Mate (Bride, #2)

by Ali Hazelwood

“Amanda? Is everything okay?” “Has Koen not told you? Or Lowe? Or anyone else?” “I’m not sure what you’re talking about.” She takes a deep breath. Runs the back of her hand over her mouth. And then resigns herself to be the one to give me the news. “Serena, the Alpha of Northwest pack is traditionally asked to honor a celibacy covenant. He’s forbidden by law to engage in any kind of intimate relationships—emotional or physical.”

He told her that he would never touch her because he didn’t want her enough; in truth, he will never touch her because he wants her too much. The make-believe, he thinks, was kinder to both of them.

The covenant was never a big part of his life. He would forget about it for months, even years. It never felt like a sacrifice, just a simple trade-off, an integral feature of who he was: the Alpha of the Northwest. Then she arrived, assumed total control of him, and left no room for anything but her.

“The pack newsletter let you know that I have a woman—my mate, no less—staying in my cabin as we wait for this new tide of murderous psychos to ebb, and you’re afraid I’m fucking her. Sound about right?” Anneke and the man exchange surprised looks, but the older woman just smiles. I run my hand through Koen’s hair and tilt back his head until his neck is exposed. He follows my directions, pliant in my hands. “He’s not,” I say distractedly. “He’s not…?” Anneke asks. “Breaking the covenant. I remain tragically unfucked.”

“Stop moving,” I murmur, going back to shaving him. “Or I’m going to nick you, and they’re going to think I’m pregnant with your triplets.” Koen stills, but the corners of his lips twitch.

“You’ll see when we get there. Give me five to shower.” He heads for his room. Stops. “And, killer?” “What?” “Tuck that T-shirt in your pants. It’ll look less like it’s mine.”

He wants to show her every corner of his territory. The deep blue lakes and the snow-capped peaks. Moss-draped trees and rock spires. He wants to be with her for each marveled intake of breath.

There will be people referring to you as the harbinger of the decline of civilization, but what you are is not new, per se. It’s just… A comeback? If you will. What you’re saying is, I’m vintage. It’s not really what I— And Renaissance Girl should be my new nickname? I didn’t— Deal.

“Are you a member of the Northwest pack?” “There is no Northwest. There are no packs, no species, no borders.” “Right. Okay…if you don’t tell me who you are, I’m going to scream, and someone who’s much less nice and patient than me will come out of the house—” “I can be fucking nice,” Koen says, coming to stand behind me. Most of my tension dissolves. “Not patient, though,” he adds. “She got that right.”

“You shouldn’t touch her,” he warns. It is, demonstrably, the wrong thing to say to the Alpha of a territory he just breached. So wrong, it bothers even me. “Excuse me?” Koen asks mildly.

“I told them that there was no need to take you. No need for blood. I promised them that if you knew we were waiting for you, you would come.” “Bro, she’s not going anywhere.” “She is your superior in every way. You cannot speak for her, Koen Alexander.”

Because the Were doesn’t run away toward the forest. Instead he chooses the opposite direction, and I don’t understand— Koen’s “Fuck” is muffled by the waves lapping onto the shore —where does the Were think he’s going— as Koen sprints to catch him —that’s not where he came from— or maybe to kill him —not the right path— and why is he not slowing down, he’s almost at the edge of the cliff, he can’t —below the cliff, wasn’t there a— The Were jumps.

He wants to abscond with her. Fuck the rest of the world—it’s incapable of giving her the safety she so clearly deserves. He’ll fix that. He’ll make up for everything she has been put through.

Right. “I might be the Eva person he was talking about.” The prospect is disorienting. Makes me sick to my stomach. Koen’s hand shifts to my cheek. “Look at me.” I do. His eyes are dark and steady. Make me forget what led us here, and what’s to come. “Your name doesn’t fucking matter. You are my killer. Okay?”

“Do you want to come with me?” Yes, with every single cell of my body. “Why would I come with you?” “Because the idea of having you out of my sight makes me want to flip those cars one by one.” I stifle my chuckle. “The Assembly is very concerned that you’re breaking your covenant. I doubt me coming with you would help your case.” “Good point.” He seems to consider it. “On the other hand, fuck my case.”

“Killer?” “Yeah?” There is a false start. Like the words are too foreign to flow out with ease. But then he says, “Before I leave, I think I need to hold you for a minute.” I’m in his arms before I know how I got there. He bends down to scoop me up, and my forehead fits so perfectly into the valley of his already-prickly throat, this cannot be anything but fated.

“I’ll be back tomorrow morning. If anything happens to me, what do you do?” “Buy a black veil, pretend I’m a widow, cash in on your life insurance.” “You call Lowe. Ask him to come get you.” “What about your seconds?” Koen’s jaw shifts. He seems to come to a bitter realization. “I trust them with my life, but apparently not with yours.

“I’m sorry.” He frowns. “None of this is your fault.” “I know. But this is difficult for you, too. And he dragged your parents into it, which I can’t even imagine…” I swallow. “I’m sorry that you have to deal with this.” His teeth clench. There’s a flicker of something unreadable in his face. “If I come back and something has happened to you, Serena, I’m going to be so fucking pissed.” I bite the inside of my lips. “That sounds like a you problem.” “Yeah. That it is.”

Instead I go to my room, dig into the mountain of blankets and pillows the bed has somehow accumulated, sit cross-legged with my phone in my hands, and do the only thing that makes sense. Serena: Would you love me less if my name was Eva? Misery: Yes. Misery: But not like, by a lot. I bury my face in the pillow to laugh and cry at the same time.

“It’s b-better if you leave.” His eyes are shadowed. He takes a step forward, bringing inside a tidal wave of his scent that’s safe and clean and healthy and— Oh my God. Sex. It’s so delicious, so indecent, so fundamentally erotic, I want it even more than the cold water. Which I need to survive. “Please, Koen. I need you to leave.” “Where does it hurt?” He comes closer, clearly unaware that I’m scary and unpredictable. His heat should bother me, but by some miracle of biology it doesn’t add to the fever. “And how bad?” “It’s fine. I just need to—”

“Your claws are out, and you’re already bleeding. You need to stay still.” “My eyes—” “It’s okay.” “But they—” “Serena.” That Alpha voice. “Calm down.” I do. For about a second. Then panic rises, higher, stronger. “That’s not normal.” “Stop looking at them. Deep breaths.” “I can’t. What is happening?” “Don’t look at them.” Tears slide down my face. I’m about to explode. “But why are they—” Koen’s fist darts out to punch the mirror, shattering my reflection into a thousand small shards. “Here. Now they’re not doing that anymore.” His palm rests against my forehead. “You’re burning up. This is not the first time, is it?” Yes. No. I don’t know. “Answer me.” “N-no.” “Good girl. Is it a fever?”

“How long have you been feeling poorly?” Koen asks, rudely interrupting my panic tailspin. I can tell with a millisecond-long glance that he’s willing to slow roast the truth out of me. But what kind of veteran liar would I even be if I didn’t attempt a weak “I’m not. It was just—” “Serena.” He looks at me like I’m not just insulting his intelligence, but also lowering the IQ of the entire pack. Okay. Fine. No games. “I don’t know.”

“CSD can be treated.” “Yeah. In Weres, it can. Sometimes. But my hybrid biology hasn’t been responding to meds. My hormonal levels are getting worse, and Dr. Henshaw said…” I suck my teeth. “Not compatible with life. That’s how he put it.” Koen’s eyelids are the only moving parts of his body. They flutter closed, then open again as he asks calmly, “How long?” “Six months at the most. But that was…two months ago.”

“I’m sure your pretty little head made up a million good reasons and topped them with those gross formaldehyde cherries. Still can’t believe she lets you out of her sight.” “No one ‘lets’ me do stuff or go places,” I point out tiredly. “That’s not how it works, Koen.” “If you were mine, it would. And clearly, you fucking should be.”

“Is that why you were in the fucking woods alone for two months? Why you’re here now? Some fucked-up notion of sparing your sister from finding out that the person she cares the most about in the whole world is ill?”

Dr. Henshaw is under instructions to inform Lowe, after…afterward. I hope it’ll help, and—” “After what, Serena?” “—I’m not precious about that stuff. It’s more that I don’t want them to freak out or feel like they have to—” “After. What,” he repeats. He’s not on the stool anymore. Instead, his palms brace both sides of my bare thighs, and he leans into me. Close enough that his scent becomes my entire universe.

“Say it. After what?” I have to. Out loud. For the very first time. I have no choice but to make this real. “After I die.” The second the words are out, hanging heavy in the air between us, Koen…smiles. He bends further, and there isn’t a single trace of doubt on his face. He’s an immovable object and an unstoppable force. And he says, slowly, “If you think I’m going to let you die, Serena, you know fuck all.”

“She’s in pain. Not eating enough. Not getting enough sleep. The fucking fevers are happening every night.” “I can give her IVs and recommend easily digestible foods, but the cold baths are the safest way to—” “She’s in pain,” Koen snarls, leaning forward over Sem’s desk. I expect the doctor to retreat or show his throat to appease his Alpha’s anger. Instead, his eyes turn hooded with sadness. “I know, Koen. I’m sorry.”

“Don’t be sorry—that’s not your job. Your fucking job is to cure ill people. Why do you have no idea how to do that?” “Koen,” I chide, feeling my chest constrict. I wrap a hand around his forearm. The long veins running through it are coursing with blood. “That’s not kind.” “As we established, I’m not fucking kind.” He straightens. “Find a way to get this”—he gestures toward me—“fixed. Okay?”

As we exit the building, Koen halts briefly. His throat works as he looks into the distance, tight-lipped, running his tongue over his teeth. Composing himself. I bite into the inside of my cheek, feeling powerless. I’m sorry, I want to say. I know you care. I know it’s hard. But he’s unreachable—a large, silent presence at my side as we walk to the car, his legs so m...

“I know how you are feeling.” At last, his eyes meet mine. They do not look pleased. “You mean, angry as fuck?” “No.” I stop another attempted sidestep. “Well, yes. But that’s not the real issue, and—I know it takes some adjustment, learning that someone you lo—care about is going to die.” I swallow. My smile is tremulous. “I’ve been there.”

“There’s a long list of women capable of kicking my ass. In your current state, you are nowhere on it.” “What if I accidentally attacked a weaker pack member?” “Guess I’d have to spank you.”

know you want to be mad at fate—” “I’m mad at you, killer.” “—but I’m at peace with it. I wish I had more time. With…with the people I love. With the universe. With”—I gesticulate around me—“with the ocean and the trees and…I love this territory so much. But it’s such a privilege, to know that even if I won’t live much longer, Misery is taken care of, and so is Ana.” It’s the first time I’ve verbalized this out loud. And it makes my chest feel at once light as a feather and deep as a crater. “When I die—” “Not on my fucking watch, Serena.”

“Okay. But when I die—” Koen’s fingers abruptly slide into the hair at the side of my head. Bend my neck back, none too gently. “Serena.” He stares down at me, eyes a few inches from mine. His fury is a physical, formidable thing. It doesn’t scare me. “If you say anything like that ever again, I’m going to kill you myself. Understood?”

“If I weren’t Alpha,” he asks, eventually. “And you weren’t sick. What then, Serena?” “What if Earth was modeled after a giant parsley leaf? What if Humans pissed moondust? What if—” His fingers trap my chin. Tilt my head back, hitching my breath. Once again, I have no choice but to meet his eyes. “What then, Serena?”

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.

Anyway, this is where the shittiness of Koen’s life starts paralleling our own, because the whole showdown that led to him becoming Alpha—” “Actually, stop. Don’t tell me.” “You don’t want to know?” “No. Yes.” I swallow. “I think I should hear this from Koen.” “Aw. Are you guys sleeping together yet?” “What? No!” “Well, since it’s probably going to happen, would you like a heads-up on the biology?” “The what?” “His dick. It—” “It’s not going to happen, Misery. It’d be against the law. He took an oath of celibacy.” “I mean, sure.” She doesn’t sound sure. “But you should know that because you’re his mate, at the base of—” “Stop.” At the what of what?

“I liked you better when you were a virgin.” “Yeah, well, Lowe didn’t. So.”

Serena: Now that I think about it…Our shitty lives? I wouldn’t have them any other way. Misery: Seriously? No other way? You wouldn’t, idk, skip over the part where the anti-Vampyre coalition mixed up our rooms and pumped you full of carbon monoxide? Serena: What I’m trying to say is that I am grateful that our misfortunes brought us together. Misery: Oh my god. Are you dying? Shit. Serena: Is that the only reason for me to tell you nice things? Misery: It’s the only reason for me to listen to them.

“Well.” I glance at the mugs. “That was a lot of work for nothing.” “You’ll survive.” “Not according to multiple physicians.”

“I should go to sleep,” I say. “Okay. Which room?” “Um, mine?” “Okay. We’ll sleep there.” “We?” “We.” My eyebrow lifts. “Uh-oh. Celibacy Threat Alert.”

He just lets me loop my arms around his waist and place an open-mouthed kiss around his rib cage. His breath hitches. He’s so strong. And I just…I like him. His moods. The way he steals my jokes. How full and happy I feel with him. Why have we not done this yet? Sure, reasons, but they seem so irrelevant, when there is this needy heat pulsating inside me. He’s rock hard, too. He wants me. Half of the time, he doesn’t even bother hiding it. “Serena.”

Bends to run the flat of his tongue against the first few vertebrae of my spine. And I fucking die. “Oh my God.” The sound I let out is indecent. So outrageously shameless, I have to close my eyes and pretend it wasn’t mine. It’s just—nothing has ever felt as good as being licked by Koen, there. Even if the act was clearly not meant to be seductive. In fact, it was more akin to someone tasting a dish to check if they added the right amount of salt. And there must be something wrong with the flavor profile. Because he mutters a low, deep, soulful, “Fuck.”

What the hell am I doing, coming on to Koen like this? Am I out of my mind? I must be. “Is it happening? Am I dying?” He exhales a soundless laugh that’s as clear a no as anything. I turn around in his arms. Find his cheeks dark with blood. “What, then?”

He groans and gathers me. Presses me tight to him for a short, blissful moment. But the heat builds up quickly inside me, and when I start squirming against the hard part of him poking into my stomach, he pulls back and says carefully, “I have to leave, Serena.” “What?” “You have no understanding of what’s going on.” Panic climbs up my throat. “And you do?” “Yes, killer. I do.”

“I get it. You don’t have to…Is there anyone else who could help me with…” It’s a stupid question, and the second I articulate it, I realize that the simple idea of someone else touching me makes me want to tear the flesh off my bones. But going by Koen’s deep, guttural, displeased grunt, he doesn’t know that. “You’re not going to—fuck it.”

“That,” he growls in my ear, “is not the kind of stunt you pull with an Alpha. Not when you’re on the brink of a Heat.” “I’m sorry.” I’m on the verge of tears. The guilt is like a thousand needles in my chest. “I wouldn’t. It’s just—” “I know.” He kisses the ball of my shoulder, just a brush of his lips. “I’m going to help you. But you need to do as I say. Okay?”

“As long as you touch me. As long as you—” He nips the spot he just kissed. A hint of teeth. Warning. “Not how it works, killer. You do what I say, no conditions.”

“You’re going to use your fingers,” he instructs slowly, letting go of my hand. His lips are hot against the arch of my ear. “And you’re going to make yourself come.” “What? But I—” His teeth close around the fleshy part of my neck, just this side of too hard. I yelp. Squirm against his chest. Moan in frustration. Plead wordlessly. “Tell me, killer.” He nuzzles me. “What makes you think that this is a negotiation?”

“Please, use your fingers. Why don’t you want to—” “You need to shut the fuck up about what you think I want. This is a mess, and you’re not in any condition to make any asks. You promised to do what I say.” A kiss on my cheek. “Is this who you are? Someone who breaks her promises?” I shake my head, feverish, panting. “Good girl. Fingers,” he orders. “Now.”