Page 4 of Owning His Mate

His piercing ice-blue eyes bore into me as he keeps me pinned beneath him, and the anger that was flowing inside me is replaced by another feeling, one I can’t name.

My heart thuds from something that is not fear, and my wolf is intrigued. I try to understand what is happening as I come up on my elbows, intending to scrabble back from him, but I can’t move.

Mate.

The word drifts through my mind, filling my belly with complete and utter dread.

No, no,no!

This cannot be happening. I am not bonding with anyone, let alone this snarling asshole. And he is snarling, but he’s not in control of this situation any more than I am.

I can sense the power building around us, drawing from the very foundations beneath us, and I know what’s coming.

This can’t be happening.

Make it stop…

I can hear Archie and Beck yelling, but I don’t pay them any attention. All I can focus on is the speeding of my pulse as it hammers within my chest walls.

The wolf holding me down smirks as he roams his gaze over me, and then he says the one word I never wanted to hear from a male.

“Mine.”

That is the catalyst needed to start the bonding process.

Pain explodes through my body the moment he growls that word. My back arches off the mat as my insides feel as if they are being torn apart. My wolf is baying and howling as my head spins, and my vision winks in and out.

Through the haze descending over me, I see he let me go and is now on his knees, his body twisting and flexing as his shift takes hold.

This isn’t happening.

This is a nightmare.

Pins and needles attack my extremities, fizzing through my hands so painfully I hold them against my chest as if it can ease it somehow. I know what is coming next, and I know there is no way my wolf can come out.

I’m latent. At my first moon ceremony, I nearly died trying to shift for the first time, and in this moment I feel like I might be about to use up another of my nine lives.

My spine snaps as my bones try to change, attempting to push into the shift. I’m jolted forward, my fingers digging into the soft mat beneath me as I try to ground myself through the shattering agony cutting through me.

The scream that tears out of my throat as my skin pebbles, sweat beading on the back of my neck and between my breasts, is guttural. I’m going to die. No one could survive this much pain and live. Every inch of my body feels as if flames are licking it.

Collapsing face-first onto the mat, my limbs are boneless and my head pounds as the shift thankfully begins to ebb. Every breath I take is ragged, and my throat is raw, as if I have swallowed razor blades.

I freeze as a large black wolf presses its nose into the crook of my neck, the coarse fur tickling the underside of my chin.

But that is nothing compared to the panic I experience as an awareness that is not mine fills my mind.

It feels foreign and wrong as his presence strokes through my thoughts, invading places he has no right to be.

Waves of possessiveness and the need to own me completely turn my stomach. I don’t want a mate, and I sure as hell don’t want him. I don’t even know his name.

The wolf pulls back, and I watch helplessly as he shifts into his human form. I don’t attempt to move; I just keep breathing in the rubber scent of the mat beneath me, my body exhausted from my failed shift.

I can’t do this.

Strong hands press against my shoulders, and with a gentleness that doesn’t seem possible, I’m turned onto my back. The vargr who is inside my mind is leaning over me, and his heavy brows draw together as he takes me in.

No.

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