AllFreeNovel
Share Us
But he was supposed to be my one and only. I felt it in my gut. Why didn’t he feel it back?
When I’d moved to college, I’d hoped and also feared that my feelings for him would dull. I thought I’d meet a guy or girl on campus that struck my fancy. That just maybe I could get over him and move on with my life. I both wanted, and dreaded it happening. Only it never did.
One time at a New Year’s Eve party, a man I’d never met before, but had seen around campus, had grabbed me by the shoulders and kissed me. He didn’t try anything more than that, but just having someone other than Nicholas near me made my skin crawl. I’d spent the rest of the night puking in the bushes. I hadn’t even drank anything. For days it felt like I hadn’t been able to get the taste of him off my tongue, and I longed for Nicholas’ scent near me to chase away the lingering touch of the stranger.
I still saw Nicholas in my dreams at night. Sometimes I swore I caught a glimpse of him from across the courtyard where the students played frisbee. I longed for him in a way that was not healthy, and there was nothing I could do about it. Nothing that I wanted to do about it now.
Perhaps I was only allowed one love in this life. Maybe I was crazy, but I didn’t hate that it was Nicholas.
Chapter Two
Nicholas
Christmasatmyhousewas always an uncomfortable affair.
My family had decided long before I was born that they didn’t want to live on pack lands. I got it. I did. My mother was the daughter of the former Alpha, and that had all kinds of political bullshit that came along with it. Living away from that was the best of ideas.
But also… It wasn’t easy living away from others like us, and the holidays seemed to really highlight that. There was a connection a wolf made with their pack that was unlike any other. I hadn’t understood that growing up, but after having gone to “boarding school” I did.
I met people there, formed bonds with them that were stronger than any I’d had with anyone else—any humans other than my family and Christopher. Only with Christopher, it wasn’t really the bond that it felt like it was. Not really.
Christopher didn’t know I was a wolf, that I had two forms—one of my human side he knew and one of a large, black wolf. He never could. It was against the rules to tell humans about us, and really the only rule that my birth pack would come all the way out here to enforce. Humans could not know about us unless you were mated. And that rule all kinds of sucked. How could you mate someone with that huge secret over your head? Not that I had anyone around I wanted to mate. Or date even.
Human mates were rare. In all shifters I’d ever met, I’d never met any. I’d never even seen it mentioned in any of the history books I’d read about shifters. The only reason I knew it was maybe possible was because I’d asked my Alpha one time. He’d snorted and said it could happen, but it was a cruel thing for fate to do, to match a wolf with someone who could never understand them.
Call me sappy, but I was waiting for my fated mate. My brother Nate said it was bullshit, that fated mates were a fairy tale and that I should play the field and find someone to settle down with eventually. And maybe he was right. Truth be told, I thought about it once—with Christopher.
It was dumb. Teen hormones and all that. He was gorgeous, we got along well, and he looked at me like I mattered. Of course I wanted to bang him. I had been a teen, hormones bouncing all over the place.
That ended when I left in the middle of the night on my last day as a fifteen year old. I’d wanted to tell him I was leaving. Really, I did. But each time I tried to think of a good lie, it made me sick to my stomach.
It wasn’t like I could walk up to him and say, “Hey, so tomorrow my wolf awakens, and he’ll want me to shift so he can hunt and run and stuff. I won’t have any control, so I’m going to be with the other kids my age to be trained.” Even if it was allowed, which it wasn’t, he would think I was messing with him.
It had been so hard to leave that night. Not only was I a sixteen year old kid moving away from home, but I was leaving behind so much. I had a school I excelled in, a family I loved, and a best friend who I cared about so much that I asked the goddess to make him mine, make, him my fated mate.
That wasn’t how it worked. If… not when, I met my mate, they would be a wolf. And I longed for that day. It would be the day I could finally let go of Christopher once and for all. A fated mate’s bond is like no other. For the first time I’d be able to look back at our friendship as what it was… a friendship. All the flirting and near kisses I imagined would be gone, as it should be.
“Your brother and your cousins are a pain.” My mother slapped down a paper in front of me. “Can you run to Weston’s Food Store and pick this stuff up for me? I forgot how much newly shifted alpha wolves eat.”
“Sure thing, Mom.” I grabbed the list.
She didn’t forget how much we ate at that stage. She didn’t know because I’d never been allowed home. My beast was more out of control than “any wolf they’d ever seen,” and I wasn’t fit for human company, which was ridiculous. I wasn’t that bad.
Fine. I was. My wolf wanted no part of being there, insisting I go home. I tried to show my wolf that by behaving, we could visit home, but he didn’t listen. He was a my-way-or-the-highway beast, and it was the reason I was stuck at school until I was nearly twenty, and why I’d never been allowed to get or send letters. Family day was as close as I got to my old life. And while I loved them dearly, they weren’t Christopher.
“Hey, while you are there, maybe pick up a tray of cookies to bring over to the neighbors. Looks like they’re home this year.” She didn’t look up from the new list she was scribbling.
“Which ones?” Surely she couldn’t mean…
“The Hanlons.” She did mean. Fuck. Christopher’s family was home for the holidays which meant he might be, too. What was I supposed to do with that? Would I see him? What would I say?
My nose twitched, as if I was going to be able to pick up his scent from this far away.
“Is…” I started to say, but thought better of it. My parents had tried to sever the strength of my feelings for Christopher. When I’d asked about him in the past, they had shrugged off my questions. I didn’t know if they knew how much I cared for him or if they thought I was simply curious because he had been my friend. Either way, they didn’t talk about him and I didn’t ask. I didn’t know how to explain how my heart ached for him and my wolf howled to be near him.
My mom smiled at me, a softness in her eyes that I rarely saw. “I think Christopher is coming home, so you might see him. Just remember that it won’t be like before. You are different now. The bond you thought you had with him—the crush? It cannot be.”
Guess that solved that.
