by Anna Santos
I refused to believe I was just a mistake that happened because of the ability to conceive between different races. The theories were plenty, and none pleased me. I didn’t agree with the ancient laws and was glad that mentalities were changing, even if a lot of creatures still saw it as wrong to mingle. Nevertheless, the world was not perfect. There were bad and good people and some in between; therefore, there were people who were liberal about interspecies mating and the existence of hybrids, and there were ones who were not. I, for one, was glad to find a community where all seemed happy living together. But I was letting my thoughts run wild again.
I calmed my heartbeat and took control of my body, hiding my teeth and claws, and then I felt Shane holding me in a tight hug, grinding his chest against my back. I could hear his heartbeat slowing down. We were still on the couch, but I was not touching it. I was floating above it inside his arms, wrapped inside a cocoon of bliss. I could have stayed like that forever, but I knew it was making him tired.
“Are you okay, Shane?” I asked, worried. His breath was extremely heavy. I was not good at guessing, but I thought maybe he was also trying to control his wolf. It reminded me that I would love to see his wolf form. I was sure it was beautiful, but I cast that thought away. Shane was not mine to be romantic about. I had no right to see his wolf. His wolf would probably care less about me. I was not his mate. I was just an entertainment until he found his soul-mate.
I should not think about those things while making love to him. It made me feel sad. I didn’t want to be sad anymore. I had been miserable for the last eight years. I wanted to enjoy life with Shane as long as I could, wanted to have a nice memory of him when I was gone.
“I’m okay… So, can we talk now?” he asked, trying to be funny, and we both started to laugh. He loosened his grip on me a bit, and I was able to turn around and face him. I stared into his beautiful eyes. I caressed the hair near his forehead. His eyes never shifted before me: he had amazing control of his wolf. And once again, the question about what his wolf would be like crossed my mind.
“I should work now…” I said, sighing after a long silent stare from the both of us. It was said with no conviction, though, because I honestly hadn’t any willpower to leave his arms after that memorable sex on the couch.
“You will have time for that. Now you are going to give me your other phone number, have a shower with me, and then we are going to bed. That is, if you don’t mind me staying the night here with you.”
“Spend the night here?” I asked, not expecting to hear that.
“Don’t you want me to spend the night with you?” He seemed disappointed, as if I had just hurt his feelings. I was really clumsy with my words. I felt like kicking myself. The last thing I wanted was for him to have that gloomy look in his eyes; it made me feel like crap. But I was not used to having a relationship like that. I was certainly not used to having someone like Shane. Shane was sensitive, sweet, romantic, and probably a mind-reader. Shane was incredible!
My dad was sweet like that with my mom. They were mates, and they spent their time together, sharing everything, being romantic. I almost felt like crying at that moment, as I remembered them.
“What’s wrong, Anna?” he asked, alarmed by the tears that came to my eyes. I tried to hide them but without any success, because I was still in his arms, and he had no intention of letting me go. “What did I do?” He seemed really troubled by my state. I guessed that he could feel my heartbeat increase and my body shiver. I tried really hard to think about something else and not start sobbing. It was just that I loved them so much that I couldn’t help but feeling emotional.
“You did nothing.” I held him closer, placing my head on his shoulder and taking in his smell and the peace his arms gave my soul.
Why couldn’t he be just mine? Why did he have to have a mate? I was so jealous of her right then! I wanted to belong to someone. I wanted to belong to him. I thought he was perfect. He always said the right words and was sweet and kind. She will be so lucky to have Shane!
Why was I feeling all that need and sudden desire for a soul-mate? I had never been interested in finding a man and settling down to have a family and be a normal girl. My life was just messy and confused. My mission and my real work were all I needed until that moment, until Shane came into my life. I needed to be rational, but at the same time, I was feeling everything except rational. I was feeling sad, needy; I just wanted to be in his arms and hold him really tight. It was the only thing that had calmed me down over the past few days. Why couldn’t he be just mine?
I knew my parents loved me, but why did they make me if they knew that I would never have something like they had: a soul-mate? If only I knew how to get to them, those gods who play dice with our lives, I would beat them senseless!
“I’ll leave if you want me to leave,” he said, as if he had just come to terms with something. I opened my eyes, coming out of my troubled stormy world of thoughts.
“No. I don’t want you to leave. I’m just an idiot like that sometimes. We’ll do whatever you want,” I whispered near his ear, kissing it softly.
I saw the smile he had on his face. That made me feel happy. He was easy to please. I almost laughed at that thought, even if I was confused as to why he wanted to spend so much time with me.
Then I was pulled off of that uncomfortable couch and stood in front of his naked body, fully aware that I was also naked. I couldn’t help but stare at him and felt my body shiver, not from sadness but from lust. I was getting aroused again, and I realized that I had never liked sex so much. It used to be a controllable thing, a hormonal problem to fix during some months of the year. I would normally lose interest after a couple of times. I’d had some good-looking lovers before, but no one like Shane. He makes my blood boil; he woke up every single part of my undiscovered desires, yearnings, and fantasies.
Shane had an intriguing smile on his lips and a really nice glow in his eyes. I was also feeling my whole being glow with happiness. It was utterly weird and wonderful at the same time.
“How big is the shower in this place?” he asked, bringing me to his arms and making our naked bodies touch.
“Not big enough,” I sighed, standing on my tiptoes to get near his mouth and kiss him.
He knew we weren’t going to stop kissing, because he held on to me and lifted me up to carry me to the bathroom. And I had to confess that I loved to be treated like that, like a girl. I liked him carrying me around like it was the most natural thing to do. It felt good being pampered, and I understood how concerned he was about my well-being and feelings.
Chapter Eleven
Anna
I don’t know how he did it, but I spent more time at his place in the two weeks that followed than I did at my motel room. The sex was amazing; that was one of the reasons I stayed at Shane’s place and left my mark all over his bedroom and bathroom. He didn’t seem to mind. It wasn’t just about the sex, though. Shane was amazing to spend time with. He made me laugh and feel happy. He was affectionate and really supportive when I had homework to correct and papers to grade. And he gave wonderful massages. Basically, he was too good to be true.
One of my highlights of the day was to have lunch with Shane at the town diner, Mama Bear’s Diner. We met there because it was next to our workplaces. The other was to finish the day next to him. Haven’t I already said that the sex was amazing? We were always touching when we were together, and it was hard to keep our clothes on when we got to his place at night for dinner. He looked hot in a uniform, even if he normally preferred to wear normal, casual clothes. Who was I kidding? He looked hot in any kind of clothes or out of them!
At school, things were okay, even if the other teachers acted strangely. It was probably because they thought I was the only human among them and didn’t know what was going on there. But they were all nice enough, and I made some friends among the other teachers, like the drama teacher and the cute vampire girl who taught math. Actually, the whole town w
as nice and peaceful. It was as though no one was supernatural at all. Too bad I knew better than to trust first impressions.
The teenagers seemed, at first sight, normal and lazy. There were the jocks, the emos, the popular kids, the outcasts, the geeks, and other types I could not classify. Of course, then we had to divide the groups into wolves, vampires, witches, succubi, other shifters, and the hybrids. There were also a lot of human students from nearby villages, because, even if the school was private, they had scholarships, and let’s face it, humans were like a plague. They existed everywhere, despite the village’s intention to remain free of them or, at least, keep the supernatural knowledge safe from them.
Regarding the teenage hybrids, they were stronger and almost invulnerable, which was what made them respected and, most of the time, feared by other species. Even with the differences, all the students were accepted by their peers. For me, it was actually weird how well they all got along. It was clearly an open-minded community, and it was growing on me.
The principal, James Ward, was extremely nice to me, even while I was pretending not to understand his kind gestures as seduction. He was a charming man, but I was not falling for his twisted game. Maybe he was just like that all the time. He flirted with the other teachers, especially the good-looking ones. He was probably having sex with some of them, but he was not having any luck with me, that was for sure. I was with Shane, and I would be faithful to him. No matter what others would say about my panther side, I wasn’t going to be unfaithful to my boyfriend. Yes, my boyfriend! Because that’s what we were, in Shane’s words. I was his girlfriend, and it felt strangely nice to have a boyfriend as sweet and caring as Shane.
Let me clear up any confusion about feline shifters. They are known for being unfaithful to their mates. They mate for life like werewolves and vampires or other shifters, but they like to fool around. I was not like that, but I knew many that were. Jason was one of them. My cousin didn’t have a mate, because he was a hybrid, but he couldn’t be faithful to a girlfriend (not that he actually knew what the meaning of the word girlfriend was). He had a lot of girlfriends scattered around the country. I was sure that, even if he had a mate, he wouldn’t be true to her or him. But I had no intentions of being unfaithful to Shane while we were dating. Besides, I couldn’t care less about Mr. Ward or any other guy in town, for that matter.
Sometimes, I wondered if Shane was like Jason. But Shane only had eyes for me, and I was clever enough to realize that fact and be amazed by it. While Jason was always on the lookout for the next girl to seduce, sleep with, and dump, Shane was not. There were a lot of good-looking women in town, and he never seemed to be aware of them.
I was letting my guard down because Shane was unlike any other guy I’d dated before. Everybody loved him. They respected him. Even the girls I taught seemed to be jealous of me, because most of them had a crush on him. The ones who were werewolves seemed more jealous than the others, as if they knew something I didn’t. Sometimes, I would catch pieces of their conversation. Normally, it was about how Shane was gorgeous and sexy and how they couldn’t understand why he dated a human. Humans were weak, narrow-minded, and breakable. They weren’t good enough to be trusted, and Shane would eventually have his heart broken. And then they would argue about who would mend his bleeding heart after I left him.
I would roll my eyes, annoyed about my private love life being the subject of conversation at school, and even more annoyed by the fact that the werewolves thought that I could hurt Shane. As if I could really hurt him when they were the lucky ones who had a predestinated soul-mate! They all had a soul-mate. He had a soul-mate, too, whom he would eventually find.
Slowly, every day, that thought whispered darkly inside my mind, louder and louder, ruining my happiness and reminding me that my feelings were getting stronger for him as each day passed. Losing Shane to another woman was something I didn’t want to ever happen. Nothing could make Shane stay with me if he found his mate, though. It didn’t matter how she looked or how old she was: he was hers and she was his. They were part of one another, and I was the one who would get my heart broken, stepped on, and ground into dust. That was why I just dated hybrids or humans. Or, that is, until I met Shane and had my feet swept right out from under me.
Chapter Twelve
Shane
Annabel had been strangely quiet since we arrived home. She had already been quiet in the car, but when we entered the house, the moment I began to kiss her, she gave me some lame excuse about how tired she was. Being tired was the pretext to not making love with me, at least not at that moment. But what was bothering me was not her lack of libido; it was that she was sad and pensive.
I offered to cook dinner, but she claimed that she was not hungry. I offered to massage her neck, but she declined. I almost went out of my mind, trying to understand what was wrong with her and how to fix it.
“What’s wrong with you tonight?” I knelt next to her and pressed her hands to my lips. She sat on the couch, staring at the TV with pensive eyes and a sad face.
“Nothing.”
“You are sad. Did I do anything to make you unhappy?” I wondered. One can never know.
“No.”
“Was it at school? Did something go wrong? Did something strange happen, or did someone say something that made you feel sad?”
“No. School is just fine.”
“Are you homesick?”
“Homesick?” She looked at me differently in some way. My heart clenched inside my chest. “I don’t have a home to be homesick for.” Her words bruised my heart, because she seemed really unhappy, and I would’ve done anything to make her feel better. Besides, I was hoping that her home would be with me. My home was with her, no doubt about it. She had become my whole world.
“You could have a home,” I said gently. I hadn’t talked to her about moving in since the Sunday night I’d almost blown it all with my impatience and had made her think I was a psychopath. Nevertheless, we spent all our free time together, and we just had to get all her stuff from the motel. She already slept there at night and had a lot of stuff hanging around. I loved smelling her in my place and seeing her books, clothes, and beauty products scattered around.
“I think―” She paused and sighed. “All this is a huge mistake.”
I stopped breathing and then gasped as I got up. I wasn’t expecting that. I thought everything was fine, more than fine even. I was head over heels for her. If she intended to kill me with pain, she just had to say that she didn’t want me anymore and that would be it. Living without her wasn’t an option. Not when I’d spent two hundred years waiting to meet her, and I’d almost lost my faith in finding her or believing she existed. My mate had only existed for twenty-three years. She was a human and didn’t understand what a mate was. She couldn’t recognize me as hers and only hers for life. Maybe it was about time that I explained to her that we were meant to be and tell her that whatever was bothering her, we could talk about and fix.
“What’s a mistake?”
“Us,” she whispered, as if she was afraid to say it out loud. She avoided my eyes and moved uncomfortably on the couch. My heart by then had stopped beating.
“Why?”
“It’s getting too intense,” she explained, making me stare at her, eyes wide open.
“And why is that a problem?”
She was so complicated! I could almost see all her walls become reinforced with concrete or maybe adamantium. Yes, I was a Wolverine fan. Not important right now. What was important was that it was hard to make Anna trust me and open up. It was hard to understand what she felt for me. Her words were killing me. Was she already sick and tired of me? Was I not letting her breathe, not giving her the space she needed to feel happy? I knew she was reluctant about letting someone in her life, but I couldn’t help but be hopelessly romantic around her. She was mine!
I could feel my wolf howl from pain inside my head! Please let me listen to what she’s saying.
&nb
sp; “We should just―break up,” she said with a serious face, no trace of feelings for my alarm. She didn’t answer my question; she simply confessed what was crossing her mind.
I could not find anything else to say for a moment. I was panicking at her words, and I only wanted to hold her until she would promise to never leave me. I had to tell her how I felt and understand why she thought we should break up. I had to, before my wolf went all mad and got self-destructive. We loved her.
“I don’t want that. I love you!” I almost felt my voice disappearing. Being rejected by my mate was excruciatingly painful.
“What?” she almost screamed, seeming terrified by my confession. “What?” Now she was actually screaming, and I woke up from my numb state of her rejection.
Damn! It was too soon to say it. I could tell by the panic in her eyes, by how she began to tremble and hold her hands together really tight. But isn’t that what a woman normally wants to hear from a man? I couldn’t let her leave me. If she was feeling insecure all of a sudden about my feelings, I had to fix that. But I didn’t expect her to react in panic to my confession. I really couldn’t understand what was crossing her mind that would make her want to break up with me. We were happy. I made her happy. I was sure of that. So why did she want to leave me?
“You heard me. I love you,” I repeated. The harm was done. I’d wanted to tell her every time we made love. Every time she’d smiled at me.
“That’s not funny,” she said in a serious tone and got up like she was offended.
