AllFreeNovel
Share Us
When she heard footsteps behind her she breathed a sigh of relief and hurried to turn back around, grabbing Rafe by the shirt sleeve and tugging him to the middle of the kitchen. His eyebrows winged up but she released him quickly. He opened his mouth, no doubt to ask her what was going on, but she rushed the words out as quickly and as quietly as she could, praying Zoey was too busy in the other room to use her wolf hearing to eavesdrop on the kitchen conversation.
“He’s my mate.” Maya winced at the panic in her own voice and tried again when Rafe’s brow furrowed in confusion. “Nova had a dream that woke us both up and she said my fate was on the other side of the door and then there was a knock and I opened it and…” Maya made small explosion signs with her hands, “He was there and the bond clicked into place so fast there was nothing I could do.” Rafe was still staring at her, eyebrows meeting his hairline, but saying nothing so she repeated herself with a hiss. “He’s my mate.”
Rafe Hudson continued to stare at her and Maya seriously considered punching him in the face. She wasn’t entirely sure what she’d been expecting when she told Rafe that Zoey’s brother was her fated mate but it certainly hadn’t been this. The silence was deafening and it made her shift uncomfortably from foot to foot, not knowing what to say or do now that she’d put the words out into the world.
Finally, as if coming out of a trance, Rafe blinked, “Your mate. He’s…”
“Yes, Rafe.” She snapped when he drew the words out too slowly for her liking. She grit her teeth and lowered her voice again, “Yes.”
“Well…” Rafe thoughtfully scratched his stubble-covered jaw. “This night is just full of surprises.”
“Tell me about it.” Maya groaned.
“So, Nova knew? She saw it and didn’t warn us?” Rafe glanced around as if her sister might be hiding somewhere nearby instead of in the living room with the others. “Why wouldn’t she say something?”
Maya shook her head, “I don’t know what she saw, or when, or how much she put together about who he was before he got here but if she did know, it’s my fault she didn’t say anything. I’ve told her to keep her visions about my life to herself.”
Rafe made a sound, a small hum, as if he was remembering all the fights he’d witnessed at family gatherings when Nova tried to tell them about a vision and Maya shut her down. She’d screamed at her younger sister more times than she could count that she didn’t want anything to do with a fate that had seen fit to kill their parents and nearly destroy their pack. She had never regretted her decision not to heed Nova’s visions or warnings, not until tonight.
Because if she’d known, if she’d let Nova tell her that her mate was going to show up on their doorstep in the middle of the night, that he would be human with no knowledge of the paranormal world, and he would be related to someone they already thought of as family, then she would have done something to stop it.
She would have run. She would have hidden. She would have avoided the man and the bond that he had sparked with nothing but one look between them.
She wasn’t ready for this and dammit, she hated that she had no say in the matter now.
Her wolf was already pacing restlessly beneath her skin, itching for a chance to get closer to Zander, to mark him and claim him. The mating heat would only get worse the closer they got to the full moon. It would drive her wolf crazy, drive her crazy, and it would most definitely drive Zander crazy because he was a human and had no clue what was going on.
He would only recognize the urge to be with her, to join their bodies, as lust. The mating bond was like a powerful, insatiable lust that made it impossible to think clearly or want anything but the mate that fate was pulling you toward. It had been Zoey herself who had given Maya that explanation of how the mating heat felt for a human and she had a pretty good idea that Zoey wasn’t going to like that her brother’s fate had been chosen for him when he didn’t even know all the facts.
At least with Zoey, she had known what she was getting into. She’d been raised in the pack. Her adoptive parents were wolves and they’d never hidden their world from Zoey. She’d grown up knowing about shifters, about their traditions and rules. She’d wanted to join the pack and even though everyone had been surprised when it was Rafe Hudson, the near-feral brother of the Moirae Pack Alpha who had come home and unexpectedly triggered a bond with her, she had known enough to know what she was agreeing to when she took the bite.
Zander couldn’t possibly want this bond because he didn’t know it even existed.
It was virtually impossible that he could have come across another shifter and been let into their world at any point in his life. Shifters and in particular wolf packs were insular by nature but also by necessity. The outside world, the human world, was dangerous for them if they were ever exposed so they kept to themselves for the most part. The odds that Zander had met a shifter, lived to tell about it and then randomly stumbled into Noir, Louisiana, home to two wolf packs, was slim to none.
He had only come here looking for his biological sister. He had no idea that Zoey wasn’t just his sister anymore, that she wasn’t even human anymore. She had taken the bite from her fated mate, gifting her a wolf of her own that lived inside of her now just like the Hudson’s and the DeLuca’s who had been born with their soul split into two, their wolf as much a part of them as their human skin. Zoey was as much a sister to Maya now, with her dual nature and chosen family, as she was Zander’s by blood.
“Zoey’s not going to like this.” Maya swallowed past the lump in her throat and tried to focus on the present.
Rafe surprised her by shrugging, “I don’t know. She was excited about the prospect of meeting her brother after you called. She might like the idea of keeping him here by making him a wolf.”
“You’re not serious.” Maya gaped but Rafe only smirked.
“Won’t know until we tell her.”
“No.” Maya shook her head immediately, “No. We can’t tell her. Not yet.”
“What? Why not?” Rafe looked like the very thought of keeping a secret from his mate made him ill.
“Don’t you think she has enough to deal with tonight? A long-lost brother. A niece. Finding out her sister is dead. It’s a lot.” Maya hit him where she knew it would cause the most damage, “Especially in her condition.”
Rafe blinked and then cursed under his breath, “Nova saw the pregnancy?”
Maya nodded.
“We haven’t told anyone yet. Not even the kids. It’s still early.”
“I get it.” Maya touched his arm when he looked off into the distance, as if he was imagining the worst, “I know she had a hard time before and it’s scary. That’s why I don’t think we should tell her that my wolf bonded to her brother right now. I don’t want to upset her.”
