Page 30 of Wolf Fated

“Mitch?” I croak in a strangled whisper, unable to tear my gaze from his nude, thickly-muscled form.

I should scream. I should run. By all accounts, this man–this thing–is a dangerous monster who just coldly murdered another living creature in the most savage way imaginable. My brain knows I should be fleeing in blind panic.

Yet my body refuses to obey. My muscles are frozen in place while rapid, panicked breaths scorch my lungs in ragged bursts. All I can do is stare at the man I’ve just made love to and try to make sense of this insanity.

“Sarah.” Mitch’s voice is a low, gravelly rumble utterly at odds with the tender baritone I’m used to. His eyes plead with me, begging for understanding or absolution. I can’t tell which. “I know you’re afraid. I know this is...this is a shock. But you have to know I would never harm you. You’re my mate. I’d die before letting anything hurt you.”

The word ‘mate’ echoes through my mind like a silk caress, raising goosebumps and making my pulse thunder in my ears. My arms come over my chest, trying to cover my nudity before I realize I’m shaking my head in reflexive denial.

This isn’t happening.

It can’t be.

I’m hallucinating or dreaming or something because men can’t just shape-shift into towering wolves. They can’t rip out another being’s throat and bathe themselves in its blood. Every panicked instinct is screaming at me to get away but my feet remain rooted to the ground.

“I don’t...I don’t understand,” I stammer, wishing my voice sounded braver and stronger instead of on the verge of hysteria. “What are you? What...what just happened?”

Mitch rises slowly from his crouch, movements cautious and palms raised in a gesture of peace. His expression is more tender than I’ve ever seen it, as if trying to gentle a wild animal.

“I’m a wolf shifter, Sarah,” he murmurs in that same low rumble. “A human with the ability to transform into an animal. And you...you are my mate. My fated partner chosen by the Wolf Shifter Goddess herself.”

I gape at him, at a loss for words. Part of me wants to dissolve into hysterical laughter or burst into terrified tears. Instead, I hear myself whispering in a trance-like daze.

“Your...mate?”

A look of such profound yearning flashes across his face that it makes my already erratic heart skip a beat.

“Yes,” he breathes, taking a half-step closer. I flinch and he stops like I’m a cornered rabbit about to bolt. “You are the other half of my soul, Sarah. The missing piece without which I will never be whole. I know you must feel the beginnings of our bond, even if you don’t recognize it yet for what it is.”

I swallow hard, my throat clicking dryly. Part of me desperately wants to deny his words, to insist he’s utterly insane.

But how can I, when an ember of something molten yet ineffable flares inside me? When a place inside me clicks into alignment, something spiritual that’s never felt quite right until this very moment?

Subconsciously, my fingers drift to the streaks of blood splashed over my throat as images of his powerful, furred body ripping out another wolf’s life blaze through my mind. My chest seizes with the beginnings of hyperventilation.

“I...I feel nothing,” I force out in a thin whisper, hoping it will make this madness stop and knowing with sick certainty that I’m lying. “I think you’ve got the wrong person. I’m not…not your mate.”

The devastated look that washes over Mitch’s expression makes my heart lurch in a way I can’t begin to describe. “No,” he rasps hoarsely, agony coating the single word. “No, fate never gets it wrong, Sarah. You are...were destined to be my mate the moment you were born. Nothing can change that. Not even denial.”

A frantic giggle bubbles up my throat at his words, quickly spiraling into a panted wheeze. Everything in me screams that the universe has made some catastrophic mistake.

Yet that newly-awakened part of my soul resonates with the ringing truth in his statement. It knows without doubt that he speaks only fact, no matter how insane it seems on the surface.

I clutch my head in my hands, hysteria bubbling up and threatening to overwhelm me. “No,” I choke, rocking on my heels like a broken thing. “No, no, no. This isn’t real. This isn’t happening...”

Because the alternative–the alternative is too huge for my fragile human mind to accept.

I’m distantly aware of Mitch trying to speak again, to offer reassurance or explanations that will never make sense. All I can do is struggle to breathe past the crushing weight in my chest.

When I finally pry my eyes open again, there’s a look of such profound desolation on his face that it pierces me to my core. It’s the anguish of a mate rejected, an agony I can see mirrored in his devastated eyes.

I can’t stay here. I can’t face this impossible reality and the rapidly-splintering shards of my old life. Choking on a sob, I whirl on shaking legs and stumble in the direction of the cabin. Of home and safety and anything resembling normalcy.

“Sarah, wait!” Mitch’s anguished shout follows on my heels as I half-run, half-stumble my way through the shadowed trees. He moves to catch up, and then seems to think better of it when I flinch away from his reaching hand.

I shove through the door of the cabin and up the stairs, bile rising in my throat when I see the rumpled sheets of the bed where we made love not even an hour ago.

My entire world has been turned inside-out in the span of a day. The man I thought I knew has been revealed as some kind of supernatural being. Something not human, and therefore something I should be afraid of.

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