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Austin

He looks so much like Xavier that I can't stop staring. He also looks very young. To young to have already have lost a mate. He is very small. Smaller then any adult male pack member I have ever seen. He is beautiful, just like Xavier was. Now that my wolf has recognized him his scent is overwhelming me and he smells delicious. Like apples and cinnamon. Why didn't I smell him before?

He looks almost scared and my heart starts beating fast. I don't think I can survive another rejection. This cannot happen again. I reached out for him and he flinched at first but let me touch his cheek gently. I could see that his wolf was right at the surface trying to take over. He must have been looking for me. I find myself wondering how long ago he lost his mate and why I don't seem to know him.

"What is your name?"

"An..Andrew Beta Austin."  He tilted his head down in a sign of respect and submission, his brown hair falling into his face.

"How long has it been since you lost your mate?"  His head snapped up at that. I don't want to force him if he just lost his love. He looks so young. Maybe that is why I don't seem to know him. Maybe they just moved here after finding each other. We have gotten some new pack members recently. I don't recall any passing but it is possible.

"Ugh...I have never been mated...I just turned 18 today."

Well now I am very confused. In all of my research I have never heard of such an age gap nor a second chance mate, unless it is a human, being a first mate. There have been a few recorded cases of people over the age of 25 finding mates so that is less concerning. 8 years is a huge age difference.

I feel my wolf pushing forward wanting to mark our mate. He is very impatient. I had saved myself for my mate and after the trauma of losing Xavier I refused to touch anyone in an intimate way. My wolf is burning with desire. I try to calm him with logic as our mate is very young and hasn't shown that he will even accept us. I'm sure he was expecting someone completely different then me.

"I am very confused as I have never heard of a situation we find ourselves in right now. Are you alright?  Can we talk before you reject me?"  I ask tentatively. He has every right to reject me and if he found me on his 18th birthday then he probably has pure blood so rejecting me is a possibility.

"I...don't want to die...I am hoping you don't reject me. I am not fit to be a second Beta. I'm sure I am not at all what you were hoping for.  Please don't think I am like my cousin. Don't lump me in with that coward."

Bile rises in my throat. That is why I don't know him and also why he reminded me of Xavier. Xavier's family is not allowed to interact with me directly so they never approach me and if there is anything they need Elijah takes care of it on his own. Xavier's parents left shortly after the incident but he had an aunt and uncle here still...and a cousin. Of course this must be his cousin. Why would the Moon Goddess punish me like this?  So he is low rank and can't reject me or he will die. This all feels wrong for some reason.

"You are Xavier's cousin? So you know what happened with my first mate?"

I can see him gulp and he looks up at my face. I have a solid 8 inches on him so he has to turn his head almost straight up to look at my face. "Yes I am fully aware of his cowardice and how you almost died too. I am also aware of the vile lies our family believed in regards to same sex mates. My parents are still homophobic assholes who told me they hope that the Moon Goddess gives me a female mate because I am a disgrace but they said they would only accept a male if it was my mate and I was never to bring a man home unless I can prove the Moon Goddess had assigned him to me.  That is why I didn't tell them I could smell my mate because I realized it had to be a high rank wolf and I ruled out you based on what I know of age and second chance mates so I was going to drive to the near by packs to look for my mate. As much as I do not like women I was really hoping it was a women so I would not have to prove to them I didn't just make it up.  At least if it was a male from another pack I didn't know they wouldn't think it was my secret boyfriend that I just waited until my 18th birthday to bring out."

Okay he just threw a lot at me but I found myself smirking because he is incredibly adorable. Even though I had thought Xavier was beautiful when I saw him I did not feel sexually attracted to him but I can already feel my pants tightening as I look down at him. I need to get away from him before I do something to scare him away. I can't fuck this up.

Later at the cafe:

Since higher ranking wolves usually know who their mates are as soon as they turn 18 if their mate is younger than them they will often know who they are before their mate can sense them.  This is another reason why I am shocked I did not realize Andrew was my second chance mate.  As the age difference is usually only a few years an Alpha or Beta only has to wait a year or two for their mate to know who they are.  Take our Alpha for example.  As he is my very close friend on his 18th birthday myself and our other friend, Machie, showed up at his door at 7am with plans to help him track down his mate.  He was older then us so we were excited for this adventure.  Alpha Elijah has always known he was bisexual and did not save himself for his mate so he had tons of experience.  He felt that he wanted to be able to please whatever partner he had as best he could so he slept with as many different shapes, sizes, ages, and colours as he could.  He mostly stuck to humans as the chances of any of us having a human mate were low so there would be less awkward moments in the future if one of his hookups was our mate.  He did not care what the Moon Goddess gave him for a partner, he was good with whatever. 

This is not common to sleep around before you find your mate.  Machie had a serious girlfriend for a while and they had had sex but he felt so guilty towards his future mate that he broke it off immediately and I know he had secretly hoped she was his mate to appease his guilt.  As soon as the door opened Elijah looked straight at Machie and with the calmest voice I had have heard said "you are my mate".  Machie would be turning 18 in a few months so he obviously could not confirm this so he just stared.  Machie was much like me where he had only been physically attracted to women but did not care either way what the Moon Goddess felt was best for him.  Later Machie confessed to me that he was very intimated by the sheer amount of experience Elijah had and did not understand why he would think that his future mate would like that he had all of this experience.

Elijah and Machie sort of dated without all of the intimacy until Machie turned 18 and it was confirmed they were mates.  Once they were connected as mates you could not keep them off of eachother and I was often very uncomfortable in their presence.  It took years for them to calm down with their constant need to be humping.  When we were all 24 they welcomed twins via surrogacy, one genetically Machie's daughter and one genetically Elijah's son.  I became their crazy uncle who spoiled them rotten.  Machie stepped back a bit from the second Alpha role to become a full time father, not wanting a nanny to raise their kids, and we selected a pack member to promote to the new Gamma position to help ease the strain on our Alpha and myself.

It may seem that the Moon Goddess forces a sexuality on us but that is not really how it is.  How to explain this.  Our wolves do not have a sexual preference or a specific gender and we refer to them by our preferred gender for ease.  They just do not care either way, hence why they can have a mate based on what the pack requires at the time as long as it will fit us.  The Moon Goddess does try to pick mates that match what our human sides prefer, which is why there are same sex mates amongst the lower ranking wolves even though this is not required for pack advancement.  If a male mate is required for pack growth but the Alpha, Beta, or Gamma's human side is not receptive then a mate is just simply not chosen.  I know I said all of us higher ranks find our mates at 18 but that is not 100% true.  I know of one pack where the Alpha was an openly gay male who was mated to a female and everyone thought he would reject her but, like I mentioned, if the person is not receptive the Goddess would not even chose a mate at all.  He accepted his mate even though females had never attracted him at all and they are actually very happily married with multiple children.  His Beta, a female, was never assigned a mate.  It is assumed that with how their pack was at the time they needed more female mates and she was not receptive to a female partner so she was never mated to one.  She did find a love match with a male and marked him but that pack's second Beta is a female selected from the ranks and the mates of the two Betas hold the Gamma rank in their pack in order to hold the harmony needed for their pack.  Even if the person is receptive the match can be rejected but a mate will not be chosen for the higher ranks at all if it is felt by the Goddess that what is needed will not be accepted.  A good pack leadership team understands why a mate is not chosen and either removes the person from the position or comes up with a solution like the pack mentioned in my example.  It is all very complicated and I can understand how the Goddess can make a mistake here and there with how messy this can all get.

The fact that Andrew thought that I would reject him, or rather would be turned off by his lack of size or presence was almost adorable. Yes he was very much on the small size, in fact one of the smallest fully grown males I had ever seen, but even without the mate bond I thought he looked perfect. I am most definitely attracted to him on a human level not just on a wolf level, which is very strange for me. Through all of my research I had learned that the most likely reason I was mated to a male even though I had never been physically attracted to them was more due to a pack need so my wolf was drawn to a male due to our current pack structure and growth. That means that my more human tendency to prefer woman was more or less overwritten by the much more important requirements of our family. This is perfectly acceptable to me and I am 100% okay with this.

I do know I found Xavier beautiful on my human level so I imagine that is why the Moon Goddess chose him for me as my human side would appreciate him to some extent. Now as I am thinking of Andrew and I am seeing how I do not just find him beautiful but I am becoming aroused again as I think of his eyes I realize that maybe I have just never seen the correct man to stimulate me physically.

In my research I did come across some ancient writings of theories that the Moon Goddess was close when choosing a mate. People quickly squashed this but some suspected that if your true mate was not quite old enough, or you were not quite old enough, she would get confused and assign you a close relative to your mate thinking it was your mate. This stemmed from some couplings finding themselves being attracted to their mate's family members, which should not be possible, or their second chance mates coming almost immediately and being a relative of their lost mate.

As I look at Andrew I wonder if he was actually my mate all along and because he is so much younger than me the Moon Goddess got it confused. A thought crosses my mind. If I was a sick person and at 18 knew that my mate was a 10 year old boy and could not control myself what could happen to that boy? This is one of the main reasons why it is suspected that we are almost always within a few years of each other when we are mated. Also to have to wait 8 years for my mate to come of age, well really only 6 since the legal age is 16 but still, would be torture for my wolf. Maybe that is why I was unable to tell that I had my second chance mate all these years? Maybe the Moon Goddess realized her mistake and did not want to torture me so with the long wait for him? But how much more torturous would it have been if I had given up and found a love match to mark and then found him? Or even worse, moved away and left him to feel that he had a mate that he just could never find. Although if I had moved far enough the mate bond never would have activated and he would have been none the wiser. He would have never been given a mate and would have probably just waited until he was 26 and found himself a love match. This leads me to wonder how he even feels about his mate being a male. I know how his family feels about homosexuals after everything came out about Xavier so I hope he will be open to this match.

This is all to much and I need to return to the pack house to try and get some sleep.