Page 3 of Reclaiming His Lost Mate
Heat spread across my skin and my insides as I took in his gunslinger walk, shaved jaw, thin straight lips, and cold furrowed eyebrows that concealed deep blue stormy eyes. I found myself trapped. His eyes found mine, and a string so thick, it was almost visible connected us both, urging me to close whatever distance was between us.
The ballroom faded into nothingness, and it was just me and Alexis as I tried to discern what that juicy scent of his was. It was like a rare tree standing tall in a forest, something earthy, and even if I couldn’t place my finger on what it was, I wanted to drink in it till I lost my sanity.
By Igaluk, never in my life have I been this madly attracted to or affected by anyone.
Then it snapped into place.
Alexis was my fated mate!
“Ilak,” I muttered, saying the goddess’s word for mate and taking a step forward as jubilation sprang from within me.
Maybe for the first time in years, the one who would choose me, and only me, was finally here.
Chapter 2
Alexis
My steps did not falter as my legs carried me to their destination—the ballroom where the pieces that would unite us Eastern packs, my Shadow Moon Pack and Lucian’s Nightwing Pack as allies, currently lay.
With each determined stride, bitter memories from the most tragic time of my life rose higher in my mind, having become more frequent in the past days, and a weakness hit me in the knees. Flashes of how both my parents—fated mates—withered away right before my eyes just because they were forced into marrying each other, even when it was clear from the beginning that they shared no love, caused the high surrounding walls to shrink around me, almost cutting off my breathing completely.
Father’s heart had truly belonged to another, and the only element of his relationship with my Aaka—mother—was the mental pull of the fated bond, so he could not give her the love and life she deserved.
Their forced marriage laid the foundation for our broken family, punished my innocent mother with a heart-wrenching mental breakdown, and drove her to suicide.
My hands clenched into tight fists, my fingers brutally digging into my palm to draw blood and feel something other than this hurt. I directed a pained stare at the doors that loomed ahead, mirroring the sunken feeling in my chest—a feeling that had never eased up over the years.
That was why a rib-rattling growl loaded with nothing but unbridled rage shook me to my foundations when the doors finally opened, ushering me into an opulent ballroom with a multitude of people, but like a moth to a flame, my eyes connected with one figure in the crowd, and the only thing that filled my once resolute mind was to be near her…claim her…mark her in every way humanly and inhumanly possible as mine…then own her forever.
Mine!
“It can’t be.”
Igaluk wouldn’t be so cruel as to punish me with the same fate my parents suffered—the same one that I hadn’t even yet recovered from!
From the way her forest green eyes glowed as she took an unbalanced step in my direction, muttering the goddess’s word for mate, “Ilak,” I knew she felt the pull as maddeningly as I did.
Gasps in the expression of shock filled the ballroom from all directions, but I couldn’t be concerned with that right now. I couldn’t see or hear anyone else. My heart was going in crazy circles, painfully banging against my chest, looking to escape, but my feet moved on their own accord, shortening the space between me and her.
“You have to be kidding me right now,” someone screeched loudly, and I whirled my head to the source as the pull between me and this strange woman snapped, only by a tiny fragment. The one who screamed had an elaborate dress on, one I was sure she could barely breathe in, and nothing about her looked natural.
That wasn’t what irritated me, though. It was that I hadn’t even seen her standing beside… “Selina, you cannot be Alexis’s mate! If this is supposed to be a joke, it’s a pretty expensive one,” she yelled, visibly shaking with anger, but all the while, I kept chanting her name in my head like a mantra.
Selina. Selina. Selina.
From the corner of my eye, I saw Alpha Lucian fast approaching, and I turned to face him, grateful for the distraction. I didn’t know how much longer I would have lasted without doing something out of character.
“Alpha Alexis,” he rasped out, smiling and stretching for a handshake. I took it briefly, my focus on anywhere but him. “I see you’ve met my beautiful daughters, eh…Selina, especially. I knew you had an eye for the finest things,” he said, pointing to her and stepping in between Selina and the fuming sister, who he didn’t care to name.
I didn’t miss the way Selina winced at the obvious faux compliment, and my beast thrashed against the surface of my skin, his guard shooting up. I opened my mouth to speak, but Lucian beat me to it, grinning like he had won the lottery. “She’s your mate, eh? You can see that Igaluk herself supports this union between our packs. What a beautiful beginning of such happiness.”
I caught the hope shining on Selina’s face, and I immediately pulled my palm from Lucian’s grip like it burned.
How was that possible?
Happiness?
How could there be a guarantee of happiness when all the mate bond did was permanently bind a person to a stranger?
