The Wizard's Rogue Mate

Chapter 5: Amazingly Perplexing

Liam has me in a bone crushing embrace, but when he hears the growl, I’m pushed behind his frame. I haven’t had the time to even say hi, or acknowledge the fact that I haven’t seen him since yesterday night, when he was drunk out of his mind, before I’m faced with the back of the grey hoodie he’s wearing.

Kids start running around everywhere, panicking. This is made ten times worse for me, because I have no idea what is happening right now.

“Athena, stay there.” Liam says in a husky, protective tone. This backfires, however, when there’s another, louder, growl. It doesn’t take a rocket scientist for me to figure out who it is after that.

“Shit.” I mumble under my breath, pushing past Liam much to his dismay. I gasp when I see Grey standing with his hands clenched at his sides and those black, white and purple tendrils of smoke wrapping themselves around him, slowly consuming his figure. It’s weird to see, foreign, almost. I’ve never seen anything like it before, and I doubt any of the pack have either.

My mate’s eyes are solely focused on Liam, who is getting ready to shift and protect everyone here. I love Liam, I really do, but the way he’s riling up Grey is slightly irritating right now.

“Grey, calm down.” I state, taking another step towards his slightly trembling frame. He doesn’t listen to me; his pupils barely flick over to mine and acknowledge my presence at all. Liam, on the other hand, growls lowly at me as a warning sign to get away. He doesn’t know this is my mate. He doesn’t understand the control I should have over his heart.

“Athena, come back here. I lost my mate, there is no way I’m losing you too.” I don’t have a chance to think about the meaning behind his words before the tendrils wrap themselves around both of Grey’s arms. Everyone in the room gasps in fear. No one speaks a word.

Grey takes a couple of steps forward and begins to raise his hand in an attempt to either land a punch or do something freaky with his powers. Before he can land the blow, I find my leg coming up at lightning speed and I spin around to kick him in the jaw. Momentarily disorientated, Grey stumbles back a little, giving me time to push his chest, hard, so his body crashes with a soft thud into the wall a few metres away.

Silence. I don’t let it deter me, though, as I take a long stride over to him and place a hand roughly on his shoulder, lightly pinning him to the wall. Grey doesn’t look seriously injured. In fact, he doesn’t seem hurt in the slightest, but I notice a purple line of smoke swirl around the area I kicked him in the jaw, healing it in a millisecond. His expression is a mix between stone cold and impressed as he stands with a straight posture against the wall, my breath fanning softly against his collar bone.

“There are three things you should know about me, Grey.” I whisper quietly, loud enough so only the most mature people in the room can here, of which there is Liam, who I haven’t had the time to turn around and look at yet, and a few parents crowded by the door, holding their kids to them. “One, I slit the throats of any pack wolf that dares crossing over to my territory.” I find my fingers softly tracing his collar bone slightly revealed from the sweatshirt he’s wearing. Breath is getting heavier on my head, the mate bond kicking in. “Two, I slit the throats of sexist pigs and anyone who thinks anyone is less important than themselves.” My claws elongate and I let them scrape and the area of skin between his neck and shoulder. “And three, I will not hesitate to slit your throat if you ever try to hurt one of my pack members again.” I state through gritted teeth, looking to his eyes to find an emotion that I can’t pinpoint, and pure darkness in place of his once silver eyes. “Mate or not.” My last words are spoken almost inaudibly, for his ears alone.

“Athena,” He starts in a slightly strained tone. If I didn’t know him, I might think he was in pain. “If you don’t tell everyone to leave now, then I will tell them who I really am to you.” Mirroring my tone, his voice is as quiet as mine was; meant only for me to hear. One glance at his black eyes and I can tell he’s completely serious about his threat.

“Leave.” I command to the room. No one questions it, they just rush out, both parents and children, from the back door of the hallway. Only Liam is left. He goes to say something, but I cut him off before he can. “Go, Liam. I can handle him on my own.”

“But, Thea-” this time it’s my mate who cuts him off with a snarl. I slam my hand down harder on his shoulder, pushing his left side into the painted brick wall.

“Go, Liam.” I repeat. He seems hesitant, but obeys my order anyway, sparing a final quick look at us before the doors slam shut behind him as a warning to Grey.

There are only two of us now, standing with my body pressed close to his. Sparks run between us, centring at where my hand is pushed against his clothed arm. He takes a final scan of the room and smirks, me just watching his gaze, before he flips us around, so now I’m the one against the wall, and he’s the one with his hand on my arm. Unlike my grip, however, his is gentle. Firm, but gentle.

“Why did you do that? Try to hurt Liam?” I question, searching his eyes for something. Anything. He just smirks and looks down at me. I don’t like when people do that, it makes me feel smaller than them.

“There are three things you should know about me, Athena.” He mutters, copying my words from earlier and bending his head close to the area where a mark is supposed to go, lips barely brushing against my skin. I try to ignore him and focus on his words, but it’s really hard. “One, my wolf side is equal to my wizard side, so whether you like it or not, I have the upper hand here.” I breathe heavily with anger at his words but can’t bring myself to say anything with his tongue flicking against my neck like that. “Two, I don’t take kindly to annoying little pups who think their duty is to hit on my mate.” I want to correct him, yell at him and curse in his face for being a cocky, arrogant little bastard, but I can’t. My body is in full control of me right now, and I move my head to the side a little to give him more access to my neck, which his canines are now moving against. One of his hands cups my elbow, the other lands on the wall beside me, effectively caging me in. There’s no doubt in my mind that I could escape if I wanted to, but that’s the thing; I don’t want to. “And three, that stunt you pulled there? The roundhouse kick to the face and the whole speech about death? Complete turn on. Maybe you should do it more often.”

Suddenly, we’re both leaning in, our breaths mixing together in the small space between us. A piece of my hair comes undone from my ponytail and drapes across my eye, but I don’t move it away. That would involve taking my hands off of Grey’s chest, and I don’t want the sparks to stop yet.

In most cases, when mates meet, they immediately fall for each other. If there’s nothing in their way, they might even claim each other within the first few hours of finding one another. Mates have such a high value in the werewolf world that most wolves wait through their whole life until about the age of twenty just to find their soulmate, and start their life.

I feel deprived of that. I didn’t fall for Grey within the first two seconds of seeing him, no, the other day, the first thing I saw him do was use his magic to hurt everyone in the pack. My wolf is yearning to be close to him, and being the same person means the feeling is relayed onto me. My heart has a space saved just for him, but my brain wants to keep it reserved.  

Just as his lips are about to meet mine, the reality of what we’re about to do sets in. Kissing him signals commitment, and I don’t want to commit to someone who I’ve only known for a couple of days. With this in mind, I turn my head last minute so his lips make contact with the skin of my cheek instead. Grey sighs heavily, but keeps them on my cheek, kissing softly. My wolf hums in my mind, happy with the closeness of our mate.

He moves away after a few seconds, resting his forehead lightly on mine. His large hand comes up, pulling my hair tie out of my hair and pulling the unruly strands around my face. I can’t help but lift my eyes up to meet his at this point, angling my head upward just to be able to look at his face.

“There’s a party at my place tomorrow night. There will be a bunch of wolves, vampires and a couple of wizards there. It’s my guardian’s birthday. I want you there.” He says huskily, still running his fingers through my hair. I can hardly breathe, anticipation running through my body as well as slight regret from my mind that I didn’t let him kiss me. I would be lying if I were to say that if he tried again, I wouldn’t let our lips meet this time.

“I couldn’t do that, Grey.” I reply. That would be weird. I don’t even know the name of his ‘guardian’. I don’t know where he lives, I wouldn’t know what to wear, and I don’t have a gift to give. I also have border watch for the last time this week tomorrow night.

“Why? It’ll be a great chance to get to know each other, properly; without people being scared of me, and not knowing what or who I am, who we are to each other.” I pull a face. No. He literally just tried to hurt Liam because he hugged me. I should be pissed off at him right now. I shouldn’t even be considering saying yes to his offer. “Look,” he starts, seeing my face. “I’ll be right with you the whole time. It’s a formal party, so you’ll have to wear a dress or something, my guardian’s name is Emily, I’ll give you her address later, your presence will be enough of a gift to her, and you’ve been on border watch for the past three days straight, I’m sure you can put off killing innocent wolves for one night.” This scares me. He just answered every question I had without me asking them, and with the abilities I’ve seen of his so far, from the intense pain in the head he put everyone in the pack through, to the random appearing and disappearing all over the place, even the unnatural wisps of smoke that are constantly licking at his fingertips, I wouldn’t put him past mind tricks.  

“Can you read my mind?” I blurt out, but I’m dead serious. I expect him to laugh at me, to say ‘no, of course not, that’s messed up’. He doesn’t. His expression stays the same; want coated with lust and mystery. I’ve never seen eyes that grey colour before. Almost glittering, but not quite. I want to compare them to steel, but I can’t. They’re more a dark, rain cloud colour.

“And clouds are the source of rain.” His whisper jolts me from my thoughts as well as confirms my original assumptions.

“You can read my mind.” I state, watching as his lips purse in thought and he takes a step away from me. I miss the warmth already, but I don’t say anything. Instead, I force myself not to think of all the cringy things I’ve thought since meeting him.

“I’ll do you a deal, Athena.” He begins, straightening his sweatshirt. “I’ll stop reading your mind, however hard that may be, if you come to the party tomorrow.” My shoulders sag a little.

“Can’t you just respect my privacy and not read my mind in the first place?” I argue, crossing my arms in front of my body. Grey lets out a short chuckle.

“If you were reading an amazingly perplexing, beautifully illustrated, gorgeously unorganised novel, would you want to just put it down because the author told you not to read it?” I raise an eyebrow as a counter to his metaphor. “Well, I wouldn’t… unless that author begged me not to, and offered me something in return for not letting the plotline embed itself into my brain as well.”

“Do you always talk in riddles?” I chuckle, somewhat feeling flattered that he thinks of my mind as ‘beautifully illustrated’.

“Have you decided yet?” he replies, still showing off that infamous smirk. I swallow, and think of all the reasons that this definitely shouldn’t happen, and all the reasons that it’s going to go extremely wrong, and all the reasons why I should be completely annoyed and pissed off at him right now.

But then I think of his eyes, and the way they mirror his name so perfectly, and how he always speaks like nothing in the world could stop him from expressing himself through words.

And then I find myself sighing with the knowledge that I will regret the word about to tumble from my mouth, however it doesn’t stop me from saying it.

“Fine.”