Filed to story: The Alpha’s Pen Pal Book
But no one from our pack feels this way. It’s outsiders who have doubts, although those doubts are erased by the time they leave the pack, once they see her poise and emotional strength, and how her mandatory ballet classes for all pack members have improved our pack’s agility and flexibility. Imagine their reactions if they knew she was Selene’s daughter, too.
So no. It isn’t the mate bond making me angrier than a honey badger. Although it may be amplifying everything. It is ramping up my protective instincts, that’s for damn sure. But that’s all it is. Just the mate bond.
Just my wolf.
“Um, Beta Reid?”
I whip my head around and glare at the teenager interrupting me. “What?!”
“I need the catalog,” she says, eyes downcast and feet shuffling on the floor.
I blink, then look behind her at the line of high school and college-aged pack members standing in a line, waiting to use the device I’ve been hogging as I zone out and think about my mate.
I mean Taryn.
“Oh,” I say. “I’m sorry. Here you go.”
I grab my notes and my pen and walk away, heading towards the stacks to find the books I need.
REIDMonday arrives all too soon—yet somehow not soon enough—and I pace the training grounds after the elite warrior training, nausea bubbling in my stomach and sweat pooling in my palms and dotting my forehead. My wolf is ecstatic because he knows Taryn is on her way, but I am markedly less enthusiastic about seeing her again.
What if she can feel the bond now? How will I explain myself? Will she think I was trying to use her, to get a night of sex out of her before I reject her?
And why do I care so damn much about what she thinks when I am going to reject her, anyway?
“Focus, Reid.” I rub my temples and force myself to stop my incessant pacing. “It’s just training, and if she didn’t feel the bond on Friday, it’s highly unlikely she will feel it today.”
The hairs on the back of my neck prickle, goosebumps forming over my whole body, even though the cold seldom affects me. The scent of peonies, strawberries, and peaches floats towards me, stronger with each passing second.
I swear, time stands still as I turn my attention to the exquisite she-wolf walking across the field towards me. Everything quiets, and the world fades away until she is the singular focus of my attention, until nothing else matters.
Her rich, smooth skin stands out against the white of the snow beginning to stick to the ground in heavy layers. She’s piled her gorgeous raven spirals on top of her head in a high, messy bun, exposing her long, thin, unmarked neck to every male in the area.
My wolf growls in my mind, and I grit my teeth to hold the sound in. It doesn’t matter. She’s not ours. Not really. Not for long, anyway. Just until the full moon. Then I will sever our bond.
She has her arms crossed, hugging herself and protecting against the chill of the breeze, but she lifts one hand in a tiny wave when she sees me, a hesitant smile lifting the corners of her mouth. Her hot pink long-sleeved top ends in those cuffs you can put your thumbs through, and as she lifts her arm, I can see a sliver of skin exposed between the high waist of her black leggings and the hem of her cropped top, and I suppress another growl.
Doesn’t she realize every male in the vicinity is staring at her? Ogling her?
Myself included?
She’s almost reached me. The distance between her body and mine is measurable by a yardstick. Little invisible sparks of electricity ignite and flash within that diminishing space, and with each step she takes to close that distance, their intensity grows until I feel them fizzling and popping just above the surface of my skin.
But the magic fades with an abrupt scratching of a vinyl record.
Or I guess some asshole werewolf’s voice.
“Taryn Campbell?” Holden Tyler asks, jogging up to her. “What are you doing here?”
“Oh, my Goddess! Holden?” Taryn says, her smile widening and her arms unwrapping from her body to wrap around his neck instead as they hug.
His arms are around her waist, his hands grazing that sliver of bare skin, and he squeezes her with all his strength, both of them laughing.
I stand corrected. He’s not an asshole werewolf. He’s a dead asshole werewolf.
My hackles raise but I hold everything in, my body so tense and frozen I’m sure I look like a jungle cat about to pounce. Or a deer in the headlights. Or some weird hybrid of the two.
And yet again I find I am reminding myself and my wolf: We. Are. Rejecting. Her.
“Beta Reid offered to give me some pointers and be a fresh set of eyes for me so I can move up in ranks and be an official warrior in my pack,” Taryn says as they break their embrace.
“So you came all the way to Northern California for that?”
“No, I live in Silver Ridge now.”
“Since when?”
“I moved up there a little over a year ago. My parents lived there before they moved to Southern California.”
“I had no idea!” Holden says, setting his hands on his hips.
I stalk the last handful of steps until I’m right next to Taryn, my eyes boring into Holden’s skull, my arms crossing over my chest as I raise a brow at him, my body and jaw as tight as they were when Taryn and Holden hugged. “Holden. Don’t you have somewhere to be?”
Holden glances at me and flinches under my ire and my heavy stare. “Well, we’ll have to get coffee or something and catch up some more another time, Taryn. I have to go patrol the grounds right now.”
He waves at her and gives me a nod before he scurries away. I can visualize his brown wolf in my mind, ears flat against his head and tail between his legs after angering his beta. My lips twitch with a silent, smug laugh at the image and the preening of my wolf in my head from protecting our mate from another male.
Then I remember Taryn is right next to me. And Taryn doesn’t know we’re mates. And I don’t want a mate.
Goddess, damn it.
Thank everything under the sun and the moon she is oblivious to my whirlwind of emotions, to my sudden about-face. She’s just standing there, waving goodbye to Holden as he leaves.
New Book: Veiled Desires of the Alpha King Novel
Dayson was the alpha of the largest pack in North America. Powerful figures from other packs sought to offer gorgeous girls as potential mates for Dayson. He steadfastly rejected these advances, he was not a pawn to be manipulated. But eventually there came a mysterious girl he could hardly say No. Who was she?