Page 31 of Bullied Mate

“She’s beautiful,” Klaus said, agreeing, but he hadn’t thought of Poppy as being a good alpha’s mate.

He figured it never truly mattered with them who mated the alpha, just so long as someone actually did.

“Do you and her … have a thing?” Greg asked.

“What? No. We don’t.” They totally had a thing. “Can I ask you a question?”

“Sure.”

Klaus couldn’t believe he was asking this. “I have this friend, and, er, it turns out that he was kind of mean to this girl for a long time. Not anything too bad. Name-calling, potential charges of hair-pulling. But it wasn’t meant in a bad way, you know? Just that he liked her hair, and well…”

Greg started to laugh.

“What’s so funny?”

“Dude, it sounds to me your friend has problems, but just tell him to tell this girl how he feels.”

“He feels?” Klaus asked.

“Yeah. The hair-pulling, the name-calling. Sounds like a classic case of him trying to get her attention. He has a crush. Does he like this girl?” Greg asked.

“That has got to be the most stupid thing I’ve ever heard.”

Greg laughed. “Is it? He pulled her hair because he liked her hair, not to actually pull it to hurt her?”

“It’s soft hair. Gorgeous even, and she is always wearing it up. Don’t you think he should have, you know, stopped it?”

Again, Greg chuckled.

He wasn’t finding this funny. Not even a tiny bit. He was in fact, getting more annoyed with every passing second.

“Dude, you only do that to girls you like. Anyway, I butted in. What were you actually going to ask me?” Greg asked.

Klaus could totally get rid of his body. Claim that Greg ran off, that he wanted to go and experience nature.

“It turns out after all of this bullying, she is his mate.”

“Oh,” Greg said.

“Oh, what isohabout it?” He didn’t see the revelation, if it was even a revelation.

“Don’t you get it?” Greg asked.

“Get what?”

“He liked her before the mating. It’s rare for it to happen, but some mates have this … connection even before their first transition. Feelings build up.”

Klaus couldn’t recall any feelings whatsoever.

So why did you stand so close to her?

Why did you always look for her in the hallways?

Why did you always follow her home without her realizing it, just so you could admire her ass?

He’d done many things Poppy wasn’t aware of. He’d figured he was just a fucked-up alpha-to-be.

Now though, he had to wonder, was he doing it because they were, in fact, mated?

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