The Alpha's Warlock (Mismatched Mates #1)

by Eliot Grayson

My heart sank. Ian Armitage. My dead ex-lover Jared’s best friend and cousin, the pack leader's second in command, and one of the most feared werewolves in northern California. And he hated me.

This is a lot of background info

I thought Jared could have solved the whole sneaking-around problem by admitting he was seeing me to his family, but hey, I was biased against being the guy's dirty little secret, so sue me.

Ian's toiletries were surprisingly high-end for a guy I'd always thought was one brow-ridge away from a Neanderthal.

🤣

It was going to be a long rest of my life.

If I'd had one, Ian probably would have kept it anyway. I could picture him hunched over it, waiting for a text that read, “Oh hey this is the Kimball shaman. Killed Matthew Armitage yet? Report soon! :) Good luck!”

“You'll draw out the Kimballs. And you'll set the damn wards, Matt wants you to.” A little note of bitterness there, and I wished I had the energy to gloat properly. “So we'll do whatever we need to do to keep you functioning. Got it?”

Honestly, he was still a jerk. But now he was my jerk, and he'd just swallowed my come, and when I took a second to think about it...he didn't sound pissed. He sounded hurt.

I was me, not someone else's leftovers, and Ian was Ian, not just Jared's cousin, and I was not going to be anyone's second — or default — choice, ever again.

💅🏽👏🏽👏🏽

I didn't have the fucking manual for this. What did a guy do when his hostile asshole werewolf mate started to, like, be nice to him? Sweet, even?

But it really did make me look like a younger, more moisturized Emperor Palpatine, and I kind of loved it.

“I’m sorry,” Freckles said. “I’ve been remiss. I’m Charlie Fenwick. Nate, you might know me better as ‘that fucking cocksucking bloodsucker that tried to kill me,’ which is what your dear departed father used to call me, I understand, with his usual eloquence.”

But it had a seedy vibe all the same, like the ghosts of all the dicks sucked in the corners of the room were haunting the place even when the bar, sorry, lounge, was closed and the drunks were at work nursing their hangovers.

How were you supposed to reach your potential if you didn’t even know what steps to take to get there?

“He’s not happy because he already fucking knew. And now we know, too, probably sooner than he expected.”

Ian is dumb

“The point,” Charlie said with a glare in Dor’s direction, “is that the enemy of my enemy is my friend, isn’t that so? We’ll polish off the Kimballs together, and then we can go back to ignoring each other in public and being moderately hostile in private. I’m comfortable with that.”

“Nate. I never hated that Jared was with you. I hated that you were with him. I hated him. I hated myself for hating him. I hated everyone in the fucking world except for you.”

I tried again. “I don’t want to break the bond. I want to stay with you. I’ll try so hard to be,” I swallowed, “better. Okay? I promise.”

I tipped my head back and looked up into Ian’s worried face. He was so handsome like this, all flushed and rumpled and damp with sweat, warm and big and mine. Now or never. “I love you,” I blurted out, the words running together.

“I’ve been trying not to fall in love with you for years and failing, and I’d die for you. You called me an asshole, so I think you actually mean it, so can you please, please just fucking say it again?”