Filed to story: The Alpha’s Pen Pal Book
My breath hitches and a tear falls from my eye, caught by his knuckle before it hits the pillowcase beneath my cheek. I push myself up to a seated position and reach for his cheek, touching it with my fingertips. Fireworks erupt on the pads of my fingers, and his eyes close as he takes a breath through his nose.
“I don’t understand,” I say, lowering my hand.
“We’re mates,” he says.
I scoff and swat at his chest, rolling my eyes. He flinches and chuckles a little, raising his hands to block my attempt at a second hit. “I mean, why didn’t we know before, Captain Obvious? It’s been three weeks since we met.”
His mood switches from playful to serious in a heartbeat, and he leans back in his chair, running his hand through his hair. “Someone has been slipping your pack an odorless, colorless, tasteless potion in your food. The potion mutes the mate bond. That’s why you couldn’t feel the bond. Because you’ve been ingesting this potion for who knows how long. Probably since you moved there.”
“My whole pack?” I ask, and he nods. “Are you sure?”
“Dr. Russo gave them all the antidote too—the members who are here, at least, and the ones at Ben’s pack are being given it as well—and several of them have already found their mates since receiving the full dose.”
“You saw them?”
“No, I’ve been in here since I brought you home—here—but I’ve been hearing the growls and shouts of ‘mate!’ for the last few hours. I don’t know if you’re aware, but us wolves can get quite loud when we claim our mate.”
“Why would someone do that?” I ask, shaking my head. “Why block everyone’s mate bonds?”
“I don’t know,” he says with a shrug.
He scratches his neck, tugging at the collar of the white T-shirt he’d put on at some point after he brought me here—he’d been shirtless the entire drive, his warm, muscular torso protecting me and cradling me, providing me with safety and comfort. He eyes me with caution, his hands rubbing on his thighs and clasping together as he releases a slow breath.
“Wait…” My brow furrows and I tilt my head to the side, staring at him as he looks at his hands. “You said ‘That’s why you couldn’t feel the bond.'”
He swallows and nods, still looking at his hands, and a stronger wave of guilt, bitter and heavy, hits me from his side of the bond.
My hands shake, and I clench them into fists as I replay every moment we’ve spent together. Every touch, every word, every utterance of “my girl,” my brain trying to figure out what my heart already knows.
“You knew?” I ask, and he closes his eyes but nods. “How long?” He flinches again—although this time he’s not playing, not teasing me, and his lips pinch together. “How long have you known I’m your mate?”
“Since I saw you sitting in Rendezvous on our first date,” he says, raising his eyes to meet mine.
A clawed hand wraps around my throat, squeezing and gripping it. My mouth gapes, opening and closing, unrecognizable sputtering noises spilling from my lips. “But… you-you—“
“Taryn—” He reaches for me, but I scoot back on the bed, glaring at his hand.
“Don’t.” I raise my finger in warning, swallowing against the vise grip on my throat.
He squeezes his hands together, his knuckles turning white from how tight he holds them, a muscle in his jaw ticking.
“You’re telling me,” I say, my throat still tight, “you’re telling me, you knew the entire time we’ve known each other that I was your mate?”
“For some reason, the ingredient that is supposed to keep me from feeling the bond between us didn’t work on you. You have some kind of immunity or something. I don’t know. Dr. Russo isn’t sure—“
I growl, and he swallows, cutting his words short. “And you didn’t think to tell me? You didn’t think I deserved to know?”
“I—“
“You sat there on our date and agreed with me that it was a good thing we weren’t mates. You went on to explain how having a mate wasn’t for you, that you’d reject your mate. Your mate, who was sitting with you, eating a meal with you!” I look up at the ceiling, blinking. “You lied to me, Reid. What else was a lie? What else did you fake?”
“Nothing!” he exclaims, leaning forward in his chair, his hands coming to the edge of the mattress. “I never lied about anything else. Everything—everything else I said or did was true and genuine.”
“Then why lie about our bond? Why not tell me?”
“I was going to. That’s what I wanted to talk to you about last night, why I asked you to hear me out.”
“Okay, but why not before? Why didn’t you say anything to me on our date? Or after? Or any of the other times we’ve seen each other over the past three weeks?!”
“Because I didn’t know what else to do! Because I’m an idiot who thought I knew what I wanted, who thought I could figure it all out on my own so I could tell you and reject you on the full moon. But I was wrong, Taryn. I was so wrong.”
“About which part?”
“All of it.”
We stare at each other. Our hearts beat in unison, but the space between us is miles wide, uncrossable, a vast desert with no end in sight. The muscles and veins in his arms bulge as he grips the mattress. The raw vulnerability in his eyes and face is still there, and the waves of guilt, regret, sincere remorse, and sweet love flowing to me from him tell me the truth behind his words.
But I can’t think straight with him here, with his scent surrounding me, and his blue eyes staring at me, and his handsome, powerful body taking up my breathing space. He says he was wrong, but that doesn’t change the truth. He lied to me, and, changed heart or not, he’d planned to reject me.
The itching returns to my eyes, liquid lining the rims and welling within. My lip trembles, and my voice comes out weaker and shakier than I want it to. “You should have told me. You shouldn’t have kept that from me. I deserved to know the truth, but you took that choice from me.”
He lowers his chin to his chest, his hands fisting into the blankets on the bed. “I’m sorry,” he says, his voice quiet.
“Get out,” I whisper, pointing at the door. His head snaps up, and he opens his mouth, but I don’t let him get a word out. “Go. I can’t—I need—“
“Taryn—“
“Get out!”
He lifts his hands in surrender and stands, towering over the bed with his imposing presence. My wolf whines as he retreats, but I clench my jaw and tense my body, resisting the impulse to take it back, to jump on him and drag him onto the bed with me.
The pain in my heart from his betrayal, from his lies, is more than I can handle. It wraps around every cell, pumps through every vein in my body until it’s all there is within me.
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?