The Party and the Mate - Part 2
633 Words
The celebration stretched deep into the night. Laughter rose again. Music softened, and for a while the pack allowed itself to believe the danger was gone. I moved among them like someone half-awake, smiling when spoken to, answering questions I didn’t remember hearing. But every time I caught a trace of cedar and frost in the air. My heartbeat quickened.
Dominic was never far. Always at the edge of the crowd, always composed. Once, when I looked up,I found his gaze across the courtyard-steady, unreadable. The connection flared again, as if the space between us wasn’t air but a thread being pulled tighter.
He watches too closely, Emma murmured. “He doesn’t know what I am,” I whispered back.
He will.
The bond hummed through me, quiet but insistent. It wasn’t affection; it was gravity. The kind that could pull worlds together-or tear them apart.
Later, when the moon climbed higher, I slipped away toward the garden paths. The lamps there burned low, the air cool and damp with the promise of rain. The roses had bloomed again after the storm, their scent thick enough to dizzy me. I leaned against the stone railing, breathing in the night, trying to steady the rhythm of my heart.
“You keep escaping your own party,” Dominic said behind me.
I didn’t startle this time. “I’m not good at pretending everything’s fine.”
He stepped beside me, keeping a careful distance. “You’ve had reason not to be.”
“You heard what happened.”
“Everyone heard.” His voice was quiet, respectful. “I also heard that when the moon burned red, you stood alone against a dozen rogues and lived.”
“Stories grow with the telling,” I said.
“Some truths do too.”
Silence settled between us-not uncomfortable, just full. The sound of the distant music softened until it was only the rhythm of our breathing and the murmur of the trees.
“You smell of silver,” he said after a moment, almost to himself.
I frowned. “Is that supposed to be a compliment?”
His mouth twitched. “It means the Moon has touched you. Wolves from my territory only carry her scent when she’s chosen them for something.”
“And what would she have chosen you?” I asked.
He looked away, toward the line of trees. “Survival, perhaps. Or punishment.”
The honesty in his tone surprised me. I wanted to ask more, but his gaze returned to me-intense, searching-and the words caught in my throat.
The air between us shifted again. The pull tightened until I could feel my heartbeat echoing in his chest. He stepped closer, slow, careful, as if testing whether the world would break if he did.
“Jennie,” he said softly’ “do you feel it too?”
The truth hovered on my tongue. I could have said no, could have pretended not to know what this connection was. But the Goddess’s mark on my palm flared faintly, betraying me.
“Yes,” I said, barely a breath.
He nodded once, as if that answer had been inevitable. Then he bowed his head, almost reverently. “Then we are both already charged.”
When he left me there, the garden seemed to exhale. I sank to the bench, every sense alive, every thought tangled. The mate-bond wasn’t a whisper anymore; it was a heartbeat inside my own.
He is truth and danger, Emma said quietly.
“I know.”
And yet you already lean toward him.
I looked up at the moon, pale and distant again. “Because the Moon decided I should.”
But even as I said it, I wasn’t sure whether the pull came from fate-or from something far more human.
- Writer
