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Grimes' confusion

Grimes’s POV

The day I noticed an obvious change in my younger brother, Mario, was the same day I got a grasp of what it meant to have a mate.

The joyful expression he had on his face was real. I didn't doubt it.

Time had passed since then, and I had been made the alpha of our pack, the Crescent pack. At that time, Mario had traveled far away to somewhere I did not know of.

I had become an alpha without a mate. Not all alphas needed a mate to act as luna. In instances where the alpha is a female, her husband would become the beta.

I had no mate to be a luna, but I had someone who occupied the space as a mate. I also had a beta.

Claudia rubbed her hand over my chest. “If you so desire a mate, we could instantly become mates.”

She was the person taking the place of a mate to me, but wasn't acting as my luna.

“And how would that be?”

She tilted her head up a little. “We would become perfect.”

What did she mean by perfect?

“And you feel we aren't okay the way we are?” I frowned.

“You aren't perfect.” She was quick to answer. “And it's all because you don't have a mate.”

We laid on my bed. She had just satisfied my sexual need as usual.

Our relationship wasn't one-sided, and she played the perfect role of a mate, such that we met our personal needs together.

I took a long look into her dark blue eyes. “That has nothing to do with our relationship.”

“It does.” Her hand moved slowly from my chest to my groin. “It does.” She insisted.

Her hand was stroking me.

“We should get married.”

Was she proposing?

“What we have is not different from mates.” Her hand went off me, and she turned to the other side so I wasn’t looking at her face. “Unless you really want to find a mate.”

Wasn't I supposed to find a mate?

I could not compare our relationship to that of mates. She wasn't my luna. Of course I was looking for my mate, and if I found her, I would allow things to go the normal way they should go.

“I’m convinced that I'm more than a mate to you.”

I had to ignore her.

Just when I was about dozing off, I heard a knock on the door which made me stand on my feet to check who it was.

It was Greyson, my beta.

“The mating ceremony,” he said.

I’d forgotten about it, and was instead spending the free time I had to rest in Claudia's arms. Without hesitation, I quickly had my bath and walked out with Greyson.

The time was already cut short.

“The ceremony is close to coming to an end,” he tried to make sure I added speed to whatever I was doing.

“If my mate was there, then she should be waiting for me.”

In a short amount of time, we arrived at the hall, but the interest I thought I had was no longer firm.

The fear of doing something entirely new was locking around me, and I wondered what it was to have a permanent partner. I imagined sticking to one person, and imagined that it was going to be tiring. It was strange that all others had gone through it, and were happy to the end.

For the next thirty minutes, I was still standing outside the hall, observing the reactions of new mates.

“You have to go in,” Greyson said directly into my ears.

I really had to go inside.

The moment I stepped my right foot across the door of the hall, everything felt light, giving me the feeling of becoming weightless. The air around me became different.

I wasn't sure of the change, but I knew that the air smelled different to my nose.

The next moment came into play when one of the girls that was stepping outside the hall bumped into me. On normal days, a simple “sorry” would have brought us apart, but she didn't move away from me, giving me strange vibes. Her bright golden hair rubbing against me was supposed to cause an inconvenience, but it didn't. It felt as though we had known for years.

“Mate?” I couldn't keep to myself.

I finally had the feeling of having a mate!

Her body was already touching me, and it took me no time to plant kisses on her lips. No doubt, she felt the bond, and I was sure about that, how would she have kissed a total stranger?

The mate bond had once again proven the animal-like nature of werewolves to the extent that a stranger could turn into a lover in a few seconds.

We separated for a bit, and she raised her head to look at me.

“R–ed eyes.” Her mouth was half opened, and she walked backwards from me to another lady I noticed had come with her.

“R–ed–eyes.” Her fingers were pointing at me.

Her next backward steps almost sent her falling to the ground, but her friend had held her up.

I could not tell why my red eyes had become a topic. Of course I had red eyes, but what about them?

The music had stopped, and everyone was watching us. I decided it was part of the mate bond working in her, and my face was still brimming with a broad smile. I was too convinced that everything was still perfect.

She had moved some distance away from me, and I walked closer to her. But then, when I touched her wrist, she started running out of the hall.

How was her running outside the hall part of the mate bonding process? She couldn't be running away from me, could she?

Greyson went out of the hall to call her, but she was so far away from him that he had to turn back in disappointment. He had no clue of her name.

We had not introduced ourselves.

I was standing at the same spot, and Greyson was the one moving around. He went over to meet the girl that was earlier standing with my mate. I could say she was my mate, what other proof did I need?

“What's happening to her?” Greyson asked.

She was already going out, but I saw the strange expression on her face.

“She is not okay.” She replied.

“Her name?”

At least, we should know her name.

“I can't say.” She walked out of the hall.

The hall was becoming empty, and almost everyone had gone out of it, save some people.

“What just happened?” I asked Greyson.

I felt like a man just waking up from a deep sleep.

“You saw everything.”

“And…”

He held my wrist for us to leave the hall. “We can find her.” He went on to hold my face with both hands. “But first, we have to go back home.”

That was the strange turn of events that kept me in a daze.

After a few minutes, I got home, and all I wanted to do was to remain in my entrance state. Greyson had not given me any explanation for it, and I think.

Claudia's presence greeted me, but I just couldn't speak to her. I laid on the bed, facing the other side so she wasn't looking at me.

She was good at reading emotions, and there was a great chance that she could tell the strange turn of events just by looking at me.

She placed her hands on my back. “You couldn't have gotten a mate, could you?”

I turned to face her, was there a need to hide anything?

Instead of looking at me, she laid on her back, looking at the ceiling.

“Everything was too hard for me to understand,” I said.

I could no longer trust my reasoning, and I felt she might have a better understanding of everything.

“Sometimes, it happens like that.” She had a faint smile on her face, and suddenly started rubbing her stomach. “I think I'm pregnant.”

I raised my head from the bed. “For me?”

“Yes.”

She wanted to see a happy expression on my face.

I stood up from the bed, but couldn't make an expression. My face was blank.

“What about my mate?”

“You’ve found your mate?” The smile on her face faded off. “I am having a child for you.”

She sat uprightly on the bed, and just then, her dark blue eyes, coupled with her dark hair, became a torture to my eyes. How was I going to combine the fact that I had just got a mate to her being pregnant for me?

“Grimes!” Her face had turned red. “You decided to leave for someone else, despite the love and care we have for each other.”

My eyes were no longer at her, but I noticed she was cleaning tears from her eyes.

“Tell me it's a prank.”

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