Chapter 2

He shoved me to the ground, hands heavy on my body, and fear bubbled in my belly for a moment…but then I lost myself to his mouth on mine again.

Max's words looped through my head like a chant. Stephanie's laugh, pitched to carry. After being told over and over how unattractive I was by all of the people who were supposed to love me, having this man touching me with such desperation made my head spin. His hands found the waistband of my pants.

His hands slid down my waist, thumbs pressing into the dip above my hips, and the noise I made wasn't a sound I'd ever heard come out of my own mouth. High. Breathless. Nothing like me.

Good. Tonight I didn't want to be me.

“Please,” I keened, wriggling against him.

He stripped my pants down my legs and threw them over his shoulder, and then he started to paw at his own, trying to get his fly open. I stared up at him, panting hard. Was I really doing this? He hadn’t said a word to me…but I was going to let him do this?

But then the wind blew, and his scent hit me again, and all of my worries slid away. He pushed his pants down his thighs and put a hand on my knee. “Yes?” His voice was low and gravelly.

Trembling, I let my knees part so that he could slide between them. “Yes.”

He leaned over me, slanting his mouth over mine again, and my breath hitched when his skin brushed against mine. His lips skimmed over my cheek and down my throat, and I moaned, clutching at his shoulders, at the tingles of sensation running through me.

My knees buckled. He caught me — one arm around my waist, lifting me like I weighed nothing.

Nobody had ever made me feel small before. I was tall for a she-wolf, broad-shouldered, stronger than half the males in my pack. But this man dwarfed me.

One of his hands appears between my thighs, and my breath hitched in my chest at the feel of his fingers against me. It was foreign…but so good. He worked his fingers over me, driving me up, up, up until I thought I might burst.

Every part of me was on high alert, so ready for whatever was going to come next, when he pulled back slightly. “Turn over.”

Shivering, I turned over onto my front and, largely, let instincts take over. From behind me, I heard a groan of appreciation and preened at it. Knowing that he wanted me was addictive and went straight to my head.

I felt him against me, and then with a breath, he pressed inside. There was a flair of pain, but then everything went warm. My hands gripped the grass beneath me as he drove us to bliss with every snap of his hips.

He pitched forward, curving along my back, and as things reached a fever pitch, I felt his teeth against the bend of my neck, against the scent gland that I had largely ignored for most of my life.

I sucked in a breath, tearing at the earth beneath me, and then his teeth sank in.

For a moment, I was giddy. I lived for the way he groaned against my neck and the feel of his hips rabbiting against mine.

And then, I went rigid.

One bite. That was all it took. For chosen mates, the mark took repeated attempts, sometimes failed entirely. But fated mates — the ones blessed by the Moon Goddess herself, the kind so rare most wolves lived their entire lives without encountering one — a single bite sealed the bond.

No. No, no, no.

Having a mate meant the end of my dreams. It meant being dragged off to his family and bearing and raising children.

Absolutely not. That was not my life.

His lips brushed my neck, and I sighed, hating how nice it felt. “Turn over,” he purred. “Let me see your face.”

Had he really not seen me that well?

My heart raced. If he hadn’t gotten a clear look at me, that meant that I could escape. I felt him slide away from me, and then he collapsed onto his back beside me. I glanced over and saw that his eyes were closed. His chest rose and fell, rhythmic. He was sleeping.

Even with the dull ache between my thighs, I slowly climbed to my feet and located my pants. Keeping my eyes on his sleeping form, I pulled my pants back on, and then I headed back towards the tree line.

Every step away from him—from my Fated Mate—made my chest ache. The place on my neck where he Marked me burned. But I had to keep moving.

It took hours to pick my way home, I slipped through the back door, praying for silence, but Stephanie was in the hallway. Dressed to the nines in a red silk gown with her hair pinned up in curls, she looked like she'd walked off the cover of a magazine. “Oh my God,” she laughed. It was a cruel sound. “Were you out all night?” She sniffed, imperious. "That's pathetic, Melinda. Even for you."

I pushed past her without answering.

"I'm going to the Royal matchmaking banquet tonight," she called after me, adjusting a diamond earring.

It was a huge step-up for my twin.

“You have a lot to learn from your sister, Melinda.” My father had come out of his office at the sound of the door. I could feel his eyes on me, and his lip curled into a sneer. “She has a realistic plan for her life.”

Yeah, because becoming a Princess is much more realistic than becoming a Royal Guard.

"Ungrateful," my father said.

Stephanie simpered at him. “At least you have me, Daddy.”

“You’re right, darling.”

Ew. I went around them and up the stairs to my room. After the hottest shower of my entire life, I threw myself into bed and slept for fourteen hours.

While my sister was gone to her banquet, and my father was ignoring my presence, I took my dinner to go and tracked down Frannie.

“Do you know if it’s possible to hide a Fated Mate?”

Frannie looked up from the medical text that she was reading. “Why would anyone want to do that? Fated Mates are so rare nowadays.”

“I mean, say I have this friend—”

She chuckled. “Like you have any friends besides me.” Then, after a moment, her eyes went wide. “Mel, what did you do?!”

Telling Frannie about the encounter that I had in the forest was absolutely humiliating. “I can’t have a Fated Mate,” I said finally. “That’s not what I want.”

Frannie adjusted her reading glasses and fidgeted with her hair. “No one tries to avoid their Fated Mate, Mel,” she said. “It’s a one-in-a-million chance even finding them.”

“There has to be something.”

Frannie frowned. “I’ll do some research,” she decided finally. “We’ll find a way, all right?”

As we enjoyed the food I had brought with me, I saw my sister and her retinue head back towards the house. She looked to be on the verge of tears.

“I should go,” I said, standing up. “Princess Stephanie looks like she’s in a huff.”

Frannie agreed. “And not in the usual way, either.”

My sister didn’t have setbacks. So, what happened?