Lessons in Love

Chapter 12: The Mate Bond

POV: Beta Ben Westlake

I stood up and stretched. “I need sleep.” I said, yawning for the umpteenth time. I headed for the door and turned back. “Am I going …” I sighed and shook my head.

“What?” He prompted.

“Am I going to like her?” I asked, avoiding eye contact.

Rick let out a little laugh. “I don’t know if I want to tell you anything about her. I’ve been growled at enough for one night.”

“I’m sorry, I shouldn’t have asked.” I turned for the door.

“She’s tough. She fought at the Crystal Lake m******e. She took down two Rogues earlier today all by herself and was ready for more.” He said. “She’s a powerhouse on the battlefield, and not any of that ‘for a girl’ crap either. She was more powerful than some of the guys standing next to me.” I growled lightly at the idea of my mate being in combat, but I felt more pride than anything else.

“While she’s incredibly aggressive on the battlefield, she’s not at all off it. She’s friendly and chatty. She makes you feel welcomed and comfortable without even trying to. I think she’s going to be a compassionate teacher, and I think the kids will respect her authority.”

He paused, and I looked at him. “Yeah, you’re going to like her a lot, I think.”

“Thanks,” I said. I opened the door and noticed her scent had faded from the hallway. The idea of going to my suite and not being able to smell her anymore made my heart ache.

“Ben,” Rick called to me, and I realized I was standing in his open doorway.

“I can still smell her in here.” I said pathetically.

“You want to sleep on the couch tonight?” He asked. I closed the door and went back into Rick’s suite. He chuckled at me as he went to get me a pillow and blanket.

POV: Riley Campbell

By the time I crawled into bed, the birds were chirping. I had literally spent all night researching different mate bonds. All the lore and educational materials I could find said the same thing. I shouldn’t be able to feel my mate until after we’d met in person. Some literature said we shouldn’t be able to feel each other until we’d touched. Even at that, to feel the kind of anger and sadness I had felt should have taken months of being together.

Either way, we both would have had to smell each other to be connected. Ben had to have smelled me at some point and knew I was here, or at the very least, that I existed. I’d been foolish to think Ben may not know who I was. Sam had told me there had only been a handful of hires, and I was the most recent to start. He knew who I was, and he’d probably known for a while, considering how quickly I started to feel his emotions.

My research suggested a few reasons the mate bond could react this way. Blessed Unions, which are said to be when the Moon Goddess blesses two souls to love each other lifetime after lifetime. It was hard to prove a Blessed Union, and it was said to only happen for two souls that impressed the Moon Goddess. I believed firmly in the Moon Goddess, but this theory had seemed a little out there to me. A lot of the other bonds were similar and seemed ridiculous.

There was the Power Bond, which was considered the rarest bond, which cosmically joined two souls to right a wrong or an injustice. This was at least believable after receiving the letter from the Alpha earlier. Power Bonds didn’t require us to meet to feel the pull of the mate bond. The idea was that we were supposed to be able to find each other when the time was right.

A lot of the literature suggested Power Bonded couples couldn’t reject each other until after the injustice was corrected and the draw and emotional transfer of the bond wouldn’t calm down until then either. Last but not least, was a good old-fashioned curse.

One story I had read was of a couple who lived on opposite sides of the country but vacationed at the same spot every year, just at different times of the year. The man would spend the winter there, and the woman visited for two weeks every summer. Despite the duration of their stays and the span of time between their visits, the couple had been able to smell each other on the same spot every time they visited. After the first year, they both claimed to feel unexplainable emotions at odd times of the day and night.

After several years, they felt everything the other was thinking and feeling. While a mind-link never formed between them, there was nothing about the other person they didn’t feel like they already knew. Eventually, the man spent the whole year there waiting for her to show up. Their story ended with a happily ever after because, curse or not, they were actually fated mates.

Most of the stories didn’t end that way. Most ended with the curse being broken and realizing they weren’t mated. Some tried to reject each other and died. Being rejected is supposed to hurt like hell. The pain of rejection was always said to be the anger of the Moon Goddess ripping through you. I shuddered at the thought.

Most curses were simple. Once an unmated person catches the scent of the cursed person, they feel like they’re bonded to you. That could be what was happening to us. If that had been the case, then why hadn’t Rick been the one to fall for me. Or whomever collects the mail. Fate has never cared about the s*x of its partners, only the outcome of the partnerships. For all I know, I should have been catching feelings for the maid!

None of it had made sense. As I tossed and turned, I thought about the savory scent of Ben’s mating scent. Roasted apples and herbs would have to hold some special significance to him. Our scent is said to be something from our childhood, a core memory. Something that made us happy or inspired the person we were to become. Wondering about his scent had led me to an unfortunate bit of cyber snooping that had left me more perplexed over my mate than I already had been.

There hadn’t been a lot of pictures of him online, but I had found one that, as I closed my eyes, I was seeing in my mind. He was muscular, not a big shock. Most wolves were, but Ben wasn’t muscle-bound. He was holding a crate of apples in the photo, which flexed his biceps perfectly under the blue shirt he was wearing. His arms were good. The kind of arms you'd want him to wrap around you and hold you; comfort you, pick you up and throw you on the bed …

Okay, that was enough of that, I told myself and rolled over. He had sandy brown hair, cut short with a side part that I imagined was easily ruffled. It looked soft and thick, like you could push your fingers through it easily. His skin was slightly tanned, probably from being out in the sun picking apples, and his cheeks were flushed in the photo as he smiled.

His blue eyes were gleaming in the photo, matching the giant smile he sported. That smile, I thought. There was a genuineness to it that made you want to smile back, and a warmth to it that made you hope you’d see that smile every day for the rest of your life. I rolled over again and took a deep breath before pulling my pillow over my face and screaming into it at the top of my lungs. I felt a little better, but it solved absolutely nothing.