My Forbidden Mate

Chapter 1

My Forbidden Mate

The view from my bedroom window was much more serene than the goings on at my home. Practically the entire pack was running around setting up for my party tomorrow night, but I wasn’t excited. Almost no one was. My father was the only exception, seeing that he was the only one who had any real love for me; the daughter his true mate bore him rather than a son. It was the stigma that had followed me around for nearly nineteen years now.

“Are you really going to sit up here like a lout when everyone is working so hard for your party?” My stepmother scolded me as she blew into my room like a welcome guest. She wasn’t. She was never welcome in my room, but that had never stopped her before.

“Do you actually expect me to pretend I’m excited and act like we’re a happy family?” I asked, not turning away from the window. The wind was kicking up the fresh, powdery snow and making the air of the sunny day sparkle. Outside was where I actually wanted to be, but there was no way I could’ve slipped past Belinda and her pack of loyal fiends.

“Would it hurt you to not act like a spoiled brat for a single week, Freja?” She sighed as she picked up my clothes off my floor. Hangers and dresses were strewn about in my half-ass bid to find something to wear to this charade of family togetherness she was throwing me. In the eight years she’d been married to my father, the only kindness she’d ever shown me was in front of the pack and my father. Behind closed doors, her favorite thing to do was belittle me and compare me to my stepsister, Natalie.

“No, it wouldn’t hurt at all. I find it’s usually harder to pretend to be something you’re not.” I said, longing to run in the fresh snow.

“Do not take that tone with me, you little b***h! Why your father puts up with you is beyond me. If your mother had any sense in that blonde, bimbo head of hers, she would’ve left you out in the snow after you were born.” She scoffed.

I squeezed my eyes shut and took a deep breath, my jaw clenched. When she said things like that, it took everything I had to contain my wolf. She was much less level headed than I was, and she wanted nothing more than to murder Belinda in her sleep. To make my father wake up to the mangled body of his wife. I’d be a liar if I said that I didn’t hold a grudge over my father for marrying her, or for not listening to me when I told him how she mistreated me while he was working. But who was going to listen to the ramblings of a grieving eleven-year-old girl? Apparently no one. My wolf didn’t share my love for my father and wanted him to pay dearly for his neglect, but I could never bring myself to wish any hurt upon him. My wolf wasn’t there when mother died, so she didn’t see what it did to him to lose his true mate.

“It’s hard to see why your son never comes around when you’re such a sweet, nurturing mother.” I jabbed back. If she was going to hit me where it hurt, then I was going to do the same thing. My mother had tragically died when I was ten years old and, within eight months, my father had already married that wretched b***h of a she wolf.

Immediately she began turning her nose up at everyone else like she was better than them. She wasn’t. She just happened to be the first one to trick my father into her pants after losing his wife, and since he was required by pack law to have a wife, he married her.

I despised the law and the wolf who wrote the law that stated that an alpha was required to have a luna. Belinda was a terrible luna.

In case I didn’t mention before, yes, my father is the alpha of the Snow Moon pack in the Swedish countryside. I’m sure you can understand why it was so frowned upon that he didn’t have a son. I was his heir, and lunas aren’t allowed to rule alone any more than an alpha is. It’s also said to be bad luck for an alpha to have only daughters, and that daughter is always held in poor regard. It didn’t matter how much I studied or learned how to be a good luna and do right by my pack. My loyalty mattered very little when it came to the taboo of having a female heir. I truly believed that was why Belinda truly hated me. She was very good to her own daughter and, despite the fact that she sucked at being a luna, she was good to my father and she loved him. Or she at least loved the power of her title enough to fake it very, very well. Well enough that even I couldn’t tell if she was faking or not, and I knew her better than most anyone since I received the lump sum of her cruelty on a daily basis.

She marched toward me very quickly and when I turned my head she slapped me across the face so hard that I saw stars and the metallic taste of blood filled my mouth.

“Don’t you ever talk about my son or about me as a mother!” She shouted at me.

“You were supposed to be my mother, too! A little girl who’s mom died and you couldn’t even love me! I wouldn’t expect you to treat me the same as Natalie, but you lacked any compassion for me!” I shouted back, refusing to cry. I wouldn’t give her that satisfaction.

“Don’t even go there, Freja! You are the only child of an alpha. What did you expect, that I’d brush your hair and tuck you in at night?” She said with a laugh. The coldness in her voice rang through my room, icier than the temperature outside.

“Yes.” I mumbled quietly, embarrassed.

“Ha! Yeah, right! You were born a disgrace and over the last year, you’ve managed to sink even lower! Haven’t you tarnished this family enough already?” She said, turning to leave.

“You’re going to regret every mean thing you’ve ever done to me when I’m the luna of this pack.” I swore at her back.

She turned the doorknob and stopped, looking at me over her shoulder. “You’re never going to be the luna to this pack, you stupid little girl. You’ve had a year to find your mate and you couldn’t even do that! The most easily accomplished task for a wolf. No, my son will be home for the party tomorrow where your father is going to denounce you as his heir, and my son will be made the next in line to run this pack.” She smiled wickedly.

My wolf’s growl rang in my head as fear descended upon me. No! If that happened, then her son would most likely send me packing. Leaders who failed to marry their true mate and got replaced were rarely allowed to remain in the pack. I’d be exiled to live in the wild, a lone wolf.

I’ll admit that a small part of me liked the idea of solitude and freedom, but I’d worked too hard for this my entire life! This pack was my birthright and I wanted to protect and provide for it. I had never been introduced to Belinda’s son, but if he was anything like his mother then he would drive this pack into the ground. Our enemies to the south would run right through us. My blood turned to ice as I imagined the Bloodstone pack decimating my home.

“He can’t do that!” I yelled at her.

“Oh, he absolutely can and he’s going to have to. You haven’t given him a choice, Freja! It’s been an entire year since you became of age and your wolf presented, and you know every member of this pack and every surrounding pack, yet you have yet to find your true mate. Even if we wanted to, we couldn’t legally ascend you to the throne and an eligible heir must be announced. Soon, or the elders will start questioning your father’s competence. Do you want this pack overthrown?” She asked, squinting at me.

“Of course not! I’d die for this pack.” I said indignantly.

“Good, then you should also be willing to step aside for this pack so that someone more suitable can run it.”

“Is your son even married to his true mate?” I asked, unable to recall if he’d been mated yet. He was several years older than I was, so he most likely had.

“No.” She said through pursed lips.

“Then what makes him the more appropriate choice?” I asked sarcastically.

“He hasn’t met anyone in this pack and they will all be here tomorrow. With any luck, he’ll meet his mate tomorrow.” She retorted.

“Hmph! Sounds a lot like you’re getting desperate.” I said, laughing quietly.

“Keep talking and I’ll make your left cheek match the right one!” She quipped and slammed the door on her way out.

How the hell could my father do this to me?

Looks like daddy doesn’t care that much after all. My wolf quipped at me. Oh, shut up! I told her and stormed out of my room. There was no way in hell I was going to let him do this to me, or to my pack!

I stormed into his office, nearly knocking the double doors off of their hinges.

“How dare you do this to me?!” I screamed at him. “I have worked myself into the f*****g ground for this pack, to make you finally proud of me and now all that hard work is circling the drain so that you can hand over my birthright to Belinda’s son?!” I screamed at him. He looked shocked, seated behind his giant mahogany desk, his beta and a council member sat on the other side.

“Freja, this is not the time!” He said, struggling to remain calm.

“Oh, I think this is the perfect time, Father! When were you going to tell me about this? Or were you even going to tell me at all? You’ve completely given up on me and you didn’t even have the decency to say it to my face! I had to hear it from Belinda!” I shouted.

“She wasn’t supposed to tell you that.” He sighed heavily. “I was going to talk to you myself. You must understand that I don’t really have a choice.” He said, surprising me by sounding apologetic.

“No, I really don’t understand! Belinda’s son hasn’t found his mate, either, so why should he be handed my f*****g birthright that he has no training for when I’ve been learning it from you my entire life?! As if Belinda hasn’t taken enough away from me! I know you needed a son and I’m very sorry that I don’t have a d**k swinging between my legs. Believe me, I am! But you already treat Natalie more like your daughter than me and now you’re going to take the only thing I have in the entire world and hand it to her stupid son who’s been MIA since the day you met that cunt, doing Gods know what?! How could you?!” I screamed at him.

“Watch your tone with me, young lady! This is out of my hands, and quite frankly, it isn’t my fault!” My father shouted and stood up.

“Oh, but it’s mine? My entire life I have been looked down on and mistreated by every single member of this f*****g pack just because I was born a girl! You made me, so tell me how this isn’t your fault again? Maybe if you had actually been able to produce the heir you needed, none of this would be happening!” I jabbed at him.

“Don’t you dare speak to me that way! I am your father and your alpha!” He roared.

“Yeah, of the pack that I’m about to be banished from. Thanks, and f**k you very much!” I picked up a vase off its pillar by the door. My mother had let me pick it out for him for father’s day when I was six years old and it was worth nearly a million dollars.

“Freja! Do not throw that!” He screamed at me.

“You don’t deserve it and mom would agree with me! She would be disgusted at what you’ve become!” I screamed back at him. I considered chucking it at his head, but I didn’t want to risk him catching it, so I hurled it at a bookshelf. It shattered into a hundred pieces as he roared at me. I turned to storm out.

“Where the f**k are you going?!” He demanded.

“To enjoy my last official night in my home and finally do whatever I want instead of whatever I’m told!” I shouted as tears filled my eyes.

“Don’t you dare go f**k that boy!” My father said, making me laugh.

“It doesn’t matter if I’m a virgin or not. Haven’t you heard, Father? I’m not your heir anymore!” I slammed the doors so hard on my way out that it echoed through the mansion.

“Well, you handled that about as well as a bull in a China shop.” Natalie said smugly from the doorway to her bedroom. She was examining her perfectly manicured nails. Belinda had never allowed me to go to the salon even once.

“f**k you!” I screamed at her, and my wolf took over, shoving her into the doorframe, hard. I wasn’t in the least bit worried about her retaliation. Her wolf wouldn’t present for another six months and I’d be long gone by then. She hit the frame with a loud crack and I didn’t bother looking back, despite the guilt washing through me.

When Belinda and Natalie first came to live with us, I was so excited to have another kid around, especially a little girl. Immediately, I took her under my wing. She was such a fragile little thing. Natalie was sweet and loving at nine years old. For two years we were inseparable, but then she hit puberty, and suddenly I was beneath her.

Even now, I wanted to rush back and apologize to her, take care of her, but she hadn’t been my sister for a very long time. Despite everything that had happened today, that was the thought that had tears now streaming down my face. Not being slapped, not losing my birthright and not my father refusing to support me. It was thinking of the little girl that used to be my shadow and mourning her loss.

I flew into the room where Arvid slept. Deplorable conditions if you asked me. He worked in our home, but he wasn’t a slave and he wasn’t there as a punishment. He just wanted to serve his pack and what did he get for his efforts? One shabby, little room with just enough space for the twin-sized bed that was a hand me down. The frame squeaked with any movement and one of the springs was about ready to poke through the old mattress. That never stopped him from taking pride in it though, and it was always impeccably clean.

The fact that he wasn’t there made me feel even more alone and I curled up in his bed, wrapping the holey blanket around my shoulders and cried.

“Freja? Baby, what’s wrong?” Arvid asked upon seeing me crying in his bed. “I heard shouting. I’ve been looking for you.”

“I hurt Natalie.” I said shamefully as I sniffled.

“f**k Natalie.” He scoffed, sitting beside me and rubbing my shoulder. “Is that why the shouting and the crying?”

“Just the crying. I shoved her because of what she said about the shouting. They’re stripping me of my title tomorrow, Arvid. I’ve put my blood, sweat and tears into becoming the best pack leader I could, and for all my efforts, they’re just going to hand my father’s pack to my stepbrother. A total stranger to us! All because I’m not married. It’s so unbelievably stupid, not to mention outdated.” I said as he handed me a tissue.

“I see.” He said after a moment of silence, broken only by me blowing my nose. “If you need only to marry to regain your title, I’ll marry you.”

Arvid had always been sweet and we had crushes on each other for a couple of years, and even screwed around a little, but that seemed a bit over the top.

“Thanks, but I couldn’t ask you to do that.” I said, disposing of the tissue in the small wastebasket by the bed.

“Why not? I’ve always loved you, Freja.” He said rather unexpectedly.

“What?” I said, pulling myself into a sitting position.

“I never wanted to tell you because it seemed unfair to with your mate out there somewhere, and mine, too. But you’ll be nineteen tomorrow and haven’t found him and I’m almost twenty-two. It’s starting to seem unlikely that either of us has a mate. Maybe we did and they died young or something, or they’re in a part of the world that our pack hasn’t met, but it’s starting to feel like it doesn’t matter. I love you and I want to be with you.”

I stayed silent for a moment to let his words sink in. Maybe our mates were dead. That would explain why we hadn’t met them, but it seemed foolish to assume they weren’t, and it didn’t matter anyway.

“Arvid, that’s incredibly sweet and I hear what you’re saying, I do…but it just wouldn’t be enough. I have to marry my true mate to ascend to my true position. Marrying someone out of love won’t stop this from happening.” I said, touching his face. He leaned into my touch and it seemed to heal something inside of me. No one had ever loved me before, aside from my fickle father and my deceased mother, and now to find out that Arvid always has both healed me and angered me a bit. Understanding why he hadn’t told me made a lot of sense, but it would’ve made my life a lot easier to know that I meant the world to someone.

He grabbed me by the back of the neck and pulled my face to his, crushing me with a kiss. I couldn’t stop myself from reciprocating and he swept me in closer and laid us both down on the bed.

“It wouldn’t make a difference to your father or the council if we married, but to hell with them. Marry me, Freja.” He said, conviction swimming in his eyes.

“That’s crazy, Arvid. There’s nearly a one hundred percent chance I’ll be banished tomorrow. You don’t want to live in exile, do you?” I said, concerned about his quality of life.

“I don’t give a damn about this pack, Freja, I’m not like you. I didn’t come here to serve the alpha family out of loyalty to Snow Moon, I did it to be near you. To watch over you and to see your smiles and your tears, to walk the halls filled with your scent. I’d follow you anywhere.”

“What about your parents, your brother? Are you so ready to give them up? To have them hate you forever for following a black sheep like me into exile?” I said seriously.

“I love my family, but our destinies are with the families we make, not the ones we were born into.” He said wisely.

That was a thought I’d never had before, but I loved the sentiment. For a moment I let myself picture it; Arvid and I living in a small cabin somewhere in a snowy field with our children’s laughter echoing through the fields. It was a beautiful picture, and I suddenly wanted it desperately, but I knew better than to secede to his request so quickly.

“That sounds like a magical life and I’m not saying no to it, but you understand why I can’t say yes right away?” I said, looking up at him and running my fingers through his sandy hair.

“I do…but you’ll think about it?” He asked with the rise of an eyebrow and a smile. His hand slid down the front of my pants, rubbing over the top of my panties that sent sparks flying from my p***y up to the pits of my stomach.

“I will.” I told him and let him kiss me again. His lips trailed down my neck, his hand sliding up my shirt to my hard n*****s and then down my side to my hips. He kissed between my breasts and down my stomach, and looked up at me for my consent as his face hovered at my waist line. I nodded yes to him and he smiled as he pulled my pants down.

Since I was fifteen I’d wanted to f**k Arvid. He was nice and tall and built with the kind of perfection that had me fantasizing about him since before I knew what it was. As he went down on me, the only protest was from my wolf, who wanted us to copulate with no one but our true mate, but even she was silenced after a couple minutes of his tongue circling my c**t.

We’d screwed around a few times in the last couple years, but I’d never let him do anything other than over the panties. And I’d sucked his d**k a couple of times because I really wanted to and I felt bad about leaving him with blue balls, but I’d never let it go further because I was to remain chaste for my true mate as the next luna. We don’t have to worry about that anymore.

I whimpered and moaned as his tongue expertly flicked over my c**t again and again.

“You taste even sweeter than I imagined.” He said, reaching up and rolling my sensitive n****e between his fingers. My whole body was tense and he ran his hand slowly up and down on my inner thigh. “Relax.” He whispered. “I’ll take care of you.” He promised and ran his tongue from my v****a all the way up to my c**t, moaning as he went. I gasped from the sensation as he slipped a finger in me. “f**k, you’re so wet already.” He purred, curling his fingers inside me and hitting a place I didn’t know existed.

“Oh, f**k! Right there!” I moaned. He chuckled and went back to working my c**t with his tongue, sliding his fingers in and out of me faster and faster.

My orgasm was building rapidly and I was loudly gasping for air. “Arvid!” I pleaded in a voice that didn’t sound like my own. He curled his fingers twice more and my orgasm crashed over me so hard that I saw stars.

I tried pulling away and my p***y clenched and spasmed, but he held me down with one hand as he extracted his fingers, and licked my hole, moaning and inserting his tongue. I was moaning so loudly it sounded like I was crying.

“How was that?” He asked, kissing my tummy on his way back up. I grabbed him and kissed him again, and I felt his c**k, rock hard, pressing between my legs. If I’d had any resolve left, that was the moment it melted.

“I want you to f**k me.” I told him, my c**t still throbbing from my orgasm.

“Are you sure?” He asked, clearly holding back his excitement. “You were pretty upset a few minutes ago. I don’t want to take advantage of you.” He said, kissing the tip of my nose.

“Arvid, please just shut up and f**k me.” I said, reaching for his pants. He kissed me again and I could taste myself on his tongue. He broke the kiss only long enough to help me pull down his jeans. I bit my lip in excitement as I watched his c**k spring free, and he positioned himself back between my legs. Hastily, I yanked my shirt off over my head and then reached up and pulled his off as well.

“Oh, I feel like I’ve waited a lifetime for this.” He said, reaching down between us. He grabbed his member and rubbed the tip up and down my slit to lube himself up. I mewled under him, anticipation and fear filling me until I thought I might explode. He inserted the tip and slowly pushed in until he reached my hymen, groaning.

“You’re so f*****g tight, baby.” He moaned, kissing and biting my neck. I moaned as he pulled back out until only the head of his fat c**k was inside me. I’d never been so stretched out before and it felt amazing beyond belief.

“It’s not too late to turn back.” He said, kissing me again, and I shook my head no.

“Are you ready?” He asked. I nodded and with one sharp thrust, he tore through my virginity.