When We Were Mates (Demetra and Emris) novel Chapter 188

188

Alpha Emris.

My hands were on her hips when I was already falling asleep.

Both our hairs…in a mess, her breath soft against my chest. Then her phone started buzzing somewhere in the room. I moved just enough to grab it, saw Travis’s name, and sent the text. I’m asleep. Yeah, I’ll be there tonight.

I think I was polite.

My Luna won the Mascots today and she is going to get the rest she earned before anyone puts a drink in her hand and calls it a celebration.

Ascension Night is usually, in simple terms, a college party. It’s happening tonight for the elevation of the wolves that got into Dragon or Panther Class. I’m sure Demetra has time to get ready later after her beauty sleep. Ascension runs late anyway… the real energy doesn’t build until ten at the earliest and right now it’s barely evening.

I adjust the air conditioning because my body temperature runs hot…pack Alpha biology, always has and at her size she’ll overheat if I’m snuggled against her back for hours. I get it right, return to the bed, and I’m out in minutes.

I end up sleeping for six hours.

Right at the dot of 8 p.m., I crack my eyes open. Demetra is still asleep.

Ascension Night gets bubbly at a good 10 p.m. I’ll wake her by that time.

I look at her for a moment and then I get up quietly. I take a cold shower and come out feeling functional and marginally less like an Alpha who has been running on four AM training sessions and full moon instincts for a week.

I pull on a shirt and get into the office. There’s a box of files that the movers brought in last time. Alpha duties. Luna duties. Pack business. Alliance contracts. Things I should have signed that don’t care that I’m technically on a pack tour. I pour a scotch and open the first file.

At the same time, my phone rings.

I put it on speaker immediately.

The number is a customized internal line, used only in the Black Covenant pack. If it calls, it means there’s important shit.

“Alpha.”

“Zayn.” I respond, looking at my drink. I’m waiting for that ice to crack.

“We have the whereabouts of Regan.”

I pause. Reagan.

“Where?” I take my seat again.

“Portugal.”

I do a small dark chuckle. That’s how far my older brother ran? Portugal

“What should we do, Alpha?”

“His cards are blocked. He currently has nothing to his name. How is he surviving?”

Γ

“We found him at some mountaintop in the cold. Living in some old man’s house. He comes out in the morning and fishes for what he’ll eat at the waterfall nearby-”

“Who’s the old wolf?” I swirl the scotch.

“No idea yet. We don’t want to draw suspicion by asking around. But he sells fish at the riverbank to the farmer’s market. That’s when Reagan is usually with him. If we draw closer-”

“Don’t draw close. Keep an eye. Don’t invade. Don’t ask questions. Use people in the environment as eyes and report back. When I’m ready I’ll come to Portugal personally.”

“Alpha…” Zayn hesitates. “We can extract him. It’s not safe for you to come here for that. Words will spread fast to the barbarian wolves in the territory-

“Just do as I say.”

“Yes, Alpha.”

The call ends and I stare at my screen where there’s a picture of both Amira and Milo. Amira is grinning with white hair in pigtails. Milo is holding a toy truck and his eyes are looking straight into the camera.

I stare at Milo.

And the betrayal hits me in the chest again. Even though I’ve filed it away. Even though I’ve refused to acknowledge it. How can he not be mine? I almost break the cup in my hands

Tknow he is mine! I raised him. I held hirm when he was born. I taught him to walk, to talk, to throw a ball. So how can he not be biologically mine? Moons, why! All these years, I’ve looked at him and somehow seen myself in his eyes. I love him. I love him and I don’t want him one day to not see himself as the Alpha’s son.

Right now, the elders have hushed because they know I could have their heads for even saying a word about what they heard that night. But how long?

One day he’ll grow up and questions will come from directions I can’t control and I never want him to look at me and see anything other than his father, because even when I didn’t know he wasn’t biologically mine I still saw myself in him. I still do.

And I never want him to not see himself in me.

I will not allow him to ever look at me as anything other than his father.

I let it go now. Because if I can’t, how will Milo see me as his father forever?

The adaptation is easy. I just throw myself into work.

Let’s see… what the hell is this?

I take out a file from under a stack of papers and see it’s from the Crestville Pack. Cresthill. Laura’s pack. Who authorized this?

I glance through it as fast as I can, scanning the dense legal text.

Words like alliance. Signed contract. Cresthill Doctors coming to the pack house on rotating schedules to work with injured wolves and training. In exchange, the Black Covenant Pack provides Cresthill by officially verifying and publicly endorsing the current Alpha in his or her blood right if Cresthill’s territory is ever threatened.

Shit. I forgot.

I cut off our alliance with Alpha Seth after I dropped millions of dollars in his pack for being able to save Amira. But really, I could not stare at that wolf’s face again for being so close to marrying Demetra.

No shade.

I guess Mom and the elders looked to the next pack we could/do an alliance and this is what they came up with.

Laura’s pack. I wonder if she knows this exists. Because I, as Alpha, am just realizing. That’s what happens when you make hasty decisions and leave it to the elders.

Wait. Fucking Silver.

He’s my Beta. He was supposed to run this back to me. My stamp is on it like I approved it…which means Silver simply stamped it and forgot to tell me.

Look at this shit. It has at least 365 pages around it. So much text that can’t even find where the actual agreement starts. I’m going to have to read the whole thing. I spend the next hour doing exactly that, working through dense legal language and pack formalities and clauses that Silver absolutely should have flagged before putting my stamp anywhere near them, when I hear a light knock on the office door.

It’s Demetra.

Her hair is curly everywhere….in ruffles like she just wrestled a cloud and won. She’s wearing my big shirt. It stops very shortly and hangs off her collarbone.

I drop the shitty file to open my arms with a smile.

She walks toward me and cradles against my chest, putting her feet up until she’s on me like a baby…heavy in the best way.

I kiss her over and over. Her forehead. Her temple. The tip of her nose. Her mouth. I palm her ass in a slow circle, squeezing the soft flesh through the fabric of my shirt.

“Sleep well?” I murmur against her hair.

“Best sleep I’ve had this month.” She tilts her head back to look at me. “Did I… ride you well?”

She says it innocently and a smile cracks across my face before I can stop it. One I didn’t want to give her. One she didn’t deserve after putting me through hell all week

She ends up chuckling at my expense.

“You won just that one.” I growl.

“I want to see your face like that forever, begging and shaking for me.” She kisses my lips. Then looks at me naughtily.

188

“Saw your text to Travis.”

He should be lucky I didn’t see anything funny other than that.”

Jealous.” Demetra gets up from me and I stare at her body in my shirt. It’s going to smell like her when she returns it to me. That’s if she ever-

“I’m heading to the Ascension Night. What should I expect?”

“Fuck boys-”

“Oh, Emris.” She rolls her eyes. “Tell me something else.”

“There’s nothing else. Stay here with me. I’ve been doing your Luna work for you since you’ve been attending school. But hey.” I lean back and spread my hands. “I’m merciful. I’m the one who forced you to bond with me. So it’s my price to pay.”

Demetra smiles.

“It’s good that you know that. So don’t complain, Alpha.” She looks around the office, at the warm light, the bookshelves, the windows that overlook the dark campus.

“I mean, it’s beautiful to stay here. All night… with you.”

“We could get takeout. Watch a movie. Talk. You know I always make you laugh.”

“And we will have that. After I go to my victory party.” She crosses her arms. “Emris, come with me.”

I chuckle.

“You. Want. Me. To. Come. With you?” I make my voice start sounding like a teenage girl…high, whiny and dramatic. “Stop babying me. Stop protecting me. Stop, stop, Emris disappear.”

“Whatever. Do what you want. The girls are already calling me so I have to get ready.” She starts walking out of the office with her chin up and her curls everywhere.

“Demetra.” I call her name when she’s already past the door.

“Nothing skimpy. Hear me?”

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