So, she ensured that I couldn't come back, that I could live out my destiny. She hoped that I would realize this was the better choice one day.
After days of reading it over and over, I realized that finding my mate was my only option. The only way to make living in this realm worth it.
I got up off the earth and went to the nearest city, doing odd jobs as I drifted from city to city on foot. My grandmother's note stayed in my pocket, giving me the strength to keep going, and for ten long years, I searched. Each moon, each city, I kept going, but the hope that I started with kept withering, layer by layer, as time went on. Until tonight.
Because tonight, I found her.
It was her scent that caught my attention first, wrapping me in an intoxicating trance of sweet honeydew. It crawled under my skin, curled in my chest, and made my knees weaken with want. I nearly stopped fighting, lost in the pull of it, as heat rolled through me in waves. I’d never touched a woman before, never wanted to until now. I’d waited for this, forher.
I’d watched enough of our jaguar shadow as a cub to know what to do, how to please your mate as both a man and the beast within, and I wanted to please her. To make her mine in every way that mattered. My mate. My salvation.
My feet picked up their pace, passing all the people that were gawking or pointing at me. I needed to talk to her, to explain everything. Just as I saw the massive doors to the outside world, someone yanked me into a dark hallway, breaking my line of sight.
Pissed at my focus being interrupted, a growl ripped from my chest before I even saw who it was.
“Whoa. Whoa. Save that kind of fierceness for the ring, boy.”
I straightened and took in the human man before me. His body was soft and bloated, golden rings flashing on every chubby finger as he gestured with them while he talked. His breath was a rancid cloud that made my face twist in disgust. My first impulse was to swipe at him, to get him away from me and clear a path with claws and teeth, but my mate’s face flashed in my mind. Reminding myself of how she behaved around humans, I forced my hands to stay where they were.
If she wanted civility, I would give it. If she wanted a representative, then I would be one. I would show her how valuable I could be.
Breathe. Be the man she can parade in front of cameras.I smiled and nodded for him to continue, willing to give him a minute or two before I went back to hunting down my mate.
“Now, my boy,” the man crooned, looping an oily arm through mine and steering me down the dim corridor. He wasn’t afraid of me. His confidence made my hackles rise, but all I thought about was how pleased my mate would be that I was able to handle this filth with a cool, calm demeanor.
“What you did out there was stupendous! The fight of a lifetime! Seeing you shift and take the champ… man!” His praise spilled over me, and I nodded. The truth was simpler: I’d trained for this. My uncle had taught me the art of war—how to move, how to survive against the strange and the powerful. Fighting beast to beast, I knew exactly how to win and survive.
He pushed harder, his breath slick against my ear. “You deserve the lights. The cameras. Worldwide. Figurines, movies—name it.” As he spoke, his saliva pooled at the corners of his mouth, and his jowls jiggled. Cold humor curled through me.This human’s greed and hunger for spectacle is grotesque.
“You were built for this life,” he said, squeezing my arm as if to claim me. “You were made for this purpose.”
“My purpose is to find my mate and have cubs,” I answered, and the words left no room for anything else.
His grin soured into something oily. “Girls? I can get girls—hundreds. Have your fun. If one gets pregnant, we can—” he gestured as if bargaining a livestock sale“—sign the child over. The public loves a family man. Single dads sell.”
The image he painted sat heavy and foul inside me. Girls. Other women. Children who weren’t hers. My body recoiled as if the idea had a poisonous taste. Sweat pricked my skin. Heat pooled low and ugly. The thought of having a cub with anyone but my mate felt like a slap to the throat.
He kept yapping away. An agency solely dedicated to me, being the first supe he’d championed. All while a volcano of pure rage built up inside me, erupting when I couldn't take it anymore.
When I shoved him against the corridor wall, his rings clanged, and his heart rate picked up. The rancid stench of fear rolled off him as he gasped. My fingers dug into his windpipe as I leaned in, voice animal-like. “Get this through your thick, fat skull: there’s nothing in this world you could offer me that would make me sign with you. Next time you cross me, I’ll snap your neck between my teeth… human or not.”
He hit the floor like a sack of rotten fruit, scrambling away on hands and knees before bolting down the hall. The urge to take him down and shred him to pieces tugged at my bones. I wanted to let him run, let him think he was safe, then show him the meaning of real fear. I imagined ripping out his esophagus and presenting it to my mate as an offering. In Faerie, trophies were proof of devotion.Would she understand that here?
The temptation to tear after him, run him down to the ground, and hear his high screams fade into the night rode me hard, but I took a few breaths and let the instinct go. She wanted the humans placated, not murdered in the spotlight.
Patience, I told myself. There were other gifts I could give her—better ones, chosen with care. I would not cheapen the start of what we might be with something grotesque.
Turning my attention back to the hallway, my nose picked up the faint sweet melon thread that tugged at my heart, so I followed it. Voices ahead drifted into focus. A man in a suit and red tie, a woman wobbling in sequins. “Did Nova leave already?” the man asked, scanning the hall. “I wanted to talk to her about an opportunity.”
The woman cackled uncontrollably behind him. “She’s not investing in your business,Kyle.” A smirk on her face, she began hiccuping. “She’s a hardened mob boss who changes into a wolf and tears hearts out. She’s not interested in your dinky security business.”
I sank back into the shadows, about to ignore these two in favor of following my mate’s trail, when the wobbly-footed woman spoke again. “I did hear she was going to the after-party… but you have to be invited. I don't think you're invited,Kyle.”
My mate. A party?
Stepping out from the shadows, I emerged right in front of the woman slurring her words. She shrieked and flailed her arms, about to fall backward, but I caught her, setting her upright with a gentle hand on her elbow.
I gave her my second-best smile—sweet, practiced, the one that opened doors more easily than violence. “Where’s this after-party?” I asked. “And how do you get an invitation?”
