Mate (Bride, #2)

by Ali Hazelwood

“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.”

He didn’t think she could be more perfect. Then she offered him her bite.

“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.

His stare feels like a kiss. More than any kiss I’ve experienced ever did.

“It has to be you, Koen. We’re like…lock and key? It has to be us.”

“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.” “Serena.” I hear the blurry edge of his smile. A quiet sigh. “I would throw away my pack, my life, and my entire world for you. Which is the exact reason I cannot have you.”

His nuisance. That’s what she is.

I really am absolutely gone over this man. Fully, irreparably lost.

I reach out. Run my hand through his hair, trying not to sigh at the way he leans into it, like my skin is his North Star.

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

There is no smart when it comes to falling in love. Haven’t you learned that?”

He is afraid—not only of what might happen to her, but also of what he might do to the world in retaliation.

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

Our mouths are touching. I feel as though we’re made of the same stuff. Me and him, set apart from the remaining matter of the universe.

“Serena,” he breathes out against my cheekbone. “I think this might be it, for me.”

I wonder if he’s storing every little touch for later. If he’s even aware of what he’s doing, staring at me with a faint half smile that is just… Lovesick.

“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.”

“There is only you, Serena.”

Koen is perfect. Koen is strong. Koen is maddening and beautiful and mine, and I want what I am due.

I could spend the next hundred years cataloging new things about him, and never be done. He could be the project of my lifetime. Just like I’m his.

I want to explain to him that he’s rebuilding me from the inside out, molding me into a more solid, resilient shape. But I can’t. Not when he looks up with a stupefied expression, like the existence of me, of what we’re doing, is something he hadn’t taken into consideration. Like I make the world a different place.

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

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

I feel close to you. So much so, sometimes I wonder if fate really does exist. When you’re around, the universe feels more bearable. This mate business—does it feel like I have you in my palm? Like we’re tethered to each other? Like I changed you at the nuclear level? Asking for a friend.

“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.”

“It’s kinda gross, how madly in love with her you are. But please, continue. Pitiful, twitterpated men are very entertaining.”

“There’s always something with you, huh,” he mumbles, for the fifth or millionth time.

“I was wrong. When I said that you weren’t my mate, even if I was yours.

“Serena, our first meeting sent you into Heat.” I flush. “Well, we don’t know that. It could have been a coincidence.”

“So…you are my mate?” “We might never know, since your biology is different from a full Were’s. I don’t care very much, because…” “Because?” “Because you’re perfect.”

They said that I’m emotionally compromised over you. Which is true.” His thumb traces my lower lip. “Has been true for a while, really.”

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.”

“Whatever you want, sweetheart.” “And we’ll have Twinkles as our wolf dog who sometimes sleeps on our bed?” “Is that why I nearly walked into a water bowl earlier?” I nod. Burrow into him. He sighs. Tightens his hold on me. “Such a fucking nuisance.”

I wonder why it took me until this very moment to realize that it’s been his way of saying I love you all along.

Serena…she feels like another part of him. His heart, in another body.

She is so enchantingly beautiful, sometimes Koen loses track of time and space.

He’s hers. He always was, but now she has claimed him, and he’s going to rub it in everyone’s fucking face until they plead with him to stop, and even then, he will not.

Perfection. His mate is perfect. He’ll massacre whoever tries to take her from him, of course.

“You asked me to bite you,” he rasps out. She nods quickly. “The mating bite.” More nodding. “Mine.” Nod. “On you.”

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.

It tastes, Koen thinks, like forever should.