Chapter 25
Julian
“Shit!” Aiden breathes again, amused disbelief immediately morphing into uncontained panic.
“Yeah,” I mumble, as I watch him flit through the same emotions I had when I realised what was happening.
Naturally, Aiden and I have been getting more intimate, but at some point, things took a left turn, where just once wasn’t enough.
I excused my reactions on being a first-timer, but Aiden isn’t as inexperienced as me, so what’s his excuse?
Alex claimed he’s just a horny fucker who’s obsessed with me, but as much as I wanted to believe that, I couldn’t shake the feeling that something is up.
A rut was the first thing that came to mind—an increased libido and urge to mate one’s mate as alphas made sense, but ruts were only supposed to occur in response to an omega’s heat.
Neither of us was an omega, so a heat was the only other option.
The only problem was that the alphas didn’t go into heat. Or so I thought.
“It shouldn’t even be possible. I know. That’s why I left earlier,” I explain as I cut into Aiden’s mental spiral. “I went to the archives to look into it, but I didn’t say anything because I didn’t want to freak you out if it wasn’t.”
“But it is?” he asks with widening eyes. “Possible?”
“According to the archives, yeah,” I reply with a poorly hidden wince. “Alphas can technically go into heat or rut with other wolves, it’s just rare because we usually mate with our selected partners before it has the opportunity to start.”
“But because we’ve been taking things slow …” Aiden pieces together as it sinks in.
“It’s started,” I confirm.
“Shit,” he says again, and if I thought he was panicking before, I was clearly wrong.
“Shit. Shit. Shit,” he echoes pacing the length of the living room at least three times before he groans his favourite word again. “Shit!”
A panicked Aiden isn’t something I’m familiar with, so I don’t know how to calm him.
When reality set in for me, my first thought wasn’t how I’d tell him, but how the pack would react if they found out.
If, not when, because my first instinct was to keep this to myself.
They might see it was as thing—further confirmation of a healthy bond between their alphas.
Or, and more likely, they’d be concerned it was yet another example of how abnormal we are.
When I focused on the latter, my parents’ warning from only a few mornings ago rose to the surface with unforgiving urgency.
If Oliver was still here, you would’ve discovered that you were meant to be Aiden’s luna on his coronation day.
If I were Aiden’s luna, there would have be no question about which side this heat was coming from.
An uncomfortable shiver runs through me before Aiden suddenly spins to face me with wild, dark eyes. My heart jumps as I wait for him to say as much.
“What are we going to do, Julian?” he blurts instead.
“What?” I manage, barely breathing.
“What are we going to do?” he repeats, slower but just as urgent. And I … relax.
My fears aren’t anywhere on his radar, because whether or not I’m his equal doesn’t even cross his mind. Maybe one day it will, if someone else planted the seed, but for now, there’s nothing but trust in his eyes as he looks at me.
I clear my throat as I blink quickly, thinking. “Well, there are options when wolves are in heat and don’t want to be influenced by it. Some stay away from each other—”
“No,” Aiden dismisses before I can finish. “We’re not splitting up.”
“I’m just stating our options, Aiden,” I promise, but it doesn’t lessen the irritation in his eyes.
“And it isn’t an option,” he declares, stepping towards me. “We’re staying together. We’ve done all of this together, and that’s not changing.”
My heart flutters, pattering a new tune in his name that makes it that much harder to breathe.
“I know,” I say, while I try to think past the excitement his words stir in me. “We can barely stay apart for a school day. There’s no way we’d make it two weeks, and that’s two weeks if we’re lucky.”
His shoulders relax at that, but it’s not long until he’s pacing again.
“We can’t ignore it,” I continue, leaning against the counter. “Clearly, we’re already slipping under its influence, and the longer it goes on, the worse it’ll get.”
“So then, what?” he asks as he stops to face me. “What do you think we should do?”
It’s my turn to stiffen.
So far, the panic of potentially being in the middle of a heat had kept me from thinking about it properly. But with Aiden’s expectant gaze pinned on me, I don’t have that luxury anymore.
I face it as a problem, because problems—I can solve.
The first step is treating this as if we’re in both a heat and a rut, because while they’re similar, there are distinctions we can’t afford to ignore.
Heats, in the simplest of terms, are a hormonal shift that encourage wolves to mate.
A werewolf’s more primal instincts surface and remain at the forefront until mate bites are shared and the bond is completed, or it runs its natural course.
Ruts are practically the same for alphas, only they don’t end until the alpha mates the omega that triggered it.
Assuming our bodies decided the other was our omega, and Aiden and I were in a rut, it wouldn’t end until we completed our mate bond. If it was a heat, then our desires for one another would only grow until we completed the bond anyway or endured it for long enough that it passed.
There were, of course, strange one-offs recorded; a beta in heat, an alpha in a rut without an omega. An alpha and a human going into heat was supposed to be the worst possible pairing, but this—two alphas in heat—sounds far worse to me.
“We only have one option,” I say when the conclusion settles in my mind.
“Which is?” Aiden encourages as he watches my mind churn.
“It’s pretty simple, really. Heats spawn between mates who haven’t mated yet, and a rut doesn’t stop until the bond is completed, so we do that before it’s out of our hands. We mate.”
It’s not until after I’ve said the words so casually and look up to see a shocked Aiden staring at me, that I realise the weight of what I’ve just said.
‘We mate,’ as in, Aiden and I should have sex.
“It’s the only option,” I defend as all the blood in my body rushes into my face. “It’s coming one way or another, and at least this way, it’ll be on our terms.”
“I don’t want to rush things,” he says, now struggling as much as me to maintain eye contact. “We’re still figuring things out.”
“I know, but we don’t really have a choice,” I reply with a nonchalant shrug that the quiver in my throat mocks.
“We both know we can’t wait it out. If we try, nature will take its course, and we’ll end up so delirious, we probably won’t even remember mating when it does happen.
Not to mention, we might end up hurting each other in the process, and that’s the last thing I want. Doing it before is better, right?”
“Yeah, but,” Aiden starts, then exhales, letting his head fall. “Why is there always something? If it’s not one thing, then it’s another.”
“Because that’s life,” I say, standing and moving into his space. I put my hand on his shoulder before I rest my chin on it. “Something would be wrong if everything was perfect all the time.”
“I call bullshit,” he retorts, and I snort.
“I call bullshit too,” I mumble as I lean into him, pressing our heads together. The next breath we take is an easier one.
Outside the obvious reasons, contending with a heat now feels like a kick in the teeth on top of everything else. We’ve only just become alphas and somehow, we’ve gotten to a point of actually liking each other as mates, but that doesn’t mean we’re at the point of mating.
Sure, it’s where we’re heading, but this speeds up our timeline by light years without giving us the courtesy of an out.
“Do we tell the pack?” Aiden asks only to shake his head. “No, we can’t. Whether we call it a rut or heat, it’ll either confuse them or cause them to doubt our bond.”
“I agree,” I say softly, and he sighs again.
“So, we complete the mating bond soon, and don’t tell anyone about the heat,” Aiden concludes. “We mate.”
I’m not so quick to speak this time, but I don’t have to. I’m sure he hears the way my heart kicks up because I hear his do the same.
Aiden and I have never spoken about mating.
It’s one of those things I figured would happen eventually, but the when hasn’t crossed my mind. I want it though. I want to complete our bond and to be mated to Aiden in body and soul. But I don’t know if he feels the same.
Does he want to have sex with me? To mate with me? And if he did, was it one of those things he just saw as a responsibility, or did he want me?
It’s been a while since I thought of anything between us as a responsibility to our packs, and I’m almost a hundred per cent sure it’s the same for Aiden, so why does saying as much feel like a foreign prospect?
“Can I tell you something?” I ask quietly as my fingers tighten on his shoulder.
He tilts his head, peeking at me from the corner of his eye. “Anything.”
“In case you need to hear it,” I say, breathing in, “even without the heat … I want to complete the mating bond with you.” His eyes widen. “Not because the pack expects it, not out of duty. It would be something I want.” My heart thunders. “It is something I want.”
Aiden draws back, but he doesn’t move away from me. He just stares, his eyes darting between mine with what I hope is interest.
“And I know we’ve been figuring this whole thing out, but I do want you, Aiden,” I add in the quiet. “I like what we have together, bond or not.”
“You do?” he asks, and the hope threading his voice breaks and mends my heart all at once.
“Yeah, I do,” I confirm with a nervous smile. “I want us to mate.”
My heart is raging in my chest, and my throat is so tight I might as well have swallowed cement—but in for a penny …
“Do you?” I ask.