Meet Felix, Your Stepbrother

~Soren~

I can't be someone's mate. No way, that’s not possible. The last time I fell out of love was last year when I was just nineteen. Among all of the reasons that Jacob gave me, one was that my auburn hair reminded him of his late grandmother who passed away at fifteen.

You can see I'm surrounded by fools, and I found him in my neighbor's bed and he didn't say sorry. The idiot said he was helping her hunt for pimples.

I glance up at the handsome devil in front of me.

"Your wolf's sick." I yell, but only a handful of people looks our way. "I’ll run, I refuse, you…you…pumpkin."

Pumpkin?

Did I just call a six-foot-something future alpha pumpkin?

Great Terrific. My insults are as broken as my life.

Felix's eye twitches. Just the left one. And for some reason, that makes him look even MORE unbearably hot, which—no. Stop. Brain, we don’t have time for this.

"Pumpkin?" His voice drops lower, and I swear the temperature drops around us with it. Or maybe that’s just my survival instincts screaming ‘run, you idiot’.

"Yeah. Orange. Round. Useless decorations that people carve up and throw away after Halloween." I cross my arms, trying to look braver than I shiver slightly. My heart is doing that thing where it thinks it’s a drum solo. "That’s you."

He steps closer.

I step back.

My spine hits the wall.

Crap.

“You done?” Felix asks, and he’s close enough now that I can smell him. There’s leather and something woodsy and under it all, that smell that makes my wolf whimper like a frantic puppy.

“I haven’t even started,” I lie, because the filter in my brain that keeps me from saying whatever comes into my head in whatever language pops into my head is dead and gone somewhere between ‘mate’ and right now.

His eyes flash gold. Full gold. His wolf, right there hidden just beneath the surface, and mine — my stupid, weak, never-come-out-for-me-before omega wolf — stirs for the first time in YEARS.

Oh, now you wake up? Really?

"Listen, Siren—"

"My name is SOREN." I shove at his chest. It's like shoving a brick wall. A brick wall that smells incredible and is staring at me like either I'm the most irritating person in the world or he's about to eat me.

Maybe both.

Definitely both.

“Soren is a boy’s name,” he says, and that infuriating smirk tugs at his mouth. "And you--" His eyes trace downward then back up slowly enough that I can feel the movement like a touch, "--you are far from being a boy."

My face is on fire. EVERYTHING is on fire . “And you’re not my mate either, so we’re both disappointed today.” I duck under his arm,keying away from him before I go and do something stupid. Like pass out. Or kiss him. Or both.

He catches my wrist.

The touch is electric. Literally.

Like I’m putting my finger in an electrical socket, only the socket is a beautiful, frustrating werewolf who despises what I am and somehow that makes the moon goddess think that we’re soulmates.

“Where do you think you’re going?”

“Far from you.” I pull my hand away. The loss of contact hurts. It physically hurts. The mate bond is doing its thing already, trying to pull me back to him like a magnet.

I hate it.

I despise him.

I hate that I don’t really hate him, which is THE WORST part.

“We need to talk,” Felix says, and he’s using that voice. The alpha voice. The voice that likely commands other wolves to toe the line.

“We're talking now.Look,words,communication.” I make all sorts of gestures between us. “What I’m saying is I’m rejecting this, whatever this is. We’re done.”

“You can’t reject a mate bond on your own, Siren. It takes two.”

“Stop calling me that!”

“I prefer it.”

I want to scream. Or cry. Or punch him. Maybe all three.

“This is bonkers,” I whisper, and suddenly I’m not angry anymore. I’m scared. Because if anyone finds out—if my MOM finds out—

“‘Let's for once we agree on something."

Felix runs a hand through his hair, and he looks...tired. Frustrated. As stuck as I am.

Good. Misery loves company.

“So, we just put a pin in it? I say. “Right now. You dismiss me, I dismiss you, and we never speak of this again.”

His jaw tightens. “It’s not that simple.”

“Why not?”

“Because my wolf is fucking losing his mind this second, and rejecting you could kill us both.” He says it matter-of-factly, as if he’s making a comment on the weather.

Silence.

Did he just say— _

“KILL us?” I Whisper, tears threatening to spill out of my eyes.

“Maybe. I don't know. No member of my pack has ever been rejected by a fated mate.” He leans against the wall, and for the first time since I collided into him, he looks less like an intimidating future alpha and more like a twenty-two-year-old guy who just got run over by a bus named Fate.

“Okay, this is just great!” I slide down the wall till I’m sat on the ground, knees to my chest. “My mother is going to kill me. Actually kill me. You know what she said before the wedding? 'This is my last marriage, Soren. My LAST. Don’t ruin it." And then what’s the first thing I do? 'Become fated mates with my stepbrother. A STEPBROTHER."

Felix is silent for quite some time.

Then: “Your mom's sort of a bitch.”

I laugh. I can’t help it. It is laugh or cry, and I’ve done too much crying over Georgina for one lifetime.

"Yeah, well. You're an ass, I guess that means we both have crappy family members."

His lips quirks. Just a half smile. "Touché.”

We just sit there quiet in the strange semi-darkness of the side hall, the wedding reception music pounding in our ears from the walls. My life is crumbling and I’m sitting on the floor with a man who believes omegas are essentially servants and he’s my MATE, and none of it makes sense.

“We can’t let anyone know,” I say finally.

"Agreed."

"Not our parents, anyway."

"Definitely not."

“And we just avoid each other.”

Felix looks at me, and something in his expression shifts. Darkens.

“We’re about to live in the same house, Siren. We can’t exactly stay away.”

Oh.

Oh no.

I was not thinking about that part.

We're going to be living together. Under the same roof. With this… this THING pulling us together like gravity.

"Then we ignore it," I say desperately. "Pretend it doesn’t exist."

"Think you can ignore this? " He motions between the two of us, and I feel it — that pull, that magnetic force that makes me want to get closer, to touch him, to —

"I can ignore anything if I try hard enough," I lie.

Felix pushes off the wall, standing. He offers me his hand.

I stare at it.

"What?"

“Let's go. Unless you have every intention of sitting here all night.”

I don't take his hand. I stand up by myself and brush off my jeans.

He’s watching. His expression shutters.

"Right," he says coldly. "Ignore it. Understand."

He rolls to walk away and my wolf cries out. He has turned to walk away my wolf whines.

Actually whines.

Traitor.

“Felix!”

He stops. Does not turn.

"What do we do?"

His shoulders are tense, hands buried in his pockets.

“We survive,” he says quietly. “And we don’t let them find out.”

Then he's gone, disappearing back toward the reception, and I'm alone in the hallway with a mate bond I didn't ask for and a future that just got infinitely more complicated.

I take out my phone. Three missed calls from Georgina.

Yeah.

I'm not going back to that party.

I head for the exit, pushing through the doors into the cool night air, and I don't look back.

But I can still feel him.

I can feel the bond humming under my skin like a live wire even from here.

This is going to be a disaster.