Chapter 1 #2
My cheeks redden in embarrassment. The alpha growls low in his throat, and everyone quits laughing immediately. I hide my smile at his protectiveness. He can sense my discomfort. You can sense certain emotions in your mate. You can tell if they are scared, in distress, or in danger.
From what I have heard, sex with your true mate is amazing, because they were made exactly for you, the other half of your soul. We women are all virgins when we find our mates, but we heal very quickly—so the pain is gone in a split second.
We can also only get pregnant under the full moon, which is kind of fitting, as we are shifters. We don’t shift under the full moon; we can shift any time. Our wolves are a huge part of ourselves. They are right under our skin, guiding us. Right now my wolf wants out, to run with her mate.
My mate.
His hand drifts from my back to my hand, intertwining our fingers. Maverick looks at our hands; then it’s like it sinks in with him. He smiles. “I am happy for you, sis. I knew this day would come, but I am glad that it is with him.” My brother nods at his alpha, not meeting his eyes.
“Want to go talk, Moon?” my mate says softly, and I close my eyes at that nickname, which is for the alpha female. It is a mark of the highest respect and honor.
“Yes,” I say softly, and he leads me away from the other men.
Their eyes are burning into our backs as we head to a house right in the center of the field.
All the cabins are big, but his is the largest. I want to roll around in the lush green grass in the field.
He walks up the stairs and pushes open his door, and I follow him inside his house.
I love it already. It has beautiful cedar wood throughout the place, along with black leather furniture.
“Want to sit down on the couch?” he asks.
We are alone, and I blush slightly under his gaze.
Just because we are mates doesn't mean we are going to jump straight into our relationship. We will do the whole courtship thing even though, in the end, we know who we belong to. Why wouldn’t we enjoy dating, since we never got to experience it with anyone else?
“Tonight, I will take you to town for dinner,” he states bluntly. Like I said, we are dating. I sure as hell am not going to jump straight into bed with him, mate or not.
“You going to say please?” I wink, smirking at him. I will agree, of course, but that doesn't mean I am not going to bust his chops about it.
He laughs. “I don’t say please.”
Oh boy. I blush deeply, catching the double meaning. His hand touches my cheek, and instinctively I tilt my head to the side. Shifters love touch, and we crave it.
As shifters we have all been genetically blessed to be good looking, but he is beyond that. It’s like God had a direct hand in making him.
I lucked out for sure.
Damon
It’s really hard to believe that I woke up this morning thinking I was just adding the first woman to the pack, and now I have my true mate sitting across from me on the couch.
At times, when you’re waiting for your mate, it seems like that day will never come. You get lonely. It’s a curse, in a way, but also a blessing. You never have the baggage of an ex. I don’t have to kill a fucker for touching my mate.
Wait. It hits me, all of a sudden, the reason she is here. “Moon, tell me what happened with the rogue?” I ask her. I need to know so I can kill him for daring to touch what is mine.
She gulps. I probably should not have spoken of it so bluntly, but my beast is howling inside me, begging to know how to take out the threat to his mate. He will not rest until he is dead. I will not rest until he is ripped apart.
“His mate died. I don’t know how, but I was fifteen at the time. He was not affected at all. He walked out of the house the day of her funeral smiling.” She shivers.
I can already tell that fucker has something wrong with him. If you are not affected by the death of your mate, you’re fucked up. Most shifters don’t even survive the loss of their mates.
“Then it started. One day I walked by him, and he grabbed my ass. Hard. I fell to the ground, sick and in pain. The alpha threatened him and sent him out to the woods for a month. He came back a new person, or so he pretended.” She stops and looks out the window to the huge field in front of my house.
“Maverick left and he changed. My brother didn’t know he touched me, because I begged everyone not to say anything. He never found out.”
She pushes her hair behind her ear. “Then he started watching me, lurking outside my house, and being everywhere I was.” Her face falls like she is deep in thought.
“Then he came to me and said he wanted me. I told him that I could kill him, but he didn’t care.
He was going to take me anyway.” Her voice is soft as she relives that day.
I hear a huge ripping sound and see that my nails have ripped the couch. She arches an eyebrow at me, but I don’t say a fucking word.
I am pissed.
She smiles. “Then I kicked him in the dick and bit his ass, showed him not to mess with me.”
I laugh at her spunk, and I am glad that she stood up for herself. But I hate the thought of something like that happening to her. In the shifter world it’s not very common for a man to threaten a woman, especially in that way.
She smiles as she watches me laugh. She is beautiful and tiny. I am six-foot-five and she is around five-foot-three, with long brown hair that reaches her ass. She has freckles on her cheeks, full lips, large brown eyes, and a small nose.
She is fucking adorable.
“What time are we going to dinner?” She pushes her hair over her shoulder. My nose flares at the scent of her. It’s something that is hard to describe. It’s something that is calling to your soul, and it kills you at the same time. It drives you wild.
“Seven o’clock good with you?” I ask her. She nods just as there is a knock on the door. Maverick is standing outside the glass door with her suitcase.
Farren
I open the door, and Mav lifts the suitcase into the house. “I guess this will be needed here?”
Immediately, Damon is at my side. Once you find your true mate, it becomes hard to stay away from each other.
Over a long period of time, it becomes painful.
Damon towers over me, immediately making me feel safe.
I just want to curl up in his arms, running my face up and down his neck, breathing in his woodsy scent.
Damon takes my bag. “Let me show you your room.” He walks down a hallway, and I wave bye to my brother.
I can’t wait for my brother to find his woman. I just want him to be happy, and now that it no longer feels like I’m missing a huge part of my soul, it’s like I can breathe. It’s so strange how your life can change just like that.
He leads me up the stairs. I love his house. It’s wood, but it’s so open with so many windows letting beautiful natural light into the house. My wolf wants to lie beneath a window, enjoy her new home, and rub up against everything, putting her scent in her mate’s house.
He pushes open a door and, right in the center of the room, is a queen-sized bed. I notice doors on the left and the right. “One of them is the closet and the other is your bathroom,” he informs me.
“It’s perfect, thank you.” I smile and roll my bag into my room, and he shuts the door behind me.
When I am finally alone, I let out a deep breath, allowing everything to sink in. I sit down on the edge of the bed and shake my head in pure disbelief as I look around the room. You wait for something your whole life then, in a blink of an eye, it just happens. It’s wild.
Now I have to get ready for my date. I look at the clock on the wall; it’s four o’clock.
“Damon, I am going to take a nap, do you mind waking me at six?” I know he can hear me from wherever he is in the house.
“I will. Sleep well, Moon.”
I smile at his endearment, and I change into a baggy shirt and fall onto the bed. I fall asleep with a smile on my face.
Damon
I listen as her breathing evens as she falls asleep.
My wolf wants to prance around the house because his mate is here and she feels safe enough in our presence to fall asleep.
I sit back on the couch, closing my eyes, after setting an alarm, on my phone, to wake me up at six.
I just want to close my eyes, for the first time, knowing my mate is here.
She is safe and, most of all, she is mine.
That is a fucking blessing. She is a blessing.
My pack is my pride and joy. Many packs don't allow mates to be together if they are not the same breed. Everyone will be welcome here. It does not matter if you are a bear, lion, or wolf. Mates are mates, and mates’ bonds do not discriminate.
It’s time for a change in the shifter world; it’s time to get out of the old and selfish ways.
I drift off to sleep as my mind wanders to a million different things at once. The most important thing is my hopes for the future, with my Moon.