My mate and my gift

Chapter twenty-five: Mira

I was awakened by the sound of music. Still half-asleep I recognized the melody, and my feet began to move to the beat. I tried to move my head, but something was pressing it. I frowned and opened my eyes, only to look straight into Matthew’s sleeping face. I wasn’t prepared for that and jolted my head back a bit. Matthew looked more peaceful now than he had done when he was unconscious. I smiled and pressed my head back against his. Then I noticed the music. It was the first draft of Matthews song. But that was not possible. That file was on my laptop, and it was password protected among other things.

I tried to twist around to locate my laptop, but Matthew’s arms wrapped around me and kept me in place.

“Where do you think you are going?” he asked, one eye open and looking at me. I couldn’t help but smile.

“I have this feeling that you have asked me this before” I said in a playful tone.

A shadow passed over his face. It only lasted a second before he smiled back at me, but I noticed the look on his face.

“Are you…” ‘okay’ I was going to ask, but before I could finish, Matthew had put his lips on mine and the soft kisses he was giving me made me forget the world around me.

The kisses got longer and longer, and soon his tongue was pressing against my own. When we both pulled away to breathe, Matthew snuggled his face against my chest.

The music once again snapped me out of my bubble, and I cleared my throat, not sure how to begin my question.

“How did you find this music?” I asked, trying for a nonchalant tone, like I was more fan-girl curious than worried.

“My phone connected to your laptop” was Matthew’s muffled reply. Just like that? I panicked a little, worried that someone else might have connected to my laptop without me knowing.

“Can I please check my laptop?” I asked, clearly anxious.

Matthew looked up at me with furrowed brows and let go of me. I sat up and leaned over to the desk, grabbing my laptop from the drawer. When I had logged on and checked all my security settings, I noticed that the setup that connected my phone and my laptop was not as private as I wanted it to be, and that my laptop could be accessed by any phone that had been within a 3 feet radius of it for more than 2 days.

Obviously, when I made this setup, I had not expected to be that close to anyone for that long. I changed the settings to only be able to pair with one phone at a time and defaulting to my own phone.

Matthew was sitting next to me, leaning his head on my shoulder.

“Aww” he said in a disappointed tone, “I wanted to listen to my song some more”

I froze and looked at him with wide eyes. He kissed my shoulder and smiled at me.

“Naming the file Matthew’s track makes it kind of obvious” he said with a grin, “although I do think you should have made that the title when you released”. He winked at me.

I hit him in the face with my pillow and he laughed. My heart was still racing.

“It could have been someone else!” I said desperately. No way anyone would believe that. “It could have been Roxy!” I added. Matthew laughed harder.

“There is no way Roxy would be able to keep such a secret from me” he said, confident he was right. I was inclined to believe him.

“Why didn’t you tell me?” he then asked, looking just a tiny bit hurt.

“How was I supposed to say it? ‘Hey babe, you know that musician that you love. It’s me, just so you know’?” I asked sarcastically.

“Yeah, something like that” he said and laughed again.

“Well, now you know” I said. I wasn’t entirely sure I liked the fact that Matthew knew. This meant that he knew the lyrics to Roxy’s song was my feelings.

I snuck a peek at him, and he was looking at me like he could see right through me. He closed the lid on my laptop and placed it on the floor, pulled me down with him on the bed and wrapped his arms around me.

I felt my body tense up with anticipation, but he just stayed like that, his cheek resting on the top of my head, breathing in my scent.

A knock sounded on the door and Matthew groaned exhausted. He got up and pulled on a pair of pants, then opened the door. Outside was Diana, the female alpha of our pack.

“May I come in?” she asked after a while. Matthew had seemed surprised to see her. He gestured for her to enter. She made her way towards the chair by the desk and I reached down on the floor to push my laptop under the bed and covered it with my jeans.

She sat down and looked at us. I could feel myself getting nervous. She took a deep breath and smiled.

“First of all, I wanted to congratulate the both of you, on behalf of the alpha pair, for finding your mate and to tell you, Matthew, that is it good to see that you are doing well.” She said, “Secondly, as you know, once two wolves have found each other, it is custom that a celebration be held in honor of the pair and the wolves be provided a residence of their own. As we speak, alpha Adal is making preparations to build a lodging for the two of you in this village. Unless you would like to make a request to be housed in the other village, of course.” She added. We both shook our head no. She smiled at our synced response. “Usually, the paired wolves will move to their new dwelling after the celebration ends, but as you know, the celebration in honor of alpha Adal and I will be held in a couple of days, and we both agreed that the pack would need a period of rest before a new celebration should be held. Under normal circumstances, the time between the wolves find each other and the celebration is between a week and the next full moon. Alpha Adal and I would like to discuss with the two of you, if you would be willing to wait until the full moon after our celebration, to hold a celebration in your honor and move to your new home?”

I looked at Matthew, who looked like he wasn’t pleased with the delay. I, on the other hand, had never thought about the two of us living together in our own house. I felt a small knot in my stomach and wondered if I was excited or about to throw up. Maybe I wasn’t ready for this?

“If it will make it easier for You, we can most certainly wait” I said. I avoided Matthew’s gaze by looking down on the floor.

“Excellent” Diana said and rose from the chair, “We will be in touch with you one of the coming days to discuss further details.”

After she left, Matthew went to his closet and found some clothes, put them on and walked out the door, without looking at me. Great. Now he was mad at me.

I decided to ignore him for now and got dressed, found my laptop, and snuck back to my own room. It felt like forever since I had been here. It felt foreign and familiar. I hid my laptop in my closet, between two pairs of jeans. I found some clean clothes, walked out the door and towards the showers.

When I was done, I went to Roxy’s room and knocked on the door. A guy I didn’t know opened the door.

“Shaun?” I asked hesitantly. I was pretty sure this wasn’t Shaun, because he looked nothing like the guy from my class, and I had never heard of two wolves with the same name in a pack. But since our packs had merged, there might be some cases now.

He frowned and tilted his head. “Do I know you?” he asked. Ok, so, this was another Shaun. I shook my head in response.

“I’m looking for Roxy” I said quickly, suddenly embarrassed by my assumption that Roxy would be with the Shaun from my class.

“She’s still sleeping” he said, obviously having no clue who I was and pretty eager to get rid of me again.

“Breakfast is ready” I tried, grasping at straws. I didn’t want to be alone right now. He gave me a superior grin and said, “She won’t make it to breakfast” and closed the door in my face.

I went to find Sascha, who was in her room with Vic. They both joined me, and we were headed towards the dining hall when we passed Matthew on the stairs. Sascha and Vic greeted him, and he nodded in response, but he didn’t even spare me a glance, which didn’t go unnoticed by Sascha.

When she asked about the situation I sighed and told her it was nothing, not wanting to elaborate the fight between Matthew and me. She seemed to feel the same way I had when Matthew had left his room in a foul mood and she chose to ignore the matter for now. I felt a little twist of guilt when she reacted like that, but I was too embarrassed about the reason for our fight to tell her.

Halfway through breakfast a thought hit me. How would the future look for Sascha and Vic? Would they ever be able to move to their own house? I couldn’t remember ever hearing of any wolves moving out of the mansion unless they were paired or getting old. I looked from Sascha to Vic and back to Sascha. I didn’t know how to bring up the subject or how to phrase it.

Vic caught me staring and poked Sascha with his elbow. When she looked at him, he made a nod in my direction. Sascha just looked confused at us.

“She wants to ask something” Vic said with his mouth full of scrambled eggs.

Sascha looked at me expectantly and I felt my palms getting sweaty.

“Uhm…” I started, “What would the two of you do if you never found your mate?”

They both just stared at me.

“I mean, would the two of you get your own place? Would you stay in the mansion?”

They looked at each other, both seeming uncomfortable with the question.

“We’ve never really talked about it.” Vic said.

“And I honestly never gave it much thought.” Sascha added, “Why do you ask?”

I had no answer for her. I didn’t actually know what I wanted with this information. It wasn’t going to help me with my own situation. In the end I shrugged and said, “It was just something that occurred to me.”

Neither of them looked convinced, but after the incident on the stairs, they both decided to let it go. It also seemed like I might have given them something to think about.

We finished the rest of breakfast in silence and when I parted with them and headed for my own room, I heard them talked in hushed voices. I ignored them and opened my door, got inside, and pulled out my laptop.