Chapter 6

REID POV

Once our date is over and I am back in the truck, I lean against the driver’s seat, my head tilted up to look at the ceiling.

“What the fuck do I do now?” I ask the air.

I had hidden my confusion, wrangled control of my wolf, and pushed both to the back of my mind for the remainder of the date, so I didn’t look like a complete fool. I’d put on a mask of confidence and acted like my normal charming and flirty self, so she wouldn’t grow suspicious. But now that it was done — now that I had paid the bill, and we’d said our goodbyes and parted ways — now I had to face the truth.

She didn’t feel it. She didn’t feel the bond or scent me as her mate. I’m not sure why. I know she’s old enough — her profile had said she was 22 and no one can feel the mate bond until both mates are 21 or older. But the fact is, she didn’t feel it. I’m not sure how this happened, not sure what I did to deserve this, but it is obvious I am being punished.

Maybe it’s because I mocked the mate bond for so long. Maybe Selene decided to fuck with me by giving me a mate who doesn’t feel the bond.

I’m going to have to look into this more. Find out if there has ever been anyone else this has happened to. I mean, I can’t possibly be the only werewolf in the history of ever whose mate hasn’t felt the bond back. Can I?

“This is all so fucked up,” I groan, starting the truck.

During the drive home, I’m on autopilot, my mind focusing more on my complicated mate bond situation than the roads I’ve driven more times than I can count. I have to figure out what’s going on, have to investigate why she didn’t feel the bond, have to figure out how to get her to feel it.

It will suck — her knowing we’re mates and feeling the bond. But I can’t reject her if she doesn’t feel it. And I definitely can’t tell her she’s my mate if she doesn’t feel it, because there is no way she will believe me. I know I wouldn’t believe me. And I have to reject her. Which means I have to figure out what the issue is.

The other problem I face is who to confide in. Who can I tell? I can’t tell Seb. Or Nolan. Or Wes. None of them will understand. Sure, they all say they’re supportive of my decision to reject my fated mate, if that’s what I really want, but saying that and following through with it when it’s actually happening to me are two very different things.

I can’t tell Haven, because telling her is the same as telling Wes. Everything she knows, he knows, because they don’t keep secrets from each other. I can’t talk to Alpha Harrison or Luna Emily because they’re on another retirement vacation and won’t be back until the week of the wedding.

And I definitely can’t talk to my dad.

I park Wesley’s truck in the garage at the packhouse so I won’t disturb him and Haven at their home, then hop out and make my way inside, stopping in the kitchen to check for any of Cookie’s homemade cookies. I may have had dessert with Taryn at the restaurant, but Cookie’s cookies are legendary, and as much as I enjoy Claude’s food, his macarons do not compare. Only the cookies at Brewed Awakenings even come close to hers. And there is no such thing as too many cookies. Plus cookies are good brain food, which I desperately need.

“Score one for Cookie Monster Beta!” I exclaim as I find a storage container on the island counter full of still warm chocolate chip cookies made with extra chocolate chips. My favorite.

“You’re home early.”

I jump, almost dropping the precious cargo onto the tile floor of the kitchen.

“Don’t do that!” I say, narrowing my eyes at Sebastian as he laughs and walks to my side, clapping me on the shoulder and taking a cookie from the container. “What if I hadn’t caught them?”

“Then we’d be cleaning cookie crumbs off of Cookie’s floor.”

“And we’d likely be running laps in the morning for the mess, since no one cleans the kitchen to her standards,” I say, grabbing two cookies and replacing the lid. “And it’s not early,” I add, glancing at the clock on the stainless steel industrial ovens. “It’s already 9:30pm.”

“That’s early for you,” he points out. “Usually after a night out with a girl, you don’t come crawling back here until after midnight.”

“Part of the deal was I couldn’t sleep with her,” I remind him as I put the cookie container back where I found it and lean my elbow against the counter. “And she wasn’t… my type,” I hedge.

“Your type is female,” Seb quips, feeding me my usual line when a girl tries to claim they’re not my type.

I hum noncommittally, shrugging and eating one of my cookies.

“I have to say I didn’t think you’d go through with it all,” Seb admits, mirroring my stance at the island. “With the date and everything else.”

“I should have made a bet with you about it,” I grumble.

“Too bad you didn’t think of it before!” he laughs.

“Too bad,” I agree.

He stares at me as he eats his cookie, brows raised, eyes expectant.

I grit my teeth together. “What?” I ask. “What do you want?”

“How did it go?”

“It was fine. Claude’s food was delicious, as always.”

“And your date? The female? Tearin It Up?”

“She’s from Silver Ridge. Her name is Taryn. She’s training to be a warrior,” I say with a bored tone, giving him the bare minimum without spilling any other major details about her or what she really is to me.

“Was she pretty?” he asks.

I clench my teeth again, preventing my gut reaction, my automatic response.

Hell fucking yes.

And she isn’t just pretty. She is gorgeous. Legs for days, a smile that lights up the room, rich, dark chocolate skin, and hair like spiraling strands of midnight.

Oh goddess, did I really just think that? Shit, meeting my mate is turning me into some kind of cheesy Shakespeare wannabe.

No, no. It isn’t me. It’s my wolf. My wolf is the one putting those ridiculous notions in my brain. He’s the one turning to mush and writing poetry.

But she really is beautiful. Plus her scent and her personality — her sass, intelligence, humor, and confidence. All of it combined into the form of a woman I couldn’t have conjured up in even my wildest dreams.

Fuck. I need to figure out what is going on and break our bond. Before my wolf’s desires and thoughts become inseparable from my own.

“She was fine.” I shrug.

I shove my second cookie in my mouth before I can say anything more to him on the subject.

Before I come clean and tell him the truth about how she looks and who she is to me.

Before I confess to him that she’s my mate.

He’ll never let me live it down if I tell him. He’ll forever gloat that the blind date he picked for me ended up being my mate. Even though I’m rejecting her — once I figure out what the hell is going on with our bond — he’ll still brag about it to anyone who listens until either he dies or he finds something else to be smug about.

Whichever comes first.

“So, you really didn’t want to tear it up with Taryn?” he teases.

“She’s not that type, okay?” I snap, slamming the black marble counter with my fist, holding back the growl my wolf wants to give him.

How dare he even insinuate that about her? How dare he treat her like an object?

“Dude, chill, I’m joking,” he says, lifting his hands in surrender.

“I’m going to bed,” I say, ignoring him and shoving off from the counter, heading out of the kitchen, down the hall, and up the stairs before I wring his neck for even suggesting I would use my mate like that.

The way I’ve used every other female I’ve ever been with.

That thought stops me in my tracks, and I rest my forehead against the door of the beta apartment, my hand frozen on the knob.

It’s not like those females didn’t know what they were getting when they rolled into bed with me. I’ve always been blunt about what a night with me entails — fantastic sex with no strings attached, no emotional commitment.

I’ve always been respectful, too. I make sure the females have as much enjoyment as I do when we’re together. Sure, there isn’t any kissing, but no kissing doesn’t equal no pleasure. There is always plenty of pleasure.

But now — what happens now? I can’t just go out and continue on in the way I have been. Sure, Taryn didn’t feel the bond, but that doesn’t mean I can still sleep with other females while the bond is still intact. I don’t know for sure that she won’t feel my betrayal, since I don’t even know exactly why she didn’t feel the bond to begin with.

And what happens if she sleeps with someone else? Will I feel that? What if she dates someone seriously from Date-to-Mate, or, goddess forbid, lets Dominic back into her life?

The snarling and growling and snapping of jaws by my wolf in my head at that thought clinches it for me. I have to find out what is going on with our bond as soon as possible. So I can reject her on the next full moon.

The day before Wesley and Haven’s wedding.

“Fuck!” I mutter under my breath, banging my head against the door noiselessly. “This is all such a fucking mess.”

Apparently, Haven’s birth mom has a sense of humor. A twisted one. But, then again, she’s Selene, and a goddess, so maybe her idea of what is funny isn’t the same as what a human thinks is funny.

“Reid, you need to stop spiraling and just go to bed and sleep on it. You’ll think clearer in the morning when it’s not so fresh,” I tell myself.

With that goal in mind, I open the door to the apartment and head inside, only to be stopped in my tracks again.

The scene in the living room shouldn’t surprise me. It’s not the first time I’ve found my dad like this in the 16 years since my mom died, and I know it won’t be the last. But somehow, I am always shocked when I come home to find him like this — passed out cold on our old, brown couch, with bottles of beer and liquor littering the floor and the coffee table.

I close the door behind me, careful to not make a sound, then walk into the living room, pinching the bridge of my nose and blowing out a long breath. I don’t want to deal with this. Not after the night I’ve just had. Not with my racing thoughts and my riled up wolf and the stress both are putting on my mind and my heart. I’m exhausted, and all I want to do right now is go to sleep so my mind can rest and my wolf will stop bothering me.

But the benefits of staying up a little longer to clean up this mess are better than the benefits of getting a small bit of extra sleep, no matter how needed it is.

I move around the living room, making as little noise as possible as I pick up the discarded beer cans and shot glasses and empty bottles of liquor. I take them all into the kitchen, sorting them into the dishwasher and the recycling, my nose wrinkling from the scent of the mixing alcohols as they flow into the drain before I toss the bottles.

I don’t even bother to calculate how much he’s had. I know it’s enough to kill a human if it’s knocked him out cold. Our enhanced healing doesn’t prevent us from ever getting drunk — it just means it takes more alcohol to get us there.

I head back into the living room with a cleaning rag and a bottle of multi-purpose cleaner, and begin wiping down the coffee table and plank flooring to rid it of the stench of his drinks. I pause as I glimpse his hand dangling down the side of the couch, clutching the framed picture of my mom he usually keeps by his bed. The one of her kneeling in the garden, with dirt on her forehead and her worn overalls and under her nails, her blonde hair windblown and messy, and a joyful smile on her face as she laughed at whatever my dad said to her when he snapped the picture.

The last picture he ever took of her before she died.

I slip it out from his fingers and wipe it too, setting it on the coffee table so I can take it down the hall with me when I head to bed. My throat tightens, and it takes everything in me to tear my eyes away from her face, to not let myself get lost in the memories my dad already drowned himself in while I was out.

“Reid?”

His voice is cracked, dry and confused. I glance at him and find him blinking, his eyes open but glassy. He sits up and roughs up my hair and I hold in my grimace, hold back my urge to flinch away.

“What are you doing out of bed, buddy? It’s the middle of the night. You should be sleeping.”

I swallow and close my eyes. He’s not here. He’s in the past. He thinks I am the nine-year-old version of me, instead of the fully grown werewolf I am now.

“I can’t sleep,” I say, pulling the words from memory, repeating the sentences I said so many times in those early years of my life, and so many times after on nights just like tonight. “I miss mom.”

It’s not really even a lie, an act. I have spent countless nights lying on my back, staring up at the glow-in-the-dark stars on my ceiling, the ones she put there for me because I feared the dark, trying to count the rotations of the ceiling fan so I can fall asleep, but never finding that relief.

“She’s just on patrol, like she always is on Friday nights. Go back to sleep, and she’ll be home by the time you wake up,” he says.

“Okay,” I reply in a whisper, getting to my feet and grabbing the picture frame and the cleaning supplies.

He’s lying back down on the couch with an arm thrown over his eyes, already snoring before I even make it to the hall. I tuck the supplies away and slip into his bedroom, putting the picture frame back in the exact spot it’s always in on his nightstand. As though he’d never removed it.

As soon as the frame is out of my hands, I leave his room and head to my own room across the hall, leaning against the door as I close it behind me, pressing the heels of my hands into my eyes as I just stand there and breathe.

I don’t know how long I’ve been standing there, emptying my mind of everything, when my phone buzzes against my leg.

I fumble in my pocket for it, my wolf perking up again, since he knows there is only one person who would try to reach me by text instead of by mindlink.

My mate.

I mean — my wolf’s mate.

I mean Taryn.

I look at the screen, reading the message a few times.

Taryn: Is the offer for extra fighting practice and pointers still on the table?

I know it’s a bad idea. I know I should just ignore the message. I don’t know what possessed me to offer her help in the first place. But before I can gather up my common sense and delete the message and put my phone on the charger, I’ve already sent my reply.

Me: Of course. Just name a day and a time.