Mate (Bride, #2)

by Ali Hazelwood

“Okay.” He inhales deep, like I smell as good to him as he does to me. “You’re doing so good, killer.” “Yeah?” I whimper. “Yeah, baby.” His laughter is soft. Wound up. “I’m trying to come up with a list of things I wouldn’t do just to be allowed to eat your cunt right now, and I can’t think of a single item.”

“This one is special. It’s where I would bite you, Serena. High up, where clothes couldn’t hide it. And then I’d lick my bite every day to remind you.” He sucks on it, and the pleasure is so intense, I have to twist away, overwhelmed. “If you knew the things I think about every time your neck is bare, you’d walk around in a fucking cape.”

“Where would I bite you, to show that you’re mine?” Koen goes still at the question. And then, after processing it for entirely too long, he lets out a soft, explosive curse against my collarbone. “I hate it,” he breathes out. “What?” “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.”

And I think he likes it, too. He encourages me with low, filthy praises, telling me how beautiful I am, how perfect, what an honor it is for him to be here, with me, how he wouldn’t want it any other way, how he would do unspeakable things to have it again. So I suck, and take more, even as I feel his muscles vibrate and the rope of his scent drawing tighter around me. “Shit, you smell so good.” He sounds as shaken as I feel. “Fuck the covenant. I want to be so deep in your cunt, you’d be squirming to breathe—”

“It’s okay,” I interrupt. “I’d rather Koen stay, for now.” “Koen,” Layla says, and all of a sudden, she sounds less like a pack member and more like a friend. Someone who knew Koen when he was young—who was young with him. “You’re not going to like me doing it this way.” A merry, careless shrug. “Then I’ll have to be a fucking big boy about it, won’t I?”

“Estrus,” she blurts out. “You’re going into Estrus.” “Ah.” I nod. Sit back in my chair, scratching my temple. Gather all that I know about Estruses—Estri?—which is a beautiful wasteland of nothing. “People without degrees would call it going into Heat,”

“Yes, it does. Usually in wolf form.” “But I’m…” I point at myself. I’m not in wolf form seems a redundant statement. “Breakthrough heats are not unheard of in human form, either. I’ve been practicing for about ten years, and I’ve had several patients like you, triggered by all sorts of things.” “Such as?” “Stressful events. Medications. The most common cause is close proximity to a sexually compatible partner.”

“There will also be temporary physiological changes. For instance, your scent will become more appealing to potential partners.” “As in, my smell brings all the Weres to the yard?”

He never thought the world was a particularly fair place. Still, it’s a startlingly vile brand of cruelty on fate’s part, to show him her—what he could have had, if only he’d made different choices.

neck, which feels swollen. Tender. “If you have any objections—” “None that are rational.” His smile is slim, self-effacing. His words sound forced. “I’ll support you no matter what. Whether you take the injection or decide to spend your Heat with someone.” I cock my head. “I thought you said you didn’t lie.”

Have to admit, killer, that your presence in my life has been humbling. A fucking revelatory experience. Thought I knew myself, but…” He laughs. Rubs his palm against his mouth. “The truth is, if you decide to spend your Heat with someone else, they’ll have to chain me at the bottom of a well and seal its mouth with concrete.”

“The idea of anyone else touching me makes me physically ill. So.” I attempt a smile. He does, too. We might be in agreement about how painful all of this is. “I can hear your heart.”

But Koen…It’s so easy to imagine how he’d act. Methodical and self-assured and bulldozer-like. Formidable. Unstoppable. And I’d relish every second of my time with him, like I always do. “Whatever you’re thinking about,” he rasps against my ear, “continue.” “Yeah?” He nods. “You smell incredible right now.” “Like…how?” “Like you’d let me keep you here and fuck you for the next six months. Like you need me to.”

“You can keep me forever,” I mumble into his throat, and his cock twitches under me. “Is this okay? I’m making a mess of you, and—” “Do more of it.”

“What if I’m doing all the work? What if you’re just my…Mine.” “Stop,” he says. I do. Inhale deeply. “Want me to move away—” “No,” he orders before I’m done talking. “You’re so— I just need a fucking second.”

“I cannot come, Serena.” “Why?” He takes slow, long breaths. Collects himself. “Is it because if you don’t come, we can pretend that this is not sexual? That it’s a favor you’re doing for a…friend?” He snorts. Opens his eyes. They are pitch black. “It’s been sexual since the second I saw you, and…I have friends, Serena, and you’re not one of them. But yes. It’s easier to forgive myself if we make this about you.”

“I’m going to make you come, however many times you need. And then I’m going elsewhere to make myself come.” “I can—” “No, Serena. You can’t. But I can. I want you to tell me what you need, and I want the privilege of giving it to you. I want you to use me.” A kiss on my collarbone. “If you think there is anything I would like more than seeing my mate through her Heat, you are fucking wrong. If this is all I get, I’m going to make the most of it. Okay?”

“It has to be you, Koen. We’re like…lock and key? It has to be us.” I rock in his lap, demanding release. Closer and closer, clumsier and clumsier. “You’re my mate, but I’m not yours. There will be other keys for you.” A flat-tongued, broad lick. When he bites me again, it feels a little more violent. Like he could easily break my skin, and he wants me to know. “And I’ll do my best not to kill them. No promises.” “I don’t want them.” I sob in pure frustration, pressing harder, all soaked, sticky underwear and hard ridges, marks sucked into tender skin, deep inhales. “I don’t want anyone but—”

“I can’t, Serena. If I touch you there, it’s over.” His kiss on my cheek is light. “There’s this voice in my head, screaming at me that I should hold you down and knot you and shred your gland until it’ll scar in the shape of my teeth, and I’m trying very hard to muffle it.” “So, I can touch you. But you can’t touch me.”

and simple. “I want to give you what you need so badly,” I say. His large hand strokes down my hair, soothing me and himself. I burrow into him and feel him shiver in response. “I know that you took an oath. And I know that this is doomed. But…Koen. There is very little that I wouldn’t do for you, if you were to ask me.”

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

“Why was she with the cul—excuse me, this totally legitimate social club?” Irene chuckles. “Your father would have enjoyed you. This humor of yours, you get it from our side of the family.” “Actually, I get it from the need to proactively cope with a staggering amount of unprocessed trauma. Back to Fiona, please.”

“How old was she?” “When she had you? I cannot say for sure. Around twenty.” That is the problem. She was younger than I am now. Pregnant with the baby of a Were cult leader whose restraint was worthy of Caligula’s orgies. Lost girl to lost girl, I cannot help wondering whether she felt alone. Overwhelmed. Scared. Proud, I’m sure Irene would say, but… Am I just projecting? Because we have the same fucking cheekbones?

“Okay. Let me rephrase this. Do you think that a Human can be turned into a Were? Has anyone explained to you that we are different species? Do you study science at all?” “I…” She looks around. Her voice drops to a whisper. “I read a book, once.”

She is meant for him, but they couldn’t be more impossible.

“You can do this,” Irene reminds me. “You are owed.” I nod. This is my right. “I’m sorry,” I whisper at Koen, letting the tip of the blade graze the soft spot on the side of his neck. I’ve kissed that spot. Licked it. Buried my face in it. I adjust my grip. I’m sorry, I think. With a firm swipe, I slice the ropes that tie his wrists together.

The child was asleep in his arms, and as he handed her over, he wondered, Is all of this a mistake? But when the Human took her, he noticed that his hands had stained the girl’s shirt a bright green.

“No one will ever know where he’ll spend the next few days. He’ll be yours for a while, Serena. But after, you must return him. So think of it as a loan.”

“Koen? You’re being a smidge weird about this.” “Right.” Another step back—somehow, he drifted closer again. “Did they do the one on your back, too?” “Yeah, but maybe it washed off.” I lift my hair. “You can check—” “Don’t.” I freeze. He swears under his breath. “The marks are…” He jerks a hand through his hair. Opens his mouth about four times before settling on “Beautiful.”

They come with a garbled mess of questions that I haven’t even begun to wrangle free. Do I resent him? Does he hate me? Am I angry? How much of this is his fault? Should I carry my parents’ sins? Can I forgive? Can he? Is there anything to forgive here? He’s just as stumped. Fiddling with these impossible thoughts. Gives me a stuck, resigned look and says, “Couple goals, am I right?”

“I would do it all over again,” he murmurs at last, eyes never letting go of mine. “Even knowing what it did to you. And for that, I’m sorrier than I’ll ever be.” We are not Human. His pain squeezes my chest. “I don’t want you to…If when you look at me you see Constantine, I don’t want you to—” “Serena.” He shakes his head. “When I say that I would do it all over again, I also mean that I would go through what he did all over again. If it brought me to you.” It’s

“Remember when Layla mentioned nests?” My voice trembles. “I’ve been working on this for a while. Honestly, I’m just relieved that this new penchant of mine for acquiring shit is just a phase. And…” I notice that the placement of the lavender velvet pillow is off. “Sorry, this is a bit…” I move closer. Rearrange it over and over until it’s just right. Deal with a domino-like cascade of imperfections that need to be fixed right now. A minute—or seventeen—later, a moment of clarity smashes into me. I look back at Koen. “Am I being absolutely insane?” “I…believe this might be common,” he says. Uncharacteristically diplomatic. “God. Do you—do you like it?”

“Let me make something very clear, Serena. I’m never going to regret any of this, okay?”

“Maybe you could help me to the bathroom—” “Hush, killer. I got you.” He holds me. I’m tacky and gross and don’t want to lean on him, but every inch of contact is pure heaven. “Koen?” “Relax.” “I’m really not feeling well.” “I know.” His nose nuzzles behind my ear. My heart could explode with joy. “You’ll be okay. I’ll make you okay.”

“I need to call Layla—” “Sweetheart.” “It’s just that I need—” “You need to do what I tell you.”

“You don’t need to call Layla. And you definitely don’t need to stay away. You know what you need?” I shake my head. His cool lips press against my heated, blotchy cheek. “You need to be fucked, Serena.”

“I…I forgot?” “I don’t think Heats are when people are at their most lucid.” His laughter rumbles softly against my throat. “So I just need to…?” “Be fucked, yes. I’ll be taking care of that. Okay?” “Please.”

“Can I…shower?” Koen inhales deeply. Rolls us over until he’s hovering above me, murmuring something about how “fucking unbelievable” I smell. Nips at my jaw, teeth just a little too tight, just this side of dangerous. He could hurt me, but he would never. “Wait. Before we…I’m going to shower.”

“You’d like it better if I washed up.” A silent snort. “I very much would not.”

“Serena, do you want to shower?” He sounds befuddled. “Or are you asking because you think I find your body disgusting?” “The…latter.” Koen exhales. Indignant, maybe. “Open your eyes,”

Then he explains, tone level, “The reason you are so wet is that your body has been preparing for what is about to happen. Believe me, you will need all the slick you can spare.” Slick. “I feel like I smell…” “Fuckable. You smell ready. You smell transcendent and filthy and delicious. You smell like you’re this close to losing your mind, like you might hurt me if I don’t take care of you, and you know what that does to me, knowing that my mate needs me? You understand what this is for, right? What Heats are for?”

“Hey,” he says, soothing. “I want to fuck you really, really bad. You know that, right?” I nod. “Good. I can’t rush this, killer, because if you become sore or hurt or God fucking forbid, torn, you’re not going to get a couple of days to recover. Once your Heat starts in earnest, you’re going to want me inside you, whether it’s painful or not. So I’m going to move slowly. And I need you to do what I say. Okay?” Another, more subdued nod. A “My good girl”

I still need more, but I’m being good. I’m doing what he says. “Yeah, you are.” His laugh is rough and shaky. Another loving, soft kiss, this time on the corner of my mouth. “You were born for this. A little more, huh?”

“It’s good,” he agrees, looking like he means the exact same thing. Another stroke. Another one, slow, like he wants to make each last as long as possible. He luxuriates. Indulges in every second of friction. “Serena,” he breathes out against my cheekbone. “I think this might be it, for me.”

“Take it.” He shoves deeper. “Be good and take my knot.” “I—I don’t—” “You do. You were made for it. How could I ever think of fucking anyone else, when you take it so well?”

“Did I hurt you?” “Nothing like that. But I think I’m going to need a Were anatomy lesson before we…Actually, I think I’m gonna need it right now.” His chin dips. He studies me to figure out whether I’m joking. “Well,” he says at last. “Fuck.”

“You do like sex, after all.” “Did I say that I didn’t?” “No. Just…” I chew on my lower lip. “Amanda said you never looked like you missed it.” “Because I didn’t.” I swallow. “Do you think…After this is done, do you think it’ll be harder for you to go back to not having it?” “Serena,” he says, deliberate, level. “None of this is about sex.” “Then what—” “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.”

Why not? This is nice. Perfect, even. I fall asleep nestled under his chin. Still thinking that—worse than earlier? Probably an exaggeration. I’ll be fine. It’s not. (An exaggeration.) But I am. (Fine.) Better than.

“Thank you,” I tell him. “For this.” “I told you not to—” I arch to shut him up with a kiss, and with a soft curse he slides one arm between my back and the mattress to pull me up. “You’re welcome. Lucky for you, I’m so fucking”—a harder stroke—“selfless.”