Chapter four: The Stripper Mate

He hit the parking lot at full stride and stopped.

The October air came at him cold and sharp. It did nothing. His chest was still a riot, his wolf still clawing at him from the inside, furious at the distance, demanding he turn around and go back.

His human mind had other ideas.

'No. Not her. Not like this'

He'd found her. The one person in the entire world that was supposed to be his. Eight years of searching, eight years of nothing, and the Moon Goddess had dropped her right in front of him.

On a stage. Under a spotlight.

Everything he'd sworn he'd never want.

His wolf didn't care. It had found its other half and it wanted to go back in there and make sure every person in that room understood exactly who she belonged to, but Kadence cared. He cared so much it was carving him open.

He pressed his back against the car and tried to breathe. Inside the club the music kept going. The lights kept pulsing. And somewhere on that stage, a woman with amber eyes was watching the door where a man had just run from her like she was the worst thing that had ever happened to him.

Which, in every way that mattered, she was.

His hands wouldn't stop shaking.

Thirty days to find his mate. He'd done it in one night. And now he was standing in a parking lot coming apart at the seams because accepting her meant walking straight into the thing he'd spent fourteen years running from, and rejecting her meant condemning them both to something slow and unlivable.

The bond didn't care about any of that. It didn't care about his rules, his trauma, his father's face or his mother's crying... it didn't care that she was human, that she danced for money, that she was the living image of his worst fear.

It just cared that she was his.

His phone buzzed.

'Ronan: Where the hell did you go?'

He stared at the screen. Then back at the entrance, where red and gold light bled into the dark.

She was still in there.

'Mate.'

The word wouldn't stop. It rolled through him like a drumbeat, over and over, his wolf underneath it howling in a way that had no sound but felt like everything. It didn't understand why they were out here. Didn't understand why they weren't inside finishing what the Moon Goddess had started. All it knew was that their other half was on the other side of that door, and something was deeply, fundamentally wrong.

Kadence pressed his palms over his eyes and tried to block out her face. Those amber eyes. The way the recognition had moved through her expression, confusion first, then shock, then something that looked like hope.

Right before he destroyed it.

"F**k." The word came out quiet and wrecked. He said it again. Then again.

His phone buzzed.

'Ronan: Kade. Seriously. What happened.'

What happened. He'd walked in there expecting nothing. Maybe a drink. Maybe an hour of pretending his life wasn't closing in on him from every direction. Instead the universe had apparently decided tonight was the night, and now he was outside while she was in there, still on that stage, still under those lights, still being looked at by a room full of strangers who had no idea what she was.

His wolf snarled. His hands curled against the car.

'Go back,' it said. 'She's ours. Go back now.'

He couldn't.

Because if he went back in, if he accepted this, he'd be exactly what he'd spent his entire adult life refusing to become.

His father's son. The man who fell for a dancer and burned everything down.

His mother's face moved through his mind. Luna Mirelle, before she got small. Before she retreated to the northern cottage just to survive. He remembered the sound of her crying through walls he was too young to do anything about. Remembered the way her light had gone out so gradually that by the time he understood what was happening, it was already done.

'I won't do that to someone,' he thought.

But even as he thought it he knew he was lying. Because his father hadn't had a fated mate. Garrison had been weak and selfish and he'd chosen Lydia not because of any divine pull but because he couldn't handle pressure and didn't want to try. That was a choice. A deliberate, repeated, cowardly choice.

This was different.

'She's your mate,' something quiet said in the back of his mind. 'The Moon Goddess chose her for you.'

Did that mean anything? Or was this just the universe testing him, seeing whether he'd learned a single thing from watching his family fall apart?

The club door opened.

Ronan came out slowly, reading the situation before he said a word. He crossed the lot and stopped a few feet away, giving Kadence room.

"Talk to me."

"I need to leave."

"Okay. We can do that." He didn't move. "But tell me what happened first. You were fine and then you weren't."

"I found her." The words came out like something broken. "The woman on stage. That's my mate, Ronan."

Ronan went still. The kind of still that meant he was processing something he hadn't prepared for. Then his expression moved through shock and landed somewhere that looked uncomfortably close to pity.

"Oh," he said quietly. "Oh, shit."

"Yeah." Kadence laughed. It didn't sound right. "That covers it."

"Did she feel it?"

"I saw it in her face." The memory of it hit him somewhere he wasn't ready for. "She felt it. And then I ran."

"Kade."

"What was I supposed to do?" His voice cracked down the middle. "Stay? Accept it? My mate works in a club, Ronan. She's human. She's—"

"She's your mate," Ronan said. Firm. No room in it. "That's what she is. Everything else is background noise."

"Background noise." Something in Kadence's chest snapped. He pushed off the car. "My father tore our family apart for a woman exactly like her. My mother has been disappearing for fourteen years. The twins exist because he couldn't control himself. And you want to call that background noise?"

"Your father destroyed your family because he's a weak, selfish drunk," Ronan said, not backing up an inch. "Not because of who Lydia was or what she did. He made a choice. A terrible one. And he keeps making it. That's got nothing to do with you."

"How do I know that?" The words came out raw. "What if it's in me? What if I accept her and then I become—"

"You won't."

"You can't know that."

"I've known you since we were five." Ronan stepped closer. "You are the most disciplined, honorable, self-punishing person I have ever met. You would never do what he did." He paused. "You know how I know? Because you're out here falling apart instead of in there taking what you want. Your father would never have made it to the parking lot. He wouldn't have thought twice. That's the difference between you and him, Kade. That's always been the difference."

The words should have helped. They didn't.

"What if the pack won't accept her?" Kadence asked. "What if the elders see her and it tears everything apart? What if—"

"What if she's exactly what you need?" Ronan said. "What if the Moon Goddess actually knew what she was doing? What if you're so busy looking at her job that you're completely missing who she is?"

Kadence wanted to believe that. He wanted it badly enough that it scared him. But fourteen years of carrying his father's wreckage didn't dissolve because of one moment, one bond, one woman with autumn eyes who'd looked at him like he was something worth hoping for, right before he showed her he wasn't.

"I don't know what to do," he said. It felt like putting something down he'd been holding for a very long time.

"Then don't do anything. Not tonight." Ronan pulled out his keys. "Come home. Sleep. Figure it out tomorrow when you're not in pieces."

He knew he should argue. Should go back inside. Should at least try. But his body was already moving toward the passenger side, and his mind was too fractured to fight it.

Ronan started the engine. Kadence took one last look at the building. Red and gold light still pushing through the glass. Music still going. Somewhere inside, she was finishing her set. Probably wondering what she'd done wrong. Probably deciding she'd frightened him.

The bond pulled tight across his chest, a physical thing, a rope that distance didn't loosen. He could feel her through it.

Confusion. Hurt. Something deep and sad that made his wolf go quiet in a way that was worse than the howling.

'We hurt her,' it said.

Kadence closed his eyes as Ronan pulled out of the lot.

He knew.