CHAPTER 5

Don’t move. Don’t get up. Don’t follow. Stay perfectly still.

I kept telling myself as I sat behind my desk with my face in my hands, trying to rein in my raging wolf that demanded that I get off my ass and run after our mate.

She was… everything I could hope for. The long auburn hair, the sun-kissed skin, the small mouth with two perfect pink lips, the green eyes, and delicate eyebrows. Even the stubborn and defiant look in her eyes, the confident posture, and the flashing rage I felt as she was leaving. She was… perfect. Mine.

“Please stop,” I whispered, begging for my voice to settle. “Not now.”

“Stop what?” someone asked just as the door to the auditorium opened and Graham walked in, carrying a small folder between his fingers. His suit jacket was unbuttoned and the top two buttons of his shirt were undone, but that tense look from earlier still lingered. The feeling in his eyes intensified as he watched me sit slumped by the desk, face still in my hands. I watched him between my fingers as he looked around before striding to the desk. “What is wrong now?”

My eyes stopped on the folder and he placed it on the desk, moving it toward me and opening it on the first page where a list of names stood.

“The workers in that cafe, as you requested. You can find a copy of their applications and personal details on the next pages,” he explained, sitting at the edge of the desk while I ran my finger down the names. My breath caught as I paused by the last one and I turned the papers inside until the last section. She was smiling in the picture attached with a paperclip to her application and other documents. My heart jumped as I ran my finger over the picture until Graham cleared his throat.

“Is that her? Your mate?”

“Yes,” I nodded, slipping the picture and putting it aside so I could check the application.

Name: Sarah Smith.

Age: Twenty-six years old.

Birth date: August 19

Marital status: blank

Emergency contacts: blank

There was a word on the top right corner saying ‘student’ and several other notes that the interviewer must have scratched as they talked to her.

Pleasant personality. Smiles a lot. Works well with others. Not possible overtime.

“How…” Graham started, a line forming on his forehead. “You can feel the mate bond through a picture? Is that… is that possible?”

I laughed at his expression, remembering I hadn’t told him what had just happened. At the thought of her leaving, my wolf stirred, but I tried to keep the focus on Graham.

“She was in my class earlier,” I said, and his eyes went wide. “She left.”

“You let her leave?” he exclaimed with even more surprise and I sighed, rubbing my temples. As if realizing that I had enough frustration to deal with, Graham’s face relaxed to his usually calm expression. “What’s the problem? If you both felt the mate bond, why aren’t you marking her right now?”

“The problem is…” I dragged, leaning back in my chair while my eyes floated to her picture. I wished she had smiled at me like that instead of staring with that horrified expression. It had taken me aback to see her so scared. I knew she’d be surprised and most likely confused, but I didn’t expect scared. Even if she felt the mate bond as keenly as any werewolf would, which was not usually the case with humans, she should have been drawn to me, not repulsed. She looked like she wanted to run as far away as possible as quickly as her legs could take her. “...she is human.”

Graham stared for a few seconds, then tilted his head, and for the first time in a while, surprised me.

“So? Where’s the problem?”

I stared at him with exasperation. Graham was mated, he had been mated almost the moment he turned eighteen. But he was mated to a werewolf. They saw each other, they bonded and they marked each other. He couldn’t possibly understand.

“Graham, you know humans are not like us. They don’t feel the same way we feel, I am not sure if they even feel the mate bond, let alone understand it,” I said, and he kept staring at me with that puzzled expression. “Without knowing about us and our kind, our way of living and loving, she wouldn’t know what to do with the bond. Even if she feels it, she’d define it as attraction or if I am lucky, love at first sight. I can’t just go biting her without explanation. She needs to understand and accept our bond before I can mark her. If she doesn’t… she can reject me out of misunderstanding. I can’t rush things.”

Graham seemed to consider it for a second, his expression dropping. He had been brought up in the werewolf world, completely cut off from the humans before his father did something to be banished from his pack. His family had to leave as well or face death and that’s how the sixteen-year-old Graham had ended up in the human world, entirely unequipped to live life between tall concrete buildings and streets so noisy, a werewolf’s hearing was a liability, not a strength.

I had ended up helping him get out of a tight situation with a bunch of thugs before he tore them to shreds in a sidestreet on one of the busiest streets in Boston. We had a rocky start at first, but I had managed to win his trust and he ⁠— mine. Hiring him as my assistant was still my best decision to this day, although his ill-adjustment to human society was a downside sometimes.

“I understand,” he said, sounding like he was trying to understand, but not fully grasping it. “So, what will you do then? Just leave her?”

I gave him an incredulous laugh and a small smile tugged on his lips.

“There is no chance of that ever happening. She is my mate,” I said, and this time when he nodded, he understood completely. “I will… have to take it slow. Get to know her, get her to trust me, ease her into our world and everything that comes with it. Then, when she is ready, I will claim her. But the way humans are, if I come onto her too strong, too fast, she will run.”

Graham scoffed, nodding in agreement. While he didn’t hate humans as most of our kind did and he didn’t think them inferior, his inability to understand them kept him from fully integrating with them. I knew it was going to take more time for that damage to be repaired, but with the help of his mate, Sheila, who was working among them and had grown up among them, I was sure he’d be fine. As for my mate…

I licked my lips, looking back at the report on her. There wasn’t much more than what was on her application, just a copy of her social security and a clean bill of health. Nothing about her life outside of that place.

“I… I need you to find me anything you can about her. Where she lives, who she lives with, what she studies, where her family is, who her friends are. Anything you can find.” I kept my eyes down, knowing full well what Graham’s reaction is going to be. When he didn’t say anything in reply, I forced myself to look at him, only to prove myself right. He had an eyebrow raised, his lips curved into one of his rare smiles. His eyes twinkled with amusement for a change, but I could tell he didn’t approve of my order.

“I thought you were going to take things slow, get to know her,” he pointed out, staring at the back of the picture that had found its way into my hands. I didn’t even remember picking it up, but as I looked at her face, my finger was caressing her cheeks, her nose, her lips. “Are you sure you want to do this? Going behind her back from the start? If she finds out you knew everything about her before even speaking to her, she might not take it well. Humans rarely do.”

“I have no intention of leaving things on chance,” I said, tucking the picture into the inner pocket of my jacket and getting to my feet. Graham gathered the folder from the desk, still watching me. “I didn’t get where I am today because I played by the rules and made safe choices. I will not force her into anything, but I will do what I always do ⁠— I will prepare thoroughly and account for all options, good and bad. In the end, she will have no choice but to fall in love with me. And when that happens, I will give her everything and take everything in return. Because she’s my mate.”