AllFreeNovel
Share Us
“It is my most sincere wish that it is so.”
The way he shook his head and made his way back to the cockpit, Mischa was pretty sure that Pyotr didn’t believe that any more than Mischa did. Fated mates were a fairytale that many shifters told themselves—mostly, Mischa thought, to justify the way some male shifters decided on the female they wanted and took her to mate whether she liked it or not.
Mischa looked out of the jet’s window at the glittering Mediterranean Sea and the island of Sicily below them. He might not believe that fated mates existed in real life, but that didn’t keep him from wishing when he was all alone in the night that it wasn’t so. He kept trying to convince himself that the woman from his dreams was GiGi, but he knew differently. GiGi was tall and slim, with pale blonde hair. The woman he held in his dreams was softer, rounder, and had hair the color of grain glistening in the sun.
Pyotr brought the plane around and landed on Bacchus Vineyard’s private landing strip. Mischa was impressed, as he was sure Giuliano wanted him to be, by the beautiful Alfa Romeo roadster that was waiting to whisk him away down to the main house. The Bacchus estate was said to be one of the most beautiful and lavish vineyards in Italy. Some said it was second only to Marco DeMedici’s home and vineyard in Tuscany.
The jet touched down and Pyotr lowered the staircase from the plane to the ground. Mischa descended the stairs.
“Mischa! Or should I call you ‘Son?’” called Giuliano, waggling his bushy eyebrows and smiling archly as he strode toward Mischa.
Mischa shook his head, trying to clear it of a faint buzzing. “Mischa will do nicely,” he said, extending his hand.
“Bene! Bene!Welcome to Sicily. It is a pleasure to finally meet you in person,” he said, waving Mischa’s hand away and pulling him into a bear hug complete with air kisses on either side of his face.
“Thank you, Giuliano. I am happy to be here. I had thought perhaps GiGi would come to greet me…”
Giuliano chuckled a bit nervously without ever meeting Mischa’s eyes. “GiGi wanted to make sure she looked her best when you first saw her in person. I assure you; her pictures do not do her justice.”
His host and soon to be father-in-law showed him into the car and then drove with reckless abandon down from the airstrip to the grand Italian Renaissance mansion below. The closer they got to the mansion, the more prevalent the buzzing in his head became. Giuliano pulled up to the stairs leading into the house with a flourish, deliberately fishtailing the car so that it spun one hundred eighty degrees and left Mischa closest to the front entry.
The two alpha dire wolves made their way up the stairs and into an opulent foyer. That was where any illusion of this being the right thing to do evaporated into thin air.
“No! No! I tell you I won’t do it! I won’t,” screeched a beautiful woman with pale blonde hair who managed to evade two brawny pursuers as she made a wild dash for the enormous staircase that dominated the foyer. “Help me! Somebody help me!”
Giuliano excused himself and rushed to join the chase. Mischa stood still and stared, fairly confident that the beautiful woman scrambling up the staircase was his intended. But he paid her no mind. The buzzing he felt didn’t seem to be emanating from the woman who was now kicking at those who pursued her. He was certain many men would have found her breathtaking, Mischa wasn’t one of them.
Instead, his attention was riveted to a far more alluring creature—one leaning in a doorway a few feet away, twirling pasta from a bowl around a fork, for all intents and purposes completely entertained by the chaos taking place before her. She was simply the most beautiful thing he’d ever seen. She was tall with blonde hair the color of ripened wheat and curves that begged for a man to use for his pleasure, and he could feel a harmonic bond arching between them.
A wry smile tipped his lips. Maybe the whole fated mate thing wasn’t a fairytale, after all. Maybe it was true.
Mischa could feel his cock harden as the buzzing grew more profound. The woman set her fork in the bowl and batted at her head as if trying to brush away a fly or a bee. She looked over and caught his eye, a look of acknowledgement and fear flashing in her beautiful blue eyes. He rumbled low in his throat and watched as she shivered involuntarily.
Suddenly, the afternoon was looking up, and things were about to become far more interesting. Poor Valentin, he’d put so much effort into putting together this strategic alliance. Perhaps if the woman with the pasta was a member of Giuliano’s pack, the union could still proceed—only with a different bride.
Mischa wondered if Val had wanted GiGi in particular to be his mate. He had worked so hard to bring them together. It might be that Val was trying to get his alpha to take a woman to mate—any woman. It didn’t matter, as Mischa had no intention of taking the screeching she-wolf on the stairs to mate.
Mischa hoped the entire alliance wasn’t dependent on him marrying the woman on the stairs. If it was, a new deal would need to be struck. Something told him with enough additional money, Giuliano could be persuaded to leave the deal intact with the substitution of one she-wolf for another. In the end, it didn’t really matter; Mischa was about to blow the whole thing out of the water.
“Hold! Giuliano!” called Mischa. Everyone stopped their caterwauling and looked to him. “I am assuming the female crumpled on the stairs and crying hysterically is GiGi?” Giuliano nodded hesitantly. Mischa continued. “From all appearances, she does not seem enamored of the thought of becoming my bride. She most likely would not fare well in Alaska, and besides she does not suit me.”
“We have a deal,” said Giuliano angrily, striding back towards Mischa.
“Yes, and far be it from me to dishonor our agreement. Perhaps there is a way we can both get what we want.”
“I am alpha here, and if I command it, GiGi will do as she is told and become your mate.”
“I have no doubt that your will would be obeyed, but I would propose, instead, that we substitute my fated mate for GiGi.”
Mischa wasn’t sure that he could have shocked Giuliano more by growing a second head.
“Your fated mate?” asked Giuliano.
Mischa nodded toward the doorway and stepped closer, invading her space and pitching his voice low as he continued. Her fork paused half-way to her mouth, and her eyes traveled the width of his chest to land on his face. “Yes, this gorgeous creature with the bowl of pasta. She’s mine.”
Her mouth rounded in an O of surprise, and she seemed to work to catch her breath. A moment later, her eyes rolled back in her head and the woman he knew to be his fated mate fainted. It was only Mischa’s quick reflexes that kept her from hitting the floor.
A staff member who identified herself as looking after her and the woman’s sister directed Mischa to her room. He carried the gorgeous creature in his arms, cradling her close to his chest. He would far rather have carried her to his bed, stripped her naked, and marked and claimed her as his own. Somehow, he thought Giuliano might object to that. Mischa reluctantly left her in the care of others so he could deal with her father. Why the hell hadn’t he brought Valentin? He was the diplomat.
