Page 13 of Mated

I sit with her as it happens, stroking her head as her human hair flows from her scalp once more, her muzzle shortening to her cute little nose and her sweet lips. She passes out halfway through, which is a mercy.

I pick her insensate form up and settle her on the couch. She will sleep for a while now. This time I will not leave her. I may never leave her side again. I cover her up with a blanket and put a cushion under her head, wishing I could do more, even though I know there’s nothing more I can do.

Kira is not the only one who has been transformed today. I started this morning as a lone wolf, but she has made me a mate. She has reoriented my world entirely.

I love her.

But love is not enough of a word for it. It completely fails to encapsulate the feeling. I feel protective to a degree I’ve never felt before, even as an alpha. I feel devotion. I feel fear. Fear of loss. Fear of all that could happen to her. Fear as I realize thatone day, something inevitably will happen to her, or to me. I am feeling love of the kind that makes the basic machinations of the universe, the cycle of birth and death feel wrong. Deeply wrong. We should be able to live forever, she and I. We should have always been together, and we should be together for eternity.

I sit beside her, I stroke her hair and her back, and I wait for her to regain consciousness. The day turns to night ever so slowly, fading to orange and then losing color entirely to be replaced with the bright neons of the world beyond our window.

My stomach growls, and I realize I haven’t eaten. I didn’t feel the need to eat. My needs no longer seem to matter as long as she is safe. If I am touching her, I have everything I need.

She stirs next to me, stretches her legs, yawns in a long, slow way that no human ever yawns, and every wolf always yawns. I adore the sight of it.

Her eyes meet mine, filling with confusion as they do.

“What is happening?”

“You’re safe,” I tell her. It is the most important thing for her to know.

“I’ve been having the weirdest dream. It was so vivid. And so…” She blinks. “Where am I?”

“You’re at my apartment. Well, one of them. A sort of cozy bolt-hole. Somewhere people don’t think to find me.”

“Just a subtle basic little place adjacent to the park,” she says, mocking me just a little. I am glad to hear it. It means she’s feeling better.

“Quite.”

There is a problem now. Do I tell her she is a wolf? Or do I let her believe she’s been dreaming all this time?

She lifts the blanket and looks down at herself, then back up at me. “Why am I naked?”

“You were tired.”

Her expression becomes deeply dubious. “I don’t get tired like that. I’d remember leaving the office and being naked in your apartment.” She sits up and runs her hand through her messy hair, looking at me with those beautiful brown eyes that hold so much vulnerability.

“Do you remember what we did in the office?”

A faint blush appears on her cheeks.Yes.

She shakes her head.No.

A lie. Very naughty.

“I don’t remember anything. Did you… I’ve been feeling weird all day. Uhm. I have to go.”

She thinks I’ve drugged her. She thinks she’s been tripping hard. Likely, she suspects that her near uncontrollable arousal at the office was due to this non-existent drug too. I can understand that thought process. It’s a series of logical thoughts leading to a completely logical, and entirely incorrect, conclusion.

I am going to have to tell her the truth, or she will run out of here feeling violated and thinking I am a very different kind of monster than the one I am.

“You were not dreaming. You were experiencing yourself in a way you never have before.”

“You mean you were experiencing me in a way…”

“No, Kira. I wasn’t. You are a wolf. I am a wolf.”

She just barely manages not to roll her eyes. “Of all the excuses a billionaire has made to defile a woman…”

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