AMAIA
On average, the brain was able to function for up to eighty years. This was equivalent to approximately 28,900 days on Earth for one life.
Unfortunately, nature forced us to spend a majority of our time engaged in a certain activity: sleep. Translated into years, the average person spent around twenty-six years asleep, or about 9,500 days. Add to that the fact that you could waste at least seven years trying to fall asleep, and you got a total of thirty-three years in bed! Now, considering that I also needed time to eat, shower, spend quality time with my little circle of friends, and let my wolf out before I forgot I had one, I didn’t have any time left for anything else, let alone a demanding male glued to my side.
Because a werewolf mate did that a lot. It was just in their nature.
“Listen, hon, do you think your parents would want to see you like this? Over a man?” Tiziano dabbed my forehead with a chamomile-infused napkin, pushing back tear-soaked locks from my pale face. “And one from Dark Diamond, nonetheless!”
What my parents would or would not have wished for me would never be known. They were gone. A bunch of bones in dusty clothes. That was the answer I would have given Tiziano, had I been able to speak.
“He’s right! Either you reject this Callum boy, or you accept the mate bond.” Makena paced back and forth across the bedroom. After some research, they had discovered that my mate was none other than one half of the notorious Dark Diamond’s Gamma twins. Definitely a player on the field. Outside the field? He probably was as well.
Dark Diamonds were all like that.
Callum Ashburn.
That name sounded perfect on my lips.
Amaia Nguyen Ashburn.
“Sleep with a few guys before rejecting him, so at least the douche won’t play well in the next game?—”
Makena smacked his head. “Tiziano!”
“What?” he snapped. “I’m not happy with the choices the Moon Goddess has made for my best friends. Not one, buttwoDark Diamonds for mates? I’m considering becoming a pagan and rejecting the goddess altogether.”
I sobbed into my pillow, the case all soaked with snot and tears.
The last time I’d cried was during the funeral of my hero, my dad, as I’d squeezed Lachlan’s hand and watched the brown coffin descend into that dark hole dug into the unforgiving ground. Since then, zero tears had been shed.
Until today.
I had sworn it. Dedicated my life to medicine and research. No other teenagers deserved to grow up without their parents.
Graduating two years early from high school, earlier than even Yvaine and Tiziano, I’d worked part-time at the braincancer research center, publishing several manuscripts under my name in the academic world.
In the middle of all that, the idea of a mate had never crossed my busy mind. The fantasy with Lachlan? Exactly what it was called. A fantasy.
Somehow, I’d always believed that I would marry Lachlan someday, my childhood sweetheart, but only when I felt satisfied with my work. Only when I felt I deserved it, as naïve as that may have sounded, since we weren’t true mates. But I’d always liked rationality and making choices on my own. The mating concept was the opposite. Mates always complicate things—see Makena and Gaius. Or even Yvaine! Now she’d been forced to skip classes and take a break from heartbreak, fleeing to Scotland.
Four days into the rejection, I officially crawled out from under the covers and took a shower. I stared at my feet all the way to the bathroom, too tired to even lift my head, before positioning my shaking body in front of the mirror.
My reflection was no surprise. Swollen eyes and dark circles. I traced the incavated lines. Had my cheeks lost flesh?
Chemo. My face reminded me of a chemo face.
It felt like someone had ripped the cold heart out of my chest and kicked it into outer space. There, floating and lonely, it had imploded on itself.
Since the rejection hadn’t been fully completed—I hadn’t known his full name then, and wolves had to pronounce the full name to truly break the bond—since I was halfway through it, I was lost in a limbo between rejection and not.
He hadn’t said my name, either.
I knew I had to choose, and fast. But deep down, I also knew I had no say in it. Because as much as I needed to focus on my life mission, on my medical research, and on my studies, I would never be able to function without a heart.
There it was.
One day later, I was before the luxurious Dark Diamond campus. The obnoxious onyx diamonds over the front gates connected to make a heart shape, a diagonal claw mark slashing through the symbol like a meteorite that had crash-landed from planet Lascivious. The trees beyond—elongated, dark—seemed handpicked to match the vibe bordering the pack we were about to visit.
