Chapter 6: The Mate

Lucas had Damon by the throat before I even understood he’d moved.

He slammed his brother into the stone wall hard enough to crack it, and I heard the air punch out of Damon’s lungs and saw his feet leave the ground entirely. I’d expected shouting. I’d expected the kind of argument brothers have loud, ugly, over quickly. This wasn’t that. Lucas’s face had gone utterly still, and somehow that stillness was worse than any rage I’d ever seen.

“Lucas”

Damon choked out, clawing at the hand around his throat.

“It’s me. It’s just, I was only”

“Touch her again,”

Lucas said, quiet enough that I had to strain to hear it,

“And I’ll forget you’re my brother.”

The words landed in the room like something physical. I watched Damon’s face change the shock in it, real and raw, stripped of every ounce of his usual charm.

“You’ve never”

Damon’s voice cracked.

“You’ve never once cared what I did with a woman. Never. Not in thirty years.”

He said it like a wound reopening, like this was less about me and more about something far older between them.

“What is she to you?”

Lucas didn’t answer him. He held Damon against the wall a moment longer, long enough to make sure the threat had settled somewhere it wouldn’t be forgotten, and then he let go. Damon slid down the stone, gasping, and didn’t try to get back up right away.

“Get out,”

Lucas said.

Damon looked at me once more before he left not with the anger from before, but with something more complicated. Then he was gone, and the door hung open where he’d broken it, and it was just the two of us again, breathing hard in a room that still smelled like violence.

I hugged my arms around myself, the marks Mirella had left still stinging, and I stared at Lucas like I was seeing him for the first time.

He pressed his palm against mine, and almost instantly, I felt a powerful warmth surge through my body. His magic, his wolf flowed into me, mending every wound and soothing every ache. Within seconds, it felt as though my entire body had been renewed, The pain that had consumed me moments ago simply vanished.

“Why do you care?”

I asked.

“You don’t know me. You’ve known me for a few hours.”

He didn’t answer right away. When he finally did, his voice had lost the fury from a moment ago, replaced by something quieter, more exposed.

“You’re my mate,”

He said.

I heard the words. I understood them, in the way you understand a sentence in a language you technically speak but have never had to use for anything that mattered. I still shook my head.

“I’m human,”

I said, like that settled it. Like it was an argument he simply hadn’t considered.

“I know.”

“Then that’s impossible.”

My voice rose, panic threading through it now.

“Werewolf mates are supposed to be your own kind. That’s what everyone says.”

“I know,”

He said again, and something in the way he said it flat, almost helpless told me he’d been arguing the same thing with himself since the moment his wolf had first spoken that word in the arena.

“Then why me?”

I demanded.

“Out of every woman in that arena, every woman in this empire why would your wolf choose a human he’s never met?”

I expected an answer. I expected the certainty every story about him had ever described ruthless, controlled, always three steps ahead of everyone else in a room. Instead, Lucas looked at me and, for the first time since I’d seen him standing over that beast with gold eyes and blood on his teeth, he looked lost.

“I don’t know,”

He said.

The admission seemed to cost him something. I watched his jaw tighten, watched him look almost angry at himself for not having an answer, and something about that honesty cracked through my fear just slightly not trust, not anything close to trust, but a small, unwilling curiosity about a man who was supposed to be a monster admitting, out loud, that he didn’t understand the thing controlling his own life any better than I did.

“The mate bond doesn’t choose based on kingdoms or bloodlines,”

He said, slower now, like he was working it out as he spoke.

“It chooses based on something else. Something older than any of that. I’ve never heard of it happening between a wolf and a human. Not once, in centuries of our history.”

He looked at me like I was a puzzle carved directly into his chest.

“Tonight I'll make you mine and no one will ever lay a finger on you again.”

“I will never be yours.”

My voice trembled with anger, but I refused to let him see the fear hidden beneath it. I stared directly into his eyes, refusing to back down.

“You might have my body, but my heart will never belong to a cold-blooded monster like you. I don’t care about the mate bond you keep talking about. I will never give you my heart.”

My chest rose and fell rapidly as everything I heard about him came rushing back into my mind.

“All you care about is using women and then killing them when you’re finished with them. You want to murder me just like you murdered the other seven women, don’t you?”

His expression darkened instantly.

“Who told you that?”

He demanded, his voice dangerously low.

“And where did you hear about those women?”

I said nothing.

He stepped closer, his eyes burning with fury.

“I don’t care what you think of me,”

He continued coldly.

“If you don’t love me, then fine. I don’t love you either. You’re here because my wolf chose you as its mate, nothing more.”

He reached for my hands and grabbed them tightly. His fingers wrapped around my wrists with enough force to make me wince.

“But you are my mate,”

He said through clenched teeth.

“And I will not have my mate wandering around like some abandoned slave. Tonight, I am going to mark you, whether you accept it or not.”

His grip tightened.

“You have no say in this.”

“Let go of me!”

I cried, struggling against his grip.

“You’re hurting me!”

For a moment, he simply stared into my eyes. His anger was unmistakable, but so was the storm of emotions hiding beneath it.

Then, slowly, his fingers loosened.

He released my hands and took a step back.

“Fine,” he said bitterly.

“Suit yourself.”

His jaw tightened as he turned toward the door.

“But I’m done telling you.”

He paused at the doorway and looked back at me one final time.

“Tonight, you’re going to be mine.”

With that, he stormed out of the room, slamming the door behind him.