Page 17 of Rejected Alpha Mate

I’m no stranger to loss, like when Dominic and I lost our father. But he’d been sick for a while—long enough for us to mentally prepare for his departure from this earth. That’s why it was easier to grieve his loss.

It’s harder to grieve the loss of someone who’s still alive. Walking. Breathing. Disrupting my life and tearing my heart apart as if it isn’t a precious muscle that holds a precious frequency of love that should be unconditional.

Grunting my frustration under my breath, I turn to the side so the mirror reflects the zipper I'm supposed to pull up. The dress feels too much, like I'm going to drown in the layers, and the zipper is the metaphorical seal on the fate that awaits me after I go through with this mate bond slash marriage ceremony.

My fingers tremble as I lift them to the zipper, and as soon as my fingertips touch the cold metal, my mind lurches into a memory I thought I’d banished, and my vision is seized as if the memory is projected into my mind’s eye.

***

Last Summer

The service closet in the Crescent Moon Pack’s training center is small, and I should be feeling claustrophobic, since I have a fear of tight spaces. The fear’s been there ever since the latch on my wardrobe door snapped while I was hiding inside, playing a game of hide-and-go-seek with Dominic when I was seven. It took my brother only five minutes to find me, but those five minutes felt long enough to develop a severe aversion to small, confined spaces.

Somehow, it’s gone now, vanished the moment Nicholas pulled me into the closet after his training session, delectable and sweaty as he pushed me against the wall and conquered my lips.

He rolls his hips between my thighs, allowing me to feel the prominent bulge of his rigid manhood against my clothed core. I moan into the kiss, the sensations rushing through my veins already enough to bring me to the verge of climax. Deftly finding the zipper on the back of my dress, I feel him pulling it down between passionate kisses and heavy breathing.

The two weeks of our stay in Wells have nearly come to an end, and while Nicholas and I can’t keep our hands off each other, we’ve agreed not to go all the way. That hasn’t stopped him from pleasing me in other ways, with skillful hands and an expert tongue, and he’s been respectful enough to accept that I wasn’t ready yet. But every time we have these secret rendezvous in the most spontaneous of places, I feel myself getting closer to the leap.

Especially in moments like these. He’d been training, and I’d been watching from the bleachers, my eyes only on him as he graced the field with moves that he’d probably mastered during his time in black ops.

Our eyes met for a brief moment that was enough to ignite a raging fire in my core, and he’d excused himself from the field, calling on one of the other members to take his position, before he jogged toward me and nodded to the walkway on the side.

We met halfway down the alley between two sets of benches, and he’d grabbed my hand and led me to this service closet.

That’s how we ended up here. Mentally, I’ve deduced that the way I’m feeling is because he’s my fated mate. It’s becoming harder to ignore the obvious signs that this is true. Since the day we arrived in Wells and my heat emerged, it’s been harder to keep my hands off him, like I’m addicted to the pull I feel every time he’s nearby, and the sensations that tingle in every part of my body every time he touches me.

Even now, his scent arrests my senses, citrus and earthy pine claiming me long before his fangs can claim my neck with the territorial mark of a mate bond. And as he breaks the kiss to stare at me with heady, dark eyes, I bite my bottom lip, briefly contemplating what I want to say.

I’m so sure of it because Cecelia already told me how it was for her and Dominic when they discovered they were fated mates. It would make sense, after all, why I feel the way I do around Nicholas, and why there’s a magnetic pull and an understanding of who my body belongs to, because I know our souls are already one. It would also explain why I have no fears anymore.

The words escape my lips before I can process the thought fully.

“Fate was sneaky, wasn’t it?” I giggle as I card my fingers through his damp blonde hair. “Who would have thought that my brother’s best friend from ops would be my destined mate?”

Nicholas’s eyes light up with instant recognition, but then he exhales and suddenly stiffens like he’d been tasered.

“Wh—what?”

My brows begin to furrow slightly. “We’re fated mates, Nicholas. I’m sure you can feel it, too.”

Nicholas hesitates, gulping as he straightens up, his jaw clenched with indifference that seeps through my spine like a cold flush.

My heart beats unsteadily as if he’d just punched me in the gut. “You don't believe me, do you?”

Nicholas shrugs nonchalantly. “I mean…Donna…we're just having fun, aren't we?”

“Fun? You think this was only fun?” I ask, shaking my head slowly as I straighten up and remove myself from his space, sticking to the wall with my back ramrod straight as my frown deepens.

“Of course, it was fun. Come on, Donna…” Nicholas tries to pull me back, but I flinch away. “You don't really believe we could be mates, do you? You’re still young. You don’t know what you want.”

My ears are buzzing at this point, ringing with my disbelief as I stare at Nicholas’s face, unable to fathom how he’s just turned so cold when I’ve felt how hot he can be.

“Y-young?” I scoff bitterly. “I’m not naive, Nicholas. I’m not an idiot.”

“I never said you were,” Nicholas retorts. “But there’s no way we can be fated mates. I'll never settle down. I don't need a mate.”

My eyes fill with tears, my airways filled with his scent as my heart cracks. Nicholas reduced our time together to “fun,” while I'd been falling for him.