My mate and my gift

Chapter fourteen: Matthew

I rolled over in bed, reaching for my beautiful mate who had finally given in to me last night.

I suddenly felt a pang of guilt. Or had she? We were both drunk and I was angry that she was making goo-goo eyes at some strange guy. A human no less!

I sat up and rubbed sleep from my eyes. She was gone. Had it all just been a dream? Oh man, what if it was? But I was sure I could smell her in my room.

I looked in the direction of the bathroom. The door was open, but no one was in there. I could see my boxers hanging from the sink. I smiled. So, it wasn’t a dream.

I flopped down on the mattress again and looked up. I burst out laughing. There, on the ceiling lamp, was the top she had been wearing yesterday. I knew it wasn’t actually hers, but still.

Her scent was filling my room. I chuckled. I had taken her to my room. She was the first girl to ever enter my room and it wouldn’t be the last time. She would always be more than welcome in here.

I rolled out of bed, took a shower, and got dressed. I gathered the dirty clothes to put them in the laundry basket. I smiled when I noticed my shirt was gone. Of course, she wouldn’t go back to her room wearing only panties. But why had she snuck back to her own room? She hadn’t needed to go back to her room at all. I wouldn’t mind waking up to her beautiful face every morning.

I walked out of the room, and went and knocked on her door, hoping to spend the day with her. Preferably in bed. No answer. I followed her scent down to the dining hall, but she was nowhere to be seen.

I sat down to get some breakfast. My appetite was back, and I needed to get my strength back.

Colin walked in and sat down next to me. He gave me a gentle shove with his shoulder. “I take it everything went well last night?” he asked. I didn’t answer. To be honest, I didn’t know. The guilt was back. Maybe she was mad at me again? Maybe she felt that I had taken advantage of her? I hadn’t! Had I? I hadn’t meant to. At least, I don’t think so. I was chewing on the inside of my cheek. I wondered where she had gone. As if on cue, Colin said,

“Oh right! That reminds me; I met Roxy and the girls on my way in here. She told me to tell you that they have gone shopping”

“Where?!” I asked, jumping out of my seat.

“I don’t know, man. They didn’t say and I didn’t ask” He tried to make an innocent face, but he couldn’t help but smirk.

“Colin!” I said with a growl.

He laughed and put his hands up in surrender. “I swear, I don’t know. They got in a car and took off before I could even ask”

Shit! That meant they could have gone anywhere. There was a ton of towns outside of the woods, and many had great shopping areas.

I tried to tell myself to respect her need for time with her friends, I just hoped she would also make time for me. More time for me! Truth be told, I wouldn’t mind if she only had time for me.

Goddess, I had never felt so greedy before in my life! My own possessiveness was new to me.

Reluctantly I sat back down and finished my breakfast. I suddenly had no idea what to do with myself until she came back. What had I been doing before I met her? The past couple of months had been spend chasing her around the village. I smiled to myself. That all seemed like water under the bridge now.

Colin jabbed me with his elbow, leaned in and whispered, “We could hit that pub and do some hustling”. He wiggled his eyebrows and seeing as I didn’t have anything better to do, I couldn’t see why not.

We took Colin’s car driving an hour to reach a certain pub called “The old Irishman”

It had a cellar used for illegal games, and we sometimes went there to make a quick buck.

By law, everything we earned was given to the pack and then the pack would provide everything we needed. But, well… sometimes we needed more than what they could give.

Once inside, the bartender gave us a nod of recognition. He knew we weren’t exactly from around here, but a few percentages of our winnings kept us on his good side – and him on ours.

We went down to the cellar and looked around. “Farrell!” a man shouted, almost amused. Colin looked at the man and smiled in greeting. Of course, we didn’t use our real names here. “Join us!” the man said. From what he had told us, his name was Jarrod. He was what humans called a biker. He had a big beard and long hair. His leather jacket hung over his chair and he sat down, motioning for us to come over.

“What are you playing?” Colin asked intrigued. 

“Texas hold 'em!”

The hours passed by. Not as fast as I had hoped, but it was better than sitting around on the stairs in the front hall of the mansion to wait for Mira to come back. When the clock struck 5 in the afternoon, I figured the girls had to be back soon and wanted to head home, but Colin was winning tonight and wanted to stay a little longer.

“All in” I said and pushed all his chips into the pot.

“What?! No!” Colin said, but he knew that once the chips had hit the pot, they stayed there. He glared at me. I didn’t even know if he had a good hand or not, I just wanted the game to end.

Colin was getting restless as the final two cards were placed on the table. I wondered if he had enough cash on him to pay whatever he would owe if he lost.

“Yeah!” Colin shouted and jumped up, knocking over his chair. I looked over my shoulder and saw that he had four of a kind. That was a rather good hand. Glancing at the other players’ cards, I could see Colin had won.

“Pay up!” Colin said with a smirk.

The others threw cash on the table and grumbled, but all of them knew that we were tougher than we looked, and we had never been dishonest when playing with them. You know, except for the whole thing with our names - but they didn’t know that.

“Great, now let’s go!” I said to Colin, not wanting to waste more time.

As luck would have it, we arrived at the mansion just as the girls got out of the car that was parked in front of the building. I jumped out of Colin’s car and called out to Mira.

She turned her head and looked at me. Then she looked away and darted through the front doors. I tried to follow, but Roxy was blocking my way, taking her time walking inside.

I growled, and she turned to face me. “Something wrong?” she said, tilting her head. She was doing it on purpose. “Move!” I said impatiently, but she just put her hands on her hips.

“Mira told us what happened last night. She was not happy about it; I can tell you that. I don’t think she wants to see you again” Roxy said, giving me a stern look.

What? No, no, no! This couldn’t be happening! I couldn’t go through this again.