All Chapters of How to Catch a Mate: Chapter 21 - Chapter 30

The walk back to the Caravan was a blur. My boots hit the earth harder than they needed to. I was bleeding somewhere, didn’t know where, didn’t care. Could’ve been my soul for all it mattered.By the time I got inside, my duffel was already half-packed. I didn’t bother folding anything. Just grabbed the bare minimum —boots, jacket, a knife I wasn’t supposed to keep, and enough cash I stole from the Alpha’s donation box to survive for a week. Not that I would need it since my dickhead father left me a pretty penny. But I wanted a way to say a silent fuck you Alpha Conan. I had higher hopes for him but after today he just pissed me off. Two middle fingers loaded. One bag. Zero fucks left to give.The SUV the Elders assigned me looked like it had been scraped off the bottom of a junkyard’s boot. Rusted sides. A broken taillight. And it made this coughing, choking noise when it idled—like me, refusing to die just to spite everyone watching. I had every plan to ditch the shitty ride as so

The first thing I felt was her breath. Her warmth against my chest. Soft. Rhythmic. Like she hadn’t just unraveled beneath me hours ago, like the world wasn’t still falling apart one heartbeat at a time. I didn’t open my eyes right away. Didn’t need to. Haylee’s leg was still thrown over mine, her hand sprawled across my stomach like she was claiming territory she already owned. Outside the cabin, birds sang of new dawns and i listened as though it held something i needed to know. Chirping over the low hum of wind slipping through the trees dawn was creeping in slow and kind if I considered how fucked up everything currently was. But inside me? Nothing felt kind. I shifted carefully, untangling her limbs from mine, trying not to wake her. My body ached from the way I’d taken her last night—fast, rough, like I needed to remind myself of something. Of who I was. Of what I’d chosen. But the ache in my chest? That was all Ashlyn. The image of her walking away hadn’t left me. The tw

Ashlyn Eight years later Deacon’s mouth tasted like danger and cardamon. His hand was on my thigh, fingers dragging slow, teasing patterns into my skin like he owned every inch of me. Which, honestly, he might. The man kissed like a man who’d been starved and found his last meal sitting in his lap. Me. I gripped the front of his shirt, yanking him closer, letting my nails dig into the hard muscle of his chest. His groan vibrated through me like thunder. It was the kind of kiss that didn’t just promise sex—it promised sin. Hot, breathless, unapologetic sin. He pulled back just enough to murmur against my lips, “You’re gonna be late, detective.” “Then be fast,” I said before dragging him back down. He laughed,low, sinful and kissed me again anyway. Eventually, I peeled myself off him, cheeks flushed, mouth swollen, legs jelly. My badge was hanging by the door where I left it last night, still looped around the doorknob of our penthouse apartment in Manhattan. Sunli

Ashlyn I knew the knock before it came. How could I not when I heard it most of my life. Not because I was expecting anyone, but because fate had a habit of warning me too late—just enough to brace, never enough to stop what was coming. I opened the door and there stood Curt. Except… it wasn’t the Curt I remembered. This Curt had bulked up in all the right places—arms like tree trunks, shoulders wide enough to carry half the pack’s pups. His jaw was more defined, nose slightly crooked like he’d broken it in a fight and never bothered to fix it. He wore the Sentinel uniform like it had been built around him—black, tight and he looked brutal. Of course I noticed it when I saw him last time but not like now. “Twice in a week,” I said. “Should I be worried or flattered?” “Both,” he said, smirking as he stepped in. “House still smells like wet socks and your darn sage bullshit. Good to know you haven’t changed that much cuz.” “Only on the inside,” I muttered. And then

Haden The wind hit harder the higher I climbed. Cold, clean. Full of pine and frost and the echo of things I didn’t say out loud. Couldn't say. My wolf snarled as his paws hit the dirt in a steady rhythm—hard, fast, brutal. The run wasn’t for pleasure. It never was. Not since Haylee. Not since the world cracked open and bled out all the things I used to believe in. Things weren't supposed to end this way. I knew it before she left, I knew it the day Ashlyn left us. Now it was instinct and a brown Alpha wolf that kept me going. The only way to silence the static that lived in my chest was to release myself to the wolf. He was mostly in my peripheral vision and always in the conscious parts of my head. Hoax chose me when I was a kid and he was a little wolf we both knew we will be Alphas and I needed an Alpha gene and he needed a big host. Many didn't know what happened or how we became shifters. For dragons it was an ancestral curse, born to them. For us it was like the wol