Chapter 8

“I’ve been looking for you since I turned fifteen. I was already finished with my training and I could focus on looking for you. I went everywhere. By the time I was twenty I had lost hope. I thought you were dead, that my mate had died before we met,” he says, his voice is a lot softer than before, but still deep, and the vibrations from his chest it sending shivers down my spine.

“I don’t understand,” I whisper.

I find myself leaning my cheek against his warm chest. He is so warm, even though it’s cold outside. He is very aesthetically pleasing, too, which is of course a bonus, but I’m still unsure if I even believe this. Did he spend five years looking for me?

“What don’t you understand, little mate?” he asks.

“Everything.”

He sighs, but somehow his arms tighten around me.

“Why don’t we do some explaining today, then? Dad told me you didn’t know that much, but I thought he was exaggerating,” he says, and pulls back from me. His hands are on my shoulders now, and he holds me, staring into my eyes with his deep green ones. “Come on, let’s shift. I’ll take you somewhere, and I’ll tell you all about being a wolf.”

He smiles, and takes another step back. His smile turns into a grin, and I’m pretty sure he’s gonna shift right in front of me, so I grab his hand, before he gets too far away. I suddenly feel embarrassed, too. Everything that’s normal for these people are so foreign for me, even though we’re the same.

“Azaire,” I plead, feeling weird when his name leaves my lips, “I can’t.”

“You can’t what, mate?” he questions, stepping closer to me again, brushing some of my hair away from my face.

“I can’t shift,” I tell him, and look away. It’s so embarrassing, when he can obviously do it so effortlessly. “I only shift when there’s a full moon, and even then I don’t do it on purpose.”

Silence.

More silence.

Fuck. I shouldn’t have said anything. I should have let him shift and run wherever he wanted, and then I should have gone up to my guest room, packet my stuff and left. It gets harder to leave every second I’m out here with him, for some reason.

“Ride on my back, then,” he suddenly says, still smiling at me.

Then I hear his bones breaking. I swear I didn’t hear that yesterday when Alessandro and Marco shifted in front of me. It has to be because my ears are so focused on him, right? I don’t even get the chance to tell him no, before he’s standing in front of me on all fours covered in thick, brown fur, with specks of white in them here and there. He looks so big and strong, and I’m suddenly even more aware of my own fragile state. He stares at me, just waiting for me to do something, I guess, and I kind of wish I could communicate with him somehow. I don’t speak wolf, do I? Is that even a thing?

I reluctantly take a step forward, and pet the fur on his back, reaching up. He isn’t too big, but he is still taller than me, he’s probably the same height as he was in his human form, but still, I’m not going to be able to just jump onto his back.

As if he reads my mind, he lays down on the grass, and I can hear every straw bend and break once again. I close my eyes, totally aware that my “mate” is waiting for me to climb on top of his wolf-back, but it’s really surreal that this is happening. I thought that I was the only one of my kind for five years. This is a little too much, but right when I’m about to turn around and leave him, he turns his head around, and looks at me. His green eyes look even deeper now, and they remind me of the human that just a few minutes earlier begged me to stay, because he spent so many years looking for me. Or, he didn’t look for me, he looked for his mate, who happens to be me.

I take a deep breath, and grab a hold of the fur in his neck, before I swing one of my legs over his back. It feels sort of degrading having to do this, like I’m a little human who can’t do shit, and has to rely on her werewolf-boyfriend for everything. Except, he isn’t my boyfriend, and I’m not a human.

Maybe I should stay. Just until he can teach me to use my werewolf-abilities at will, and then I’ll go.

The wolf underneath me stands up, and I hold on tight. He didn’t tell me to, but I feel like I have to hold on. Hopefully, it doesn’t hurt him too much. A little is okay, because he is being really forward with me for no reason, so he probably doesn’t mind. He walks slowly at first, towards the edge of the forest, but as soon as we’re past the first tree, he starts running.

He’s fast, and I can feel the muscles in his body move as he runs through the forest. I immediately laid down on his back, and gripped around his neck when he increased his speed. I’m still holding on for dear life, as I watch the blurs that once were trees go past us. Or, we’re probably the ones going past them..

Finally, he slows down, and lays down on the ground. I’m still holding onto him, and I’m about to roll off, when his bones starts cracking again, and he shifts back into a human underneath me. I stare at him in shock, as he turns around on his back, making me lay on top of his stomach, and I quickly move away from him. It somehow feels more intimate when he’s human, like I’m not supposed to do that at all.. He chuckles once, after I’ve gotten to my feet, and I mumble some words I’d rather not repeat, in my shame for holding onto him like that.

I feel mortified.

“It’s okay, little mate,” his deep voice says, as I hear him stand up too. “I just hoped you’d want to hold onto me like that, like this too, but I guess we’ve got a long way to go.”

“Ass,” I mutter, a little louder.

“Snarky. I like that,” he says, and I clamp my eyes shut.

Fuck. I hoped he wouldn’t like it.