Page 7 of Howliday Match

I glance down at my sleeping mate and that hunger roars to life inside me, whipping up like a hurricane and blowing apart all my reasons that I should wait.

But that way lies hell. My mother never forgave my father for marking her before she was ready. Logically I understand the way she felt. The anger a teenage girl had for the almost thirty-year-old man who claimed her without waiting to see what she wanted out of her life. She was pregnant from that first time. The sex was consensual but the marking? No. That was my father’s fault entirely.

On an emotional, spiritual level, I feel what he felt. Heneededto claim my mother. Needed to know that wherever she went, she had his mark and all other shifters and paranormal folk would see it and know that she was his, would smell him on her.

He panicked at the thought that he might lose her and he did something that we all regretted for the rest of our lives. I’m still paying for his mistakes on some level even though my parents are long gone, killed by a car accident when I was ten. I went to live with my cousin’s family and finally saw what a real fated mate-love match looked like. They were so sickly happy that it was enough to make you want to throw up sometimes.

But you couldn’t help but be happy for them. Which is why it’s been a shock to my aunt that her son hasn’t found and claimed his mate yet. Although I’ve got my suspicions that he has found her and he’s waiting for some reason. Maybe the same reason that’s now plaguing my decision-making.

I have a feeling she’s human and innocent too. So although we were raised differently, I think we’re both in the same boat now.

I break into a lope, heading for a small cabin that I’m staying at while I’m in town for the masquerade. I shouldn’t take mymate there because I can only hope that I can control myself, but I need to know that she’s safe and close to me.

I won’t mark her without her consent but that doesn’t mean I can’t try to convince her that I’m right and we’re meant to be.

Fated mates forever.

CHAPTER 6

Helena

Mumbling under my breath, I wake up and roll my head and shoulders, groaning.

“What the hell just happened?”

“You fainted.”

“Holy shit!” My eyes open, my body leveraging off the soft surface so quickly as my head whips around to the dark corner where Raphael sits in a chair watching me.

I turn around quickly, my head spinning and yet everything else in me stilling when I smell his warm, cinnamon and pine smell all around me.

“Where the hell am I and what am I doing here?”

He shrugs. “I kind of already answered that. You passed out and I couldn’t take you back through the ballroom. Every shifter and vampire in there would have been all over me trying to get to you. Fresh blood and all that.”

I shiver and close my eyes, remembering the huge gray wolf in front of me and his deep, dark chocolate eyes. “You’re a wolf.”

“I’m a male who has a wolf inside him that can come out when he wants it to.”

“That seems like a complicated way to explain shifter.”

His dark eyes glow golden in the deep shadows and I shudder again. I can clearly see his wolf under the surface now and it’s a mystery to me how the hell I missed it before.

“It’s a complicated yet simple concept I guess. I don’t know how else to say it.” He stands up and moves closer and the firelight flickers across his big body, dwarfing me in the bed. For some reason visions of him crawling up and across my body and then ripping my clothes off to slide inside of me runs through my brain like some x-rated daydream.

His nostrils flare and I groan, having a feeling I know why. “Can you smell me?”

“Yes,” he snarls, his eyes flashing golden, his voice deep and rough, echoing around us. “You’re like a peppermint candy cane and a sweet tart all rolled into one. And when you’re turned on like you are now?” His golden gaze rolls back and he draws in a deep breath that makes me shrink back. When he talks again, his sharp incisors flash white in the gloom.

“You smell so damn delicious that it’s hard to resist taking you right here and right now.”

“You wouldn’t,” I hiss.

He shakes his dark head and the golden glow leaches slowly from his chocolate eyes. Regret paints his features as his firm, sensuous lips tighten. “Absolutely not, little sprite. I would never mark you or take you against your will.” He leans over me and I sink back into the mattress, holding the soft, quilted coverlet up with white, strained fingers. “That doesn’t mean that I won’t try and convince you to change your mind.”

“Ummm,” I clear my throat and turn my eyes away from the intensity in his heated gaze. “Where am I though? You didn’t answer that one.”

“You’re in the cabin that I rented for this masquerade.”

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