Page 2 of Fated Obsessions

“Can I get some booze?” Lord, yeah, I actually said that, asked it that way. “I-I mean, can I get a Bloody Mary?”

The flight attendant smiled and nodded before leaving. After giving my center seat neighbor another forced smile, which got me an equally tight—and very annoyed—grimace in return, I focused out the window again.

Before long, the flight attendant was coming back with my Bloody Mary. I didn’t even care for alcohol all that much, and didn’t like tomato juice either, but hell, since I was in the mind frame recently of doing things out of character, I just went with it.

First stop was landing in London. I planned on sightseeing for a couple of days before taking the Eurostar to Paris and checking out the catacombs. After that, a few more stops—Germany, Hungary, Poland. Then I’d end my little “vacation” as I headed east and settled on a tiny Romanian village nestled in the Carpathian Mountains.

Sounded pretty cut and dry to me, and despite trying to act like this was the best idea in the world... I was terrified.

I didn’t know the land. I didn’t know the language. And taking this trip was like throwing pudding against a tree and hoping it stuck.

But I’d been at a point in my life where everything else seemed lost. It felt as though I was running around in a circle, taking four left turns and always ending up at the same spot.

If all else failed and this trip turned out to be the worst idea ever, at least I’d have experienced a little more in life.

And that couldn’t be so wrong, right?

Chapter 2

Ren

My beast roamed within me, a terrifying creature that could claw a vehicle in half, take down any living thing that stood in its way, and gave me immense power.

I was a Lycan, one of the many supernatural creatures that inhabited the earth, my very existence known only to some. It was better—easier—to stay hidden, to not let humans know what I was. The weaker species feared too much, discriminated all, and were dangerous not only to themselves, but to anything they didn’t understand.

I stalked the thick Carpathian Montane Conifer Forest, the wilderness my home more than the castle in which I resided in my human form.

I built the castle centuries ago when I branched off from my family, started my own life, and started the lifelong search for my mate when I hit my adult years. To humans, I was nothing but a mere man—wealthy, isolated, reclusive... dangerous. That’s what villagers would say when they heard my name.

Ren Lupineov.

It was safer to let them think I was dangerous, that my arrogance afforded me an air of authority and aristocracy. Let them believe my wealth was passed down from ancestors. For if they ever found out I was a three-hundred-year-old Lycan shifter—able to shift into a horse-sized wolf—they’d hunt me down with torches and axes.

They wouldn’t succeed, of course. I could level anyone and anything that threatened me or mine.

Mine.

That lone word meant more than anything else... and not something I had for myself. And for the last three centuries, I’d been searching for my mate, hoping against all odds that my Lycan instincts would lead my Linked Mate—the one female who was born to be mine—to me.

I didn’t know her name. Didn’t know what she looked like, sounded like, or if she was even on this continent. But I searched these woods every night, went from village to village, town to city, hoping my Lycan Instinct would somehow scent my mate, that I’d smell her and feel thatLinkbetween a Lycan and his mate, that supernatural connection that only a shifter had with his female, tying us together forever.

I didn’t know if she was human, Lycan, vampire, or some other supernatural creature. I didn’t even know if she was born yet, or had passed.

I stilled and brought a hand to my beating heart, rubbing my chest as a sudden onset of pain slammed into me at the thought I’d lost her before I even found her.

No, I didn’t let those thoughts consume me. I wouldn’t. I’d forever search for her. I’d forever stay positive that she was out there and I’d find her.

I stayed in my human form as I stalked the forest, my inner Lycan moving within me. The wolf tattoo that covered my entire back shifted along my skin, moved as the beast pacedunderneath. I didn’t shift very often anymore, didn’t allow the feral creature I housed to run wild. He was hard enough to control within me while I was a human, let alone when he had free reign of his surroundings.

And because he was snapping and snarling for our mate, it made him even more dangerous, destroying anything in his path. He was known to take our hundred-year-old oaks that stood in his way.

I curled my claws inward, the sharp points stabbing into my palms, drawing blood. Even though I was in my human form, I was still fearsome at a towering six-foot eight height, and three hundred pounds of solid muscle. But in my shifted Lycan form?

Nothing could match my strength and brutality.

My animal was front and center, moving right under the surface and showing itself. I knew my amber-colored eyes while I was a human changed to a glowing blue as he made himself known, trying to dominate.

Not today, you impatient bastard.

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