5 - M A T E

🐾 Alpha Jake

After I left Pernwél in the kitchen with Myriam and Anna, I retreated into my study. I had to think over a lot of things.

Wolves mate for life, and there is only one person in the whole of existence chosen for you by the Moon Goddess, or so it says in our folklore and legends. Sometimes it happens that one of them dies before meeting each other after turning of age, and in these cases, it could happen that you would find a second chance mate. It is very rare, but I’ve seen it once before.

If you are a werewolf you can find your mate after your eighteenth birthday. The bond can be triggered by smell, touch, or like I just witnessed in the basement, by looking into your mate’s eyes.

After looking into those beautiful green eyes I felt my wolf growl to life, expecting us to claim her right on the spot, but I had to approach this differently than a normal mate bond between two werewolves.

It could happen that your mate was not of the same species, normally the other creature human. If so, the werewolf would notice the bond immediately with our heightened senses, but if the other half of your soul was human, he or she wouldn’t feel it like we do. They would feel an attraction, a indescribable feeling of desire and longing. The werewolf on the other hand would feel a mystical connection inside upon meeting the one person designed specifically for you by the Goddess herself.

It is like a Yin and Yang reference. A person to balance you out on every level. To mark and be marked by the one who puts your chest ablaze with the most powerful love known in existence.

My parents, before leaving the pack to me and retiring to a more peaceful setting to be by themselves, that is what should have happened, tried to explain the bond to me when I asked what it entailed.

They had said that they felt finally complete upon meeting each other, feeling the bond grow stronger every time they touched. My mom said it was like fireworks engulfing them when they shared their first kiss.

I’ve been unmated for quite some time now. For seven years, I was twenty five now, I’ve looked for my mate. I’ve had some dark moments that I’d thought that I wouldn’t find her, so I had some flings here and there and dated some she-wolves as well. It helped fill the void inside me and sometimes it was a welcome distraction, as long as the she-wolves didn’t cling too much to me, expecting me to take them as my chosen mate.

When you couldn’t find your mate or you had found a person or werewolf you loved enough to be with for the rest of your life, you had the option to choose. You’d have been mated and marked but it wouldn’t be your soulmate.

I had never found such a person to become my chosen mate, but if I wouldn’t have found her in the next couple of years, I’d be forced to take one. I’m an Alpha, I need a Luna by my side to rule this pack.

It was a heavy burden on one self. I had to be a leader, trainer, diplomat, sometimes a parent or a teacher. Keep all the paperwork in check and housing updated for the pack members. Bring food to the table and tend to my people. We worked as a good oiled machine, everyone had their job inside this pack, but as an Alpha, I had to oversee the whole operation to keep everything running smoothly.

When the Alpha found his Luna, the one to rule beside him, his heart and pack, their bond solidified also the ties to the werewolf pack. The power that runs through the veins of an Alpha gets bigger and more potent thanks to his people. How better the connection between him and his wolves, how more powerful he is. When the Alpha mates with his Luna the mystical bond between those two strengthens the whole pack.

That is why it is so important to mate as a werewolf and why we mate for life.

And now, I’ve found her.

The one creature in the world made for me.

The future Luna of Grey Moon pack.

And I couldn’t claim her on the spot because she wasn’t a wolf, nor a human. She was something else entirely: an Elf.

I don’t know what the Goddess was thinking, but this was unheard of. I never met her species and now she came into my life unannounced and turned out to be my mate?

I didn’t even know if she had felt something roaring to life in her insides. If she felt it like I did. If she noticed the same I felt moments ago when her eyes met my own. I knew it then that I was hers. Completely.

She hadn’t even blinked when I felt my wolf jumping in my chest, so happy and content that he finally found her. She hid herself away again under the hood and averted her gaze from me.

My wolf was going crazy in my mind, asking me questions why our mate was acting so strange and why she wouldn’t even look at us. He felt bad, rejected even.

I tried to calm him while trying to find an explanation myself. The best I could come up with was using the same knowledge we had about pairings with humans. It just wasn’t as strong as a pull between full blooded werewolves and that we had to take this slowly.

Let her adapt to her environment and to us.

If it was true, everything that she told me, she had experienced enough trauma already. So I concluded that a werewolf pouncing on her claiming to be her mate wasn’t going to do either any good.

I heard the faint voice of Myriam passing outside my door. She was taking Pernwél upstairs to one of the guestrooms like I asked. What a strange name my mate had, I never heard something like it before.

Her sweet herbal scent greeted me as I noticed her softly walk a few steps after Myriam. If it wasn’t for my good hearing I wouldn’t have even heard her, she walked very stealthily. It made me think back at the ninja comment that Darren had said. He always had those geeky remarks, he after all was the one werewolf I knew with the biggest comic book collection I’ve ever seen.

Focussing back on the petite Elf in my pack house, I followed the footsteps upstairs. For the short amount of time we had spent together, I had commited her green eyes to memory. She was breathtaking. I was mesmerized with her silver silky soft shining locks that framed her face and I would love to take the time to count every one of those little freckles she had around her nose. Taste those pouty lips and sense the softness with my own.

I inhaled and exhaled heavily. The mate bond has already started working between us, setting on fire my desire to know more about her. Her lingering scent in the hallway was enough to make my wolf stir again.

I gathered her belongings that lay out on my desk and put everything in her bag. I had promised to return them to her when we talked earlier.

So, I went upstairs, said good night to Myriam who was returning to the kitchen to clean up and left her bag hanging by the strap on the door handle. I heard water streaming so she must be taking a shower. I only lingered for a moment, deeply inhaling her scent and resuming my way onto my private floor.

Tomorrow, I was going to get to know her better.

Maybe, in time, she would fall for me, like I had fallen for her.