Getting Back My Younger Mate

2 Hallway Encounter

“He’s so hot,” Kimberly, one of the girls in my class gushes, watching Corey strip off his shirt in the middle of the gym.

“Look at his tapered ‘V’. I just want to trace my tongue down it and see where it leads,” another girl says.

Rhea is snarling and growling in my head, but there is nothing that I can do. I can’t announce to the entire school that he’s my mate and that he won’t mark me. He’s still the Beta and it wouldn’t look good for either of us, especially since he is technically more than 20 years older than me. He may not look like it, but being the Beta, everyone knows everything about him.

“He’s still unmated, isn’t he?” Kimberly asks.

“No. Look at his neck. He’s marked.”

“Why do we never hear about his mate then?”

“I bet he’s embarrassed of her,” Kimberly snorts. “I mean, look at him. It would have to take someone like, I don’t know, super hot to match that. Like Gigi Hadid or Rihanna hot.”

“Maybe no one knows his mate because he still likes to fool around,” another girl asks, sounding hopeful about the idea. “I wouldn’t mind showing him a good time.”

Rhea is livid, snarling in my head, but Chelsea is the one who snarls out loud, making all the girls sitting near us jump in surprise. “He’s your f*****g mated Beta. Show some f*****g respect,” she snaps. All of them bow their heads, bearing their necks submissively, not wanting to piss their future Luna off more.

Chelsea continues to glare at them for a few more minutes, her nostrils flaring, then when she’s sure they aren’t going to start up again, she looks over at me with sympathetic eyes.

“Don’t listen to them. He could never be embarrassed of you, Eva. He’s just trying to let you live your childhood before he takes you.”

“What childhood?” I snorted back at Chelsea in the mind link, “I haven’t been a child for years.”

“Maybe to you, but in his eyes you are still a high schooler. Just be patient.”

“I’m tired of being told to be patient,” I sighed, then turned back to look at him. He’s staring up at me, a concerned look on his face. The coach says something to him and he ends up turning back to get the claw-proof mats ready for wolf sparing.

When I noticed the girls still gawking at him, only doing it silently now, I could not take it anymore and got up from the bleachers and started walking down so I could head towards the locker rooms.

“Where are you going?” Chelsea calls after me.

“Bathroom,” I lied.

I just want to get somewhere I can’t see Corey and feel worse about being unmarked. I need to clear my mind for a minute.

“If you let me spar like I want to with those girls, they will never look at him again. I can claw their eyes out,” Rhea suggests.

“No thank you. I rather you just find a way to make our mate accept us.”

“Hmm,” she groaned while thinking, “Spar him instead. I’ll try to get Samson to give in to the bond.” Samson is Corey’s wolf.

“Yeah right. Samson is as uptight as his human. He won’t even fight back with you. He will just let you win.” Samson is fiercely protective of me. Corey might be easier to seduce than Samson.

“We could always try to make him jealous,” Rhea suggests, making me scoff and roll my eyes.

“Yeah right.”

“No, hear me out. I know he never gets jealous, but we never really give him a reason to be. We don’t acknowledge other guys besides him. What if we paired with a guy and got a little flirty during the fight? Maybe we could trigger mate’s envious side.”

“That’s mean,” I told my wolf. I don’t like the idea of flirting with other guys, even if it is to make Corey finally start showing me the right kind of attention. I also don’t think Corey even has an envious side to trigger.

“I think it's necessary.”

“You got mad when Tyler was flirting with me earlier,” I reminded her.

“Well, desperate times, desperate measures. Just try it.”

“I don’t want to. If it’s not Corey, I don’t want to.” I’ve never flirted with anyone and I don’t want to start now for such a malicious reason. I don’t want to try to manipulate Corey like that. I don’t want to make another guy think I might have feelings for him either. It’s just a bad idea any way you look at it.

“Well, what if the guy knows that you are just using him to get a rise out of your mate? Offer to pay him or something.”

“Pay a guy to let me flirt with him?” I scoff.

“Yeah! Then it's just a business transaction.”

“Like prostitution,” I snorted.

“Hey. Watch your mouth,” she growls. Seems she's allowed to talk about me flirting with other males, but if I mention prostitution which might suggest sleeping with someone, she starts getting defensive for our mate again. I wasn’t even suggesting that. I was just making a joke.

“Eva?” I heard Tyler’s voice beside me as he came out of the boy’s locker room. I didn’t even see him since there is another hallway off the main one that travels the 10 feet to the boys’ locker room door. Tyler is dressed in just a pair of workout shorts since we will be shifting soon, and I almost blush seeing his exposed chest and toned legs. He’s nowhere near as impressive as Corey, but still impressive for an 18-year-old regular wolf.

He couldn’t take on any of the men in my family, or even me for that matter, but he could hold his own with the pack warriors.

“You okay? You looked upset.”

“Yeah,” I’m quick to smile to hide my wayward thoughts, “Just got a lot on my mind.”

“Yeah?” He leans against the wall next to me. From the main hallway you probably couldn’t see him and it probably looks like I’m talking to myself, but I don’t care. “Are you upset about lunch? I didn’t mean to push you like that. I didn’t mean to sound like a jerk about you and your cousin and not knowing you were related either. I honestly didn’t know.”

“It’s fine. We get that sometimes. Brently just gets grouchy.” Most men in my family do. “I wasn’t upset. I really do have a mate, though.”

He nods, looking at the ground. “I do too. Well, did. Mine rejected me right away when I turned 18. I heard your mate wouldn’t mark you, so I just thought maybe you were in a similar situation as me.”

I smiled sympathetically, rubbing his arm for a second. “I’m sorry. I didn’t know that. I wasn’t rejected, though. My mate just, uh, wants to wait, I guess.”

He makes a dumbfounded face. “Why? I mean, how could someone wait to claim you?”

“I guess I’m just not mature enough yet,” I sighed.

He snorts, “I find that hard to believe. Does he still want to sleep around or something? I don’t get it.”

Rhea growls at the sleeping around thing, but I can tell she is thinking about something.

“I don’t get it either,” I told him honestly. “I just have to wait for now, I guess.”

“That’s not fair to you,” he mutters.

“No, it’s not, but I have no other choice.”

He thinks for a few seconds, looking down at the floor before he looks back up at me. “Do you love him?”

I smiled sadly. “I do. I love him a lot. More than anything.”

He presses his lips together, nodding his head. “Well, I can still just be your friend. Friend zone me all you want. I know how lonely it can get without your mate accepting you.”

I smiled gratefully. “Thank you Tyler.”

“Ask him,” Rhea tells me.

“What?”

“Ask him to help you. Ask him to spar with you and you can flirt with him in front of mate.”

“No!” I yelled at her in my head, “I told you I’m not doing that.”

She’s about to say something back, but then the man himself calls for me from down the hall.

“Eva!” Corey says loudly, walking quickly towards me.

Tyler definitely has nothing on Corey. Corey is over twice Tyler’s size and his defined muscles make my mouth water and my thighs moisten as his sunshine and sage scent wafts towards me.

“I saw you leave. Are you okay?” he asked, coming to a stop beside me. When he notices Tyler, he looks surprised for a minute, and I almost think he’s finally about to show some form of jealousy or possessiveness, but he does neither.

“Oh. You came to meet a friend,” he says, then smiles kindly at Tyler.

“Hello, Beta,” Tyler bowed his head respectfully.

“Corey, kid. Eva’s friends call me Corey. I’m a friend of her dad’s,” Corey says, and my heart sinks. I wanted to cry, feeling the rejection in his words. Not, ‘I’m her mate’ but ‘I’m her dad’s friend’.

This sucks. This sucks so, so bad.

“He’s not a kid, Corey. He’s the same age as me,” I muttered, making Corey laugh.

“That still makes him a kid. I’ll leave you both to your conversation. I was just coming to check on you. See you both on the mats.”

My heart feels completely crushed. I’m always going to be a kid to him. Not his mate. I’m his friend’s daughter and just a kid.

“Wow, I didn’t expect him to be that nice,” Tyler says, “I thought he was getting ready to kill me for talking to you alone in the hallway like this.” He waves his hands down his body.

“He’s not nice,” I murmur, “Not at all.” If he was nice, he would have gotten mad at me and Tyler talking while Tyler was half naked. He just acted like it was completely normal. Like seeing me with a boy in an intimate setting was no big deal.

Tyler chuckles. “I’m sure he’s like an uncle to you if he’s friends with your dad. He doesn’t even look much older than us. It’s crazy.”

“Yeah,” I huff, “Crazy.”

I purse my lips for a minute while Rhea begs and pleads in my head for me to give in to her plan.

Screw it. What do I have to lose at this point?

“Hey, Tyler. Could you maybe do me a favor? As a friend?”

“What?”

I bite my lip, nervous to actually do this. “Could you help me make my mate jealous today? Like, flirt with me and stuff in the gym?”

“Oh s**t. Your mate is someone in our class?!”

I smiled sadly. “Kinda.”

He stares at me, thinking for a moment. “Sure,” he grins, “If you can do me a favor in return.”

“What?”

He grins crookedly. “Help me make my mate jealous too. Go to the party with me this weekend.”

I grin. “Deal.”