“You'll have to be strong,” she says. “They'll want to take from you, use you, but you can't let them.”
She's crying now, silent tears that trail down her cheeks as she stares down at me. “I wish I could be there to see you grow up. You're the one I'll miss most of all,” she says. “My little omega, my Ollie.”
“But why do you have to go?” a child's voice asks with my mouth, a plaintive plea in the tone, and even though don’t really remember this woman, there’s a hole in my chest when I think about her being gone.
“It's my time,” she says. “But the pack will look after you.” Almost too low for me to hear she adds, “I hope.”
She sniffles and ruffles my hair. “You just listen to your brother and everything will be okay.”
But it’s not okay.
The dream fractures into a nightmare of leering faces and dark rooms and, finally, the cage at the lab. The images come faster and faster until they’re flashing by so quickly, my mind can’t even register them, and I’m drowning in a sea of broken memories.
My breath catches in my throat.
And then it all falls away.
I shoot up into a sitting position, heart racing, and breaths coming in panting gasps. Tears are running down my face, my heart crying out for the woman I finally recognize—my mother.
Beside me, Luke stirs awake, his eyes blinking open. His gaze narrows in on my tear-streaked face and his brows draw together. He quickly sits up and tugs me toward him, wrapping his arms around me and tucking my head under his chin as I bury my face in his chest. “What is it? What's wrong?”
“My dream… I remembered my mother,” I choke out. “She was dying. She's dead.” Anxiety twists in my stomach. “She said the pack would look after me, but what if Doc was right? What if it was my pack’s Alpha who did this to me? What if those triumvirate people try to send me back to them?”
“No matter what happens with the triumvirate or with your birth pack, if you decide you want to locate them, you’reminenow,” he says, his voice a soft rumble in his chest. “The bond we share is new, and I’m not sure anyone fully understands how fated mates work, but we’re in this together. No matter what. You're it for me, and I won't let anyone hurt you ever again. I don’t care who they are.”
His words are enough for me to let go of the fear and uncertainty lingering from my disconnected dreams. I close myeyes, nuzzling at his neck and basking in the warm comfort of his presence.
“She called me Ollie,” I whisper after a few seconds. “I think that's my name. It… feels right.”
“That's a good name.” He brushes a kiss over the top of my head. “My Ollie.”
The way he says it, the words mirroring my mother’s from the dream, causes a sudden spike of anxiety and my muscles go tense as my thoughts spiral down an unexpected path. Can I truly believe this man I just met is going to take care of me based only on this near magical connection I barely understand?
Where the doubt comes from, I have no idea, but the longer I sit with it, the more pervasive it gets until I finally have to ask, “How do I know?”
“How do you know what?” asks Luke, rubbing his hand over my back.
“How do I know this whole fated mate thing isn’t just another trick?” I lean back and force myself to meet his gaze, biting at my lower lip. “That you’re not just another Alpha out to take advantage of me?”
Luke stammers, stunned half into silence, then sighs and shakes his head. “I guess you don’t.” His brown eyes bore into me, his expression earnest and open. “But even if you can’t quite trust me yet, which is completely understandable, you can trust your wolf. He won’t steer you wrong, not with something like this.”
When I don’t respond, he reaches his hand forward, holding it out expectantly. I place my hand in his and he presses my palm to his chest, right over his heart. “I have very little experience with this, and I can’t tell you how it all works, but I know you’re mine. Can’t you feel it too?”
The thing of it is, I can. There’s a vibrating connection between us, tying us together. It’s not love, this connection morebiological than emotional at this point, but that possibility is definitely tied in there somewhere.
I nod and a tear streaks down my cheek. “I don’t know why…”
“It’s okay.” He releases my hand and cups my face, brushing his thumb over the corner of my lips until I release the lower one. “Stop biting. You’re going to hurt yourself.”
“Sorry,” I say after a long pause. “I think the dream must have unsettled me more than I thought.”
“No need for apologies,” he says, cupping my cheek and staring into my eyes.
Something shifts between us, his gaze darkening and darting down to my mouth as desire coils low in my stomach. Unlike when I was in the bathtub, Luke doesn’t hold himself back this time. He leans forward slowly, giving me plenty of time to pull away if I want to.
I don’t.
I stay almost perfectly still as he ever so gently brushes his lips against mine. He pulls back almost immediately, searching my face to gage my reaction. He smiles at whatever he sees there and leans forward again.
