Page 32 of Alpha's Bullied Mate
“What would you know? You don’t even want a mate! What wolf shifter doesn’t want a mate?”
“What, so it’s just one more person I’ll love more than anything, only to lose?” I hadn’t meant to shout that but it tumbled out in fury. “How can you sit there and say you’ll never get what she has?”
“Because I don’t believe I will!” Dakota cried. “And I don’t think I’m wrong for feeling a little self-pity over it.”
“Screw your self-pity. What good does that do to sit there and mope?”
“You don’t know what it’s like to be raised being told that your worth will be found in who your mate is,” she snapped. “I do. And my parents tried to hide their disappointment when Itold them I hadn’t won the Mating Games, but they didn’t do the best job of it. So, yeah, Aidan, I can sit here and be upset that Thalia got it all. The mate, the pack, the cub, theglory. I can want that for myself, too. What’s so wrong with it?”
“Nothing,” I bit out. “I just think you’re so fixated on wanting a mate that…” I stopped myself in time but she caught onto me.
“Thatwhat?”
“Nothing!”
“God, you’re infuriating.”
“You didn’t say that when your tongue was in my—”
Dakota tackled me to the porch, sitting atop me in the way that shouldn’t have been my dick twitch in interest, especially when her ass was flush against my crotch, but it did. She clasped a hand over my mouth. I wondered if I could get away with biting her fingers.
And then the thought of her pushing them into my mouth to silence me made me shudder.
I blinked up at her, a growl building in my throat at the threat of another wolf pinning me down, restricting me, but the sight of her above me was too good to fight. And I let myself think that. I held her hips, and slowly bucked my hips up into her. Dakota froze as if she hadn’t realized the position she’d put us in but didn’t slide off. Not at first.
No, instead she leaned down, her mouth hovering centimeters away from mine. Her eyes flickered over my face, and I had the sense of not being in control anymore. “What were you saying about my tongue, Aidan?”
God, the way she said my name had me biting back a groan. Her hips shifted over me, as if she could feel my growinghard-on. We were outside, where any of my pack might see. All they’d have to do was look through the living room window or several bedrooms upstairs, and we’d be in sight.
“What’s so wrong with wanting a mate?” Dakota asked, still circling her hips. Even through her sweatpants and my jeans, I had the unbearable friction that made me want to tear off her clothes and take her the way she’d almost let me earlier that day. “Do you think it’ll make you weak,Alpha?”
I swore under my breath and bucked her off me completely. I contemplated walking back into the house immediately but only paced down the garden, away from her. Distance. I needed distance. Because—fuck. She couldn’t be on me like that andcallme that. She knew exactly what sly little game she was playing. I chanced a look at her. She sat with her legs parted, on the edge of the porch, her elbows balanced on her knees as her hands relaxed between her legs.
Dakota cocked her head at me, the length of red coils of hair falling over one shoulder. “Well?”
I walked back to her. “Stop this.”
“Why?” She was all coy smiles, and I wanted to both throttle her and kiss her. “Am I getting to you, Al—”
“Don’t call me that,” I hissed but it wasn’t out of resentment. It was because if she did, I’d want to carry her inside and throw her on the couch and devour her whole. Take what the alpha in me wanted—what he sensed the wolf inherwanted as well. I craved her body. I craved her closeness. I couldn’t even take a shower without thinking of her bare breasts pressed against me, of the sharp angle of her hips when her legs had wrapped around my waist. Of how close I’d gotten earlier to sliding into her and finding a home within her body as I’d nosed her mating mark, her scent gland.
I gritted my teeth. I was an alpha. I could hold it together. My pheromones would be going insane, but I could handle this. Even if I could smell her arousal through the thin sweatpants. Even if she could see my desire, evident in the tenting of my jeans.
In the end, I sat down by the pond, hating how uncomfortable and tight my jeans were. I lay back instead and breathed through my nose. By the time Dakota came to lie down next to me, I had calmed down. Her own arousal ebbed, and I could actually stand to be near her. Why did even her close proximity send me into a frenzy? It hadn’t at the start. It only had done since this morning, in the woods, after kissing her.
I had let my desire come out just once, and now these were my consequences.
Her hand shifted so it lay back to back with mine, knuckles brushing. It felt oddly intimate, and I pulled away. Dakota made a noise, almost like a scoff.
“I always wanted to be an alpha,” I told her. Above us, the stars were coming out, and I saw a few streaking stars. When I turned my head, she was murmuring, as if wishing upon them. I wanted to laugh at her, that old, immature instinct to make fun of what brought her peace, but I kept my mouth closed. “But that meant needing to find a Luna. That finding a mate wouldn’t just happen when it happened. They would be an integral part of the pack. That’s why other alphas get Mating Games, but I never asked for them to be arranged. I wanted it to be more natural. I wanted my pack to be my own, not just the next-generation kids I grew up with. I wanted every member to mean something.
“My dad met my mom in a library,” I told Dakota.
She laughed before realizing I was serious. “Really?”
“Yeah. In Atlanta. They were both on a field trip and met there by chance. They knew, immediately, they’d met their mate.”
“That’s intense.”
