Mate

by Ali Hazelwood

“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.”

“Am I Mommy in this scenario?” “Or Daddy,” Saul offers. “You get to pick first, since you provide the pancakes.” “Nice. I’ll take it.”

“It’s not fair. That they won’t allow you to— ” Fall in love. Have a family. A chance at happiness. A chance with me.

“I like you more than anyone I’ve met since Misery. And when I’m with you, I feel . . . a little less like half of two things, and a little more whole. And when you touch me, it feels right. So right that I forget it’s wrong. I forget that you’re the heart of this pack. I forget that thousands of people rely on you, and that every moment I spend with you, I’m taking something away from them.”

“So this is what’s going to happen. I’m going to walk in there and take the drugs Layla gives me. This Heat won’t happen. And as soon as the issues with the Vampyre council are officially over and Ana is safe, which will be any day now . . . I’ll go back to the Southwest, where I won’t be keeping you from the people who need you. And you and I . . . we’ll make sure to avoid each other in the next few decades. Won’t we?”

I don’t know if I can deal with Saul now— his compassion, his kindness, his terrible music. Where is Brenna when I want to be bitch-slapped back to my senses by an expert?

“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.

There are more than half a dozen people in the room, but his gaze falls on me instantly, like I’m the center of mass of his universe. The violence of his relief is so strong, I don’t think anyone in the room is immune to it.

Would you like some tea, Alpha?” “That would be lovely. Chai, two sugars.” “Nele? Do we have . . . No? No chai, unfortunately. Can we offer you anything else?” Koen sits back. “Lady, fuck you and your tea.”

Koen isn’t thrashing or wriggling away. There is no pleading, nor an attempt to convince me that I’m overreacting. He sits quietly, looking up at me like I’m a queen. 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.

“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.”

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.” “Beautiful.” My face tingles with heat. “That’s not the word you were thinking.” “No.” His jaw tightens. “I can scrub harder. Or cover them.” “Absolutely fucking no.”

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?”

You will kiss me, and touch me, and fuck me, because it’s what I require, and those will be the memories I carry for the rest of my life: you, satisfying my needs.

He groans against my right asscheek. Then bites into it like it’s a piece of fruit. “Koen!” “Sorry,” he says. Before doing it again. “Koen!” “I said sorry.”

“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?”

“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. But here you are. Defenseless. Mine for a short time.”

“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?”

“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.”

“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.”

Koen is perfect. Koen is strong. Koen is maddening and beautiful and mine, and I want what I am due. At my best, I am enamored with every inch of his body, with every word he rasps against my ear. At my worst, I am a savage, impatient, rude creature that tolerates no competition. Possessive. Impossible to reason with.

He is— perfect. Mine, mine, mine. Not mine at all.

He just stares at me with a small, content smile at the edges of his eyes. Like I’ve given him everything he could ever want, and he’s not planning to ask for more. Like he’s too happy about what we had to be sad about what we’ll soon lose.

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.” I come again, and he comes, too, knot swelling, the pleasure sharper than a knife, slicing right through us. Irreparable damage that doesn’t hurt enough.

“You told me that you loved me, Serena,” he says simply. His eyes are earnest, liquid. So profoundly good. “And while I’m willing to resign myself to an existence without the person I love, I refuse to condemn you to it.”

He would die for her, and he would kill for her. More importantly, he will live for her.

It tastes, Koen thinks, like forever should.