Page 16 of Unlearning

“After I'd met my mate, he was being so weird around me that I just had this gut feeling that something was terribly wrong. He claimed he had to go to Chicago the next day for a whole month to finish up with school and then he'd come back to our pack and we'd have our mating ceremony. I secretly followed him up there, ‘cause I had seen a woman's photo as his screensaver and the whole thing was just driving my wolf insane. While I was sitting in my car in front of his house during my amateur stakeout, trying to find out what was happening, I was eating potato chips. They used to be my favorite snack,” she sighed dreamily.

“That's when I saw him, my mate, kissing a heavily pregnant woman,” she shuddered. I could hear her heart racing. “All the chips came right back up, I vomited for what felt like 20 minutes. I could never look at them again,” here she stared crying in earnest and hugged herself while staring into the fire. I moved closer to her on the couch and pulled her into our first hug. I gently stroked her back while she cried. She fit into my arms so perfectly.

“Enough of that for tonight, hm?” I whispered after a while.

She looked up at my face, with her eyes unfocused, and I just stared at her lovely full mouth.

“We should probably -,” she said hoarsely.

“Yeah,” I whispered, but didn’t move.

She pressed her forehead into my chin and we remained like that for a few more minutes, then Samantha got up and headed towards her room.

“Good night, James.”

“Good night, Samantha.”

The next morning we walked the trails in comfortable silence for hours.

“I was thinking,” Samantha was the first to break it.

“As one tends to do,” I joked and she grinned at me. My heart swelled at the sight.

“My heat is coming up in two weeks and as you know, last year I went to my aunt's pack for it, and then worked over Christmas. This year I was thinking I should do the opposite, spend my heat here and go stay with them for the holidays. Do you think it would be doable?”

Hearing the word “heat” had actual heat crawling up my spine, as if a hand was caressing my back seductively. I needed to think about something else, anything, maybe Samantha's aunt, bear attacks, expense reports. I cleared my throat.

“I don't see why not. I'll be here over the holidays in any case so I can just do our usual rounds on my own.”

“Thank you so much!” she clasped her hands together and beamed at me. “I owe you one, whenever you need time off I'll cover your shifts, promise.”

I just smiled and shook my head, thinking how there was no way I was taking time off while she was here.

“I really need to do this, they basically saved my life and I've treated them so horribly while I stayed with them after, you know, everything. Next time we go to the City I'll get presentsfor everyone, I am so excited already! If you want to send your brother anything let me know, I'll be paying for extra luggage anyway,” she was already lost in her planning and my wolf was already whining at the prospect of her being away from us for two weeks.

???

The days leading up to Samantha's heat were pure delicious torture. Her aromatic warm sage smell was now mixed with something mouthwatering and ripe, something you want to sink your teeth into and have the juices running down your chin. I kept poking my canines with my teeth and scratching my palms with my claws. I hadn't masturbated this much since I was a teenager. Every time she’d drop off a document in my office, it was a struggle not to run to my private bathroom to indulge in all the fantasies I had of licking her, biting her, bending her over, filling her to the brim, marking her as mine, and imprinting my scent on her. I was painfully hard all the time. It was even worse when we were alone in the forest. There was nowhere to run. Luckily her heat was already clouding her mind enough that she didn’t pay attention to my struggles, since she was struggling herself. Even though I was jealous of her asshole mate, I hated him for leaving her to suffer through heat on her own for so many years.

I prepared the cabin for her, double checked all the locks. Samantha's smell would soon become irresistible to all theunmated males around her so she needed to lock herself in if she didn’t want any company. My wolf was angry with me, he wanted us to take care of her, relieve her pain, breed her; he already had saliva dripping down his fangs, he only spoke the language ofwant.I, on the other hand, would respect whatever she decided, as much as it saddened me that she would be alone and in pain. I left one of my sleeping shirts there, pushed by my wolf. We wanted to lay our claim to her, to leave our scent as a warning to others and as a comfort to Samantha. The whole three days that she was locked in the cabin, I couldn’t sleep. On the last night, I shifted into my wolf, ran to her, howled outside her door and peed around the cabin, marking it as off limits. After hearing her whimpers inside the cabin and catching a whiff of her scent which was at its peak, I ran back into my office and angrily smashed anything I could get my hands on.

When Samantha knocked on my door two days later, the office was still mostly a mess.

“What happened here?”

She looked well rested, unlike me.

“I left the windows open. With the rain and wind we had two nights ago, a lot of stuff was soaked or blown to the floor, I'm still trying to tidy up.”

She narrowed her eyes at me but didn't say anything.

I should probably hide the sage plant before she gets back. I looked at my watch. Only six more hours and then we'll have her back.

CHAPTER 13

January 2017

Samantha, age 27

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