way I looked at her. I was hers and she was mine. We belonged to each other.
“Get out of my way,” I warned Blake, not moving my eyes from Scarlett. “You’re keeping me from what is mine.”
But Blake didn’t move. He had no right to keep me from her.
“He won’t hurt me,” Scarlett assured him as she stepped around him, but Blake grabbed her arm to stop her. Seeing him touch her made the rage grow inside of me again. No one was to touch her. I growled at Blake again to warn him and he released her. If he touched her again I was going to go ballistic.
I watched Scarlett take a tentative step toward me. Her eyes held mine as she took another step closer. With every step closer I felt the anticipation of touching her grow.
Blake remained behind her ready to spring into action if I lost it. He hadn’t found his mate yet so he didn’t understand the connection I’d just formed with Scarlett. There was no way I could hurt her, she was a piece of me. Hurting her would be like hurting myself.
She took one more step and she stopped. We were so close. I could see the uncertainty in her eyes. She was used to being in control and I could see something deeper than she understood pulled her to me.
My hand lifted to her face and I trailed my knuckles down her cheek. Her skin was so soft. She closed her eyes at the feel of my touch. I felt the anger begin to disappear and I felt complete. She was the other half of me and when I touched her, I felt at peace. Nothing I’d ever experienced was even close to what I felt at that moment.
My eyes drank her in. She is mine.
She is my soul mate.
She opened her eyes and tilted her face to gaze up at me. I could see she felt the same as I did, complete. I wanted to feel her skin against mine.
Slowly I threaded my hands through her soft, silky hair as I pulled her closer. My eyes flickered to her lips and I leaned closer. The smell of wild daisies was intoxicating. I’d wanted to kiss her since the first time I’d met her.
The moment my lips touched hers, I felt an overwhelming desire to hold her close and never let her go. She gripped my arms as I moved my lips against hers.
No one else existed as I tilted Scarlett’s face up to mine to get better access while my lips moved against hers. I needed to taste her. My tongue swept across her bottom lip; her lips were so soft. Her grip on my arms tightened and she opened her mouth.
The first taste of her as I touched my tongue to hers was addictive. I twirled my tongue against hers and I felt her pull me closer. I wanted to keep kissing her and touching her, but then I remembered we were kissing each other with an audience that included Blake.
She groaned when I pulled away, ending our first kiss. She was breathless as she still held onto my arms. I liked that I had this effect on her.
I rested my forehead against hers as I struggled to catch my breath.
“We need to get out of here,” I whispered to her. We’d just found out we were mates and we needed time by ourselves to figure things out. I half expected her to say no, but she surprised me by saying, “Yes.”
I turned to Blake who was still watching us from the sidelines with a smile.
“We need time,” I said to Blake who was still smiling as he watched me put Scarlett’s hand in mine. “I’ll be in touch later.”
I knew we were skipping school, but what had just happened between the two of us was more important.
“Sure,” said Blake with a nod.
Not wanting to waste another moment, I walked Scarlett to my car and opened the passenger side. I helped her into the seat before I closed the door. I walked around the front of the car and got into the driver’s side.
As I started up the car and pulled out of the parking lot, I reached for her hand and held it. Just touching her made me feel calm. I liked it.
The ride was quiet. She seemed as content as I was to just be together with our hands touching.
I wanted to take her somewhere where we could talk without distractions or interruptions, so taking her back to my house wasn’t an option. I decided to take her to a place I didn’t tell many people about, a small house I’d inherited from my grandmother.
It wasn’t flashy or anything like that. I could have renovated it but I liked the way it was—small and lived in. It reminded me of my grandmother and it was a place that I went to when I needed time alone or to think.
I’d never brought a girl there before.
The house was secluded, with tall trees lining the dirt road that led to a house surrounded by more tall trees. I parked outside the front of the house.
I watched Scarlett look around and take a deep breath. I was feeling nervous, unsure if she’d like it here. She was used to a certain standard of living that this house didn’t live up to.
I reached for her hand and led her to the door of the house. I reached for the key in its usual hiding place behind a potted plant beside the front door and unlocked the door and stepped inside.
“It’s not much, but I like to come here when I need to be alone,” I said as I entered the house. Normally, I was the only one who came here other than the cleaning lady once a week. She stepped inside after me and looked around the small house. I waited while she scanned the house.
“I like it,” she said, surprising me.
“I thought it would be better to talk here than at the house where there are too many distractions.”
She nodded her head in agreement
I knew her well enough to know that our talk was going to get heated. She was my mate, but she was no pushover. It was something that I liked about her, but I knew there were going to be times that same independence was going to drive me nuts.
I don’t know if it was the way she looked at me or just the fact that I needed to touch her, but I wanted to kiss her again before the fighting started.
“But before we talk, I need to do this again,” I said before I reached for her and pulled her closer. My hands cupped her face and tilted it upward as my lips touched hers.
The urge to move my lips to her neck and mark her as my own was nearly impossible to fight, but I knew she wasn�
��t ready for that yet and there was no way I’d mark her without her consent. I fought against the urge as I continued to kiss her.
I lost myself in the moment, moving my lips against hers. The thought that she was mine made me so damn happy.
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
Scarlett
It was time to talk but I didn’t want to stop kissing him. I’d never felt so alive before and it was hard to break away from him and take a step back. Breathlessly, I gazed up at him, still holding onto his arms to keep me up on weakened legs.
Knowing we were mates was one thing, but touching him and making that connection with him was something so different.
I’d felt attracted to him before but now it was so much more. I cared about him in a way I’d never felt before. It wasn’t an instant love but I wanted to be with him and protect him and I knew he felt the same; it was written in his eyes.
“We need to talk,” I insisted, trying to get my heart to slow down, but standing so close to him just made me want to shut up and keep kissing him. I released my hold on his arms and stepped back.
“Yes… we need to talk,” he agreed, remaining where he was.
I needed to sit down so I took a seat on the comfortable sofa.
“Where do we start?” I asked as I clasped my hands together. This whole experience was so weird. It wasn’t just like I was a girl who liked a guy and we kinda dated to see where it would lead. No, we were mates and we were destined to be together. We had to sit down and figure out what that meant, or at least I did.
I gazed at him as he took a step closer to me. We both knew this conversation wasn’t going to be easy.
“How about we start with why you slapped me?” he asked as he cocked his head slightly to the side.
The answer was going to anger him. I knew he wasn’t going to be happy that I’d hidden the fact that I knew he was my mate from him. I took a deep breath and released it.
“I was jealous,” I admitted as I held his gaze. His self-assured smile widened.
“Jealous?” he asked. He was so enjoying this.
I narrowed my eyes.
“I didn’t want some other girl with her hands all over my mate,”
The smirk disappeared and his forehead creased.
“You knew I was your mate? How?” he asked in a calm voice. It was way too calm, if you asked me. I kept watching him, waiting for him to explode with anger, but he remained calm. Then I noticed his hands had tightened at his sides. He wasn’t calm at all.
I stood up and showed him the birthmark on my hip. He walked over to me and his fingers traced over the two teardrops.
“You saw mine when you came to my room to get pain pills,” he murmured more to himself than to me. I sat back down on the sofa as he took a step backward.
It was like the silence before the storm.
“Why didn’t you say anything?” he asked as he crossed his arms. His voice remained calm, but I could see the hurt in his eyes.
“I wanted a chance to get used to the idea,” I explained. He might not like the answer, but it was the truth.
“How long were you planning on keeping it to yourself?” he asked softly as his jaw tensed.
“A couple of days,” I answered.
“Why a couple of days?” he questioned, looking a little perplexed.
“Blake saw it. He told me I had two days to tell you and if I didn’t, he would.”
“Blake knew you were my mate!” he exploded. The storm had hit.
“He saw my birthmark,” I tried to explain as I stood up, but I didn’t take a step closer to him. He was furious. Normally, I didn’t feel intimated by him, but it was hard to hold my ground when I could feel the anger emanating from him.
“He saw your birthmark,” he repeated in a deadly tone as I watched him try and control the anger flowing through him. “How did he see it?”
He closed his eyes for a moment; it was like he was convinced the answer was going to upset him even more. I gave him a confused look and then I realized why he’d asked the question.
“He saw it yesterday morning when I was reaching for cereal,” I explained to him, a bit of exasperation creeping into my voice. Trust him to jump to the conclusion that Blake and I’d been getting better acquainted, and that’s how he saw it.
I was the virgin, he was the alpha of a pack with all the girls falling left, right and center for him. And he had the audacity to get angry because he thought I was fooling around with Blake?
“So you and he didn’t…” he said, unable to say the words. His anger began to disappear as he realized he’d overreacted.
“No, I’m not like you,” I stated as I crossed my arms and glared at him.
“How are you not like me?” he asked, not sure what I was getting at.
“Not even an hour ago you were getting mauled by another girl,” I said, trying to contain the jealously that I felt as I remembered how he’d enjoyed the attention. “And if I hadn’t slapped you, you’d probably be screwing her already.”
“I thought you had a thing for Blake,” he tried to explain as he held the back of his neck. “You spent most of yesterday treating me like a leper.”
“I don’t have thing for Blake, I was just trying to make sure I didn’t touch you by mistake.”
He was silent for a few moments and then he let out a sigh.
“Let’s forget about what happened before. All that matters is that we found each other,” he said.
“Fine,” I agreed as I nodded. “As long as I don’t have to worry about your conquests coming out of the woodwork.”
“I’m not going to lie to you, Scar, there have been plenty before, but now there is only you,” he softly declared.
I wanted to stay angry with him, but it was difficult when he was so damn sweet. And I couldn’t help the flutter inside my stomach when he called me Scar. There was something intimate about the way he said it that did crazy things to me.
“It’s hard for me to think you’ve been with other guys, but there is nothing I can do about it,” he said. Little did he know I had an empty past when it came to boys; I’d never had a boyfriend. I’d been kissed before, but that had been the sum total of my experience.
One moment of silence turned into another as I contemplated what I was going to tell him.
“Have you had… many?” He asked the question he didn’t really want the answer to. Hell no! There was no way I was going to tell him there hadn’t been anybody. He didn’t get to have the clear mind of knowing that he would be my first when I knew for a fact that I wasn’t his. He’d probably had so many that he couldn’t even count them.
I hated the fact that when a girl slept around everyone called her a slut, but if a guy did the same thing he was called a stud. It was so unfair.
He would find out the truth when we mated but until then I would allow him to think that there had been others. If I had to think about all the previous girls he’d screwed, I’d occupy his mind with my imaginary guys. Fair was fair.
“A few,” I lied.
His fists tightened and then he released them. He didn’t like that one bit. Welcome to my club. I didn’t like to think about all the girls he’d entertained before me.
He paced for a little while before he turned to face me.
“I know this whole werewolf thing is new to you and most people in your shoes would be freaking out,” he began to say. I knew where this conversation was headed.
“And if your life wasn’t in serious danger at the moment, I’d give you the time to get used to all of it, but I can’t.”
I pressed my lips together as he sat down beside me and took my hands in his. I knew he was going to insist I join his pack and mate with him so he’d be able to protect me better.
I knew he was doing it because he cared about me and wanted to keep me safe; I understood that, but there were just some things I wouldn’t be forced into and I had to stand my ground.
“I want you to join my pack,” he said as he
watched me for a reaction.
It wasn’t a surprise. I waited for him to continue.
“It will help me keep you safe. Like Blake explained to you, if you join my pack we will be able to communicate via the mind-link,” he explained calmly, still holding my hands in his.
I could read in his eyes that he was expecting me to fight him on it. Before we’d connected as mates I would have fought him on it but now I understood his need to protect me because I felt that need for him as well. Above all else, I wanted to keep him safe.
Just the thought of something happening to him nearly had me hyperventilating.
“Okay,” I said with a nod to emphasize I was agreeing to it. His mouth dropped open slightly in shock. Yeah, he hadn’t seen that coming.
“I kinda expected you to fight me on that,” he told me as he flashed a lethal smile that should come with a warning, like ‘panties will melt’. I had an urge to reach for his face and press his lips to mine. The constant urge to touch him and have him touch me was very distracting.
“I understand you want to protect me, I really do and that’s why I’m not going to fight you on this,” I explained. I squeezed his hands in mine.
I wondered if he realized my wording meant that although I wasn’t going to fight him on this, I was going to stand my ground on some other things. I’d conceded on this point and I hoped he’d be able to concede on the other ones I wasn’t going to back down on.
“I’ll miss the fact that you won’t smell of wild daisies anymore,” he murmured to me as he tucked a piece of hair behind my ear. He leaned closer and took a deep breath and sighed as he released it. He liked the way I smelled and I couldn’t stop the flutter in my stomach at the thought.
I loved the smell of fresh rain, so I didn’t mind.
“So is joining your pack going to hurt?” I asked as I looked nervously at him.
It just seemed like everything that was connected to the werewolf thing had to hurt: the biting to mate, and the first few shifts when I started shifting into a werewolf.
Was it too much to hope that it wouldn’t hurt?
“A little,” he answered, taking my hand gently into his. He opened my hand and my palm faced upward. “We make a small cut on your hand and I do the same on mine. Once we mix the blood, you become a member of my pack.”
