Mate (Bride, #2)

by Ali Hazelwood

“Is this the way you talk to your beloved mate?” A single eyebrow lifts. “I said you were my mate. Not that I loved you.”

“What Misery is to Lowe, you are to me.”

“For a Were, finding a mate triggers a chain of physiological changes. Misery compared it to falling in love at first sight, and there’s some truth to that, but—”

“You’re the most beautiful woman that I’ve ever seen,” he says simply. Like it’s not a big deal. Like he’s complimenting my taste in socks.

Koen is the Alpha of a pack that takes up a quarter of the country. Koen confuses me just by breathing the same air. Koen is so diametrically opposed to the kind of men I prefer, a protractor must be involved.

“You’re my closest friend’s husb—mate’s closest friend. And I’d love to get along with you. So maybe we could be, you know, friends.” “What about polite acquaintances?” he counters. I cannot tell whether he’s serious, so I nod. “Deal. And you may quietly pine after me, if you must.”

“I will take care of you,” he says roughly.

His leadership philosophy seems to be if inconvenient, why not dead?

He’s going to take her lies and peel them off one by one. Then he’ll force her to show him what’s underneath.

Cute, how she thinks he’d ever let her out of his sight.

“If I’ve given you the impression that I’m kind, something is very wrong, either with me or with you.

Because every single thing I glanced at, grazed, examined, eyed, or even considered when we were at the grocery store, every single thing I decided to walk past, every single thing I told myself I didn’t need—every single thing has somehow made it here, inside Koen’s house.

“Mouthy, isn’t she, Boden?” He sighs. “Never thought I’d be into that, and yet. Bane of my fucking existence.”

“Since you’re so sure that everyone here despises her, including me, let this be known: fuck with my mate, and I’m going to kill you so slowly, draw it out so long, tectonic plates will move and create whole new mountain ranges. And when the rest of your family comes to avenge you, I’ll do the same to them. And if your friends come, I’m not going to fucking stop. Not even if all that’s left of the pack is me and her. I will paint this entire territory green before I let anyone in the pack spill a single drop of red. Okay?”

Then she arrived, assumed total control of him, and left no room for anything but her.

The past doesn’t have to shape the future.

when he looks as confused as I feel, when he chooses to share his lack of understanding with me, I think I love him. Just a little bit.

“Your name doesn’t fucking matter. You are my killer. Okay?”

“If I come back and something has happened to you, Serena, I’m going to be so fucking pissed.”

Close enough that his scent becomes my entire universe. Close enough for me to see little freckles on his skin, to count the scars that crisscross all over his torso.

“Anything that’s going to happen to you,” he promises, voice honest and pitched low in the swish of the breeze, “is going to be over my dead body.”

He easily resigned himself to a lifetime without her, but… Simply put, he is unwilling to contemplate a universe in which she no longer exists.

There has never been anyone like him. I could live a thousand more years, and there will never be.

“How perfect you are. I spent the last twenty years hoping that if there was a mate for me out there, I’d never come across them. And then I found you, and, Serena…there isn’t one thing I would change about you. Or one single thing I regret about knowing you.”

“My entire life is made of fucking lines. And you’re blowing past all of them.”

“I would throw away my pack, my life, and my entire world for you. Which is the exact reason I cannot have you.”

“It’s a very small space, Serena, and you are…Your scent destroys my focus. It’s better if we’re not too alone.”

It’s odd, what her absence does to him. She is missing, but she fills and floods every part of his life.

His life and death are but my decision. He wouldn’t dream of objecting. If I want to carve his heart out of his chest, he’ll crack his rib cage open and lie prone for me.

“You always smell like you were made specifically for me. To fuck. To be around. To worship. But right now, you smell like you’d give me anything I asked for. If that’s the scent you’re planning to wash off…don’t do it on my account.”

“In a matter of days, you’re going to leave, and I’ll spend the rest of my life as your fucking servant. Whatever you ask me for, you’ll have.

“You. This, all of it, is purely about you.”

“You are my mate. I would have wanted you no matter what. I will want you no matter what. But you are also…” He licks his lips. “If someone had given me a piece of paper and asked me to list everything I liked, everything I dreamed of, everything that I was sure would make me happy, you would have been the final product of it.”

comparisons, or expectations, or hopes, or standards to meet. There’s only…” He casts a glance around the room, searching. Then his eyes settle on me. “There is only you, Serena.”

“I love you. And I’m never going to stop, no matter what.”

Surely, it’s unfair. Surely, a love this deep should be reserved for the universe as a whole. But what if, to me, he’s the linchpin? What if he’s the stitch that keeps it all together?

“You are the heart of this pack, Koen.” He nods. Even as he says, “And you are mine, Serena.”

“And while I’m willing to resign myself to an existence without the person I love, I refuse to condemn you to it.”

“I don’t think I can go on without you. Above all, I don’t think I can go on knowing that you need me, and I’m not by your side.”

She would make for the perfect Alpha’s mate.

“I love you,” I say simply. His eyes close. “You are mine. My mate.

“She is my mate,” Koen snarls. “I get to treat her like she’s made of mother-of-pearl. You do not.”

The thing is, I love you, and mate or not, I wouldn’t love you half as much if you weren’t the kind of person who deserves it. And one of the reasons you deserve it is that you care.”

“You make my world better, for sure. And mate or not, I wouldn’t love you half as much if you weren’t the kind of person who deserves it.”

His heart, in another body.

To him, it feels like an adventure. This. Them. Waking up every morning wondering if he’ll survive the intensity of his feelings for her. Seems unlikely, and yet.

You’re not the center of the fucking world. She is.

He would die for her, and he would kill for her. More importantly, he will live for her. She’ll be the purpose driving every second of his every day.