Chapter 1

There were a lot of ways Naomi had seen herself spending her 20th birthday, but curled up against the warmth of her fated mate was not one of them.

Right now, she was supposed to be getting ready with her best friends to go get very drunk at the new campus bar, but she had blown them all off with one message that they all understood. “Can’t make it. I met my mate. Have fun without me”

Naomi knew if she had done that over an ordinary date her friends would have gone ballistic and melted her phone with angry calls and messages but as the mate bond is so special and hard to resist, and they had all experienced what Naomi was feeling themselves they knew that it really wasn’t in her control.

Naomi was shy and reserved, in her pack she was invisible. Spending all her time with her books or her computers the only time anyone, outside of her family, ever spoke to her was when they needed IT help.

Naomi had been quite ill as a child and was indoors a lot, so she spent a lot of time online and taught herself everything form the basics of learning what code was to skills that meant she was offered a scholarship place at MIT at age 17.

Naomi accepted this place and left New York without any return visits to her pack, telling herself it was because she had been so busy and dedicated but really she had stayed away from her hometown for the last few years because she didn’t want to face the man she was in love with.

Or see him find his true mate and know he was forever out of reach. Her parents had died when she was in her early teens and it has been just Naomi and her brother Rhys and he was popular and a Beta in her pack so he was never home so her decision to leave for college wasn't a heard one to make.

As a teenager Naomi had developed a crush on the one guy in town she knew she could never have, the Alphas son Theon. He was her brothers best friend and two years older than her. She watched as he turned 18 knowing he would be able to sense his mate at any time.

Naomi had to endure watching his parents, the Alpha and Luna parading women in and out of the packhouse, in the hopes that they were their sons fated mate and it was becoming almost physically painful for her so when it came time for Naomi to pick a college she did something a wolf rarely did and chose one in another state, away from her pack.

Only her brother understood why Naomi made this decision. She never forced the issue even when the town elders expressed that they disapproved of Naomi's decision to go so far from their protection.

Naomi and her brother Rhys had always been close and even though she didn’t go back to the pack she saw him fairly regularly. Since she had moved off campus and in with her new roommate (that he clearly had a thing for) she was seeing more and more of him, so getting the text that morning saying he was coming to see her for her birthday wasn’t a surprise.

What was a surprise was that he said he was bringing a friend and didn’t say who. Naomi wondered if he had given up on her roommate and was bringing a girlfriend. Or maybe he has met his mate and was surprising her.

Deciding to distract herself before he arrived Naomi got ready to go to the library to do some research for a while. She pulled on some black wide leg jeans and a hot pink vest top and brushed out her straight platinum long hair.

In her pack Naomi had never really stood out, everyone was used to the pale face and white-haired girl fading into the background but here it made her stand out and people admired the almost mystical aura it gave her with her large deep blue eyes And the genuine warmth of her smile. Naomi was oblivious to all this and just thought she was a plain jane melting into the background as she didn’t ever lift her head up to see the people looking at her in wonder.

After a few hours in the library she decided to go home, there was a point where she was surely just torturing herself working to hard on her birthday. At the same time, she got a message from her brother to let her know he was at her apartment.

Excitedly Naomi hurried across campus to see who her brother was with. As she got within about 100 feet of her apartment she caught her brother’s scent on the wind, and then another scent which made her stomach churn with nervous anticipation.

Two pieces of information hit her with that scent. One her brother had brought her mate with her. Two. Alpha Theon was here.