The Alpha's Unrecognised Mate

Chapter 3: Sleepless Nights

The days between the meeting on Wednesday and training on Saturday stretched on endlessly. Lyra was far more agitated than normal and I found myself running through the forest for hours on end when I should have been sleeping. Tiring out my body to the extreme was the only way I could convince sleep to take me. My mind buzzed with the thought of Clint and the options he had laid before me. Take a mate that felt nothing in return, and the responsibility of being Luna to a struggling pack, or stay silent on my feelings and continue as I had always done. Just when I forced the thought out of my mind, I would become distracted with images of all of the things I wished we had done in that chapel. To distract myself, I would pull myself back to the real issue, and the cycle would continue. The thoughts wouldn’t end until I had a solution, and I had nothing of the sort.

I’d shown up to the chapel for training nearly an hour early. I’d planned to roam around the nearby forest to check for anything of interest, but I also had planned on being there alone. I should have expected the tireless Clint to be there, preparing the grounds for training.

Lyra picked up his scent long before we neared the chapel. If I’d been expecting it, perhaps there was a chance I could have held her back, or at least proceeded at a more leisurely pace. I could have used some time to plan. It wasn’t up to me, though. I was already in wolf form. Lyra had control here, and I wasn’t getting it back when she sensed her mate so close.

I’d never really needed to push the limits of my wolf. I knew she was fast, and strong, but I’d never bothered to learn the extent to which this was true. To be honest, I didn’t even know how I compared against the others in the pack. I was confident I wasn’t the strongest, but I hadn’t taken stock of them any more than myself. We hadn’t seen a lot of each other in years. Even if I had taken much notice, a lot could have changed.

I got a pretty good idea of my top speed in that moment, as Lyra bounded through the forest like a crazed taxi driver in rush hour traffic. I was no more than a passenger as she whizzed pass trees and fallen logs. If I’d been in any control at all we would probably have crashed into one of them as I balked at the pace. Several times I thought for sure we would smack headfirst into a thick trunk, only for Lyra to deftly side-step at the last moment. She was single-mindedly focussed on getting to Clint, and with her in complete control I had the mental space to think on other things. Like how much Lyra enjoyed pushing herself. Hell, how much I was enjoying her pushing us- when I wasn’t convinced we were about to incur fatal head injuries. I’d gotten caught up in my human world so much I’d disregarded Lyra’s.

By the time we reached the clearing Clint was standing in, our heart was beating too fast to speed up at the sight of him. Fated mate aside, he was breathtaking. He stood with his back to me, shirt already discarded despite the morning chill, leaving him standing in his jeans alone. His strong arms were gripped around the handle of an axe, muscles rippling as he swung it at the tree in front of him. It didn’t appear to be the first one he’d defeated- the clearing was only partially natural. As I pulled my gaze off him, I could see stumps of over two dozen trees surrounding the empty meadow in the centre. He’d been busy, and not just this morning.

There was no way he could have not noticed me, especially in my wolf form. My scent would be too strong- even if he didn’t have the benefit of mating to increase his awareness of it. He simply chose to ignore me for now, focusing on taking down the oak in front of him. On closer inspection, I could see he had already cut a triangle on one side and was now working on some straight cuts along the other side. I had no idea how to cut down a tree, but the tremble in the thick base with each swing made me think he was close to bringing it down.

I hadn’t had any intention to sprint all the way here, but I was glad for it now. Lyra’s need to be close to Clint hadn’t faded at all, but with the exercise she didn’t have the kind of fight to do something drastic. I still hadn’t decided what I wanted to do, after all.

“Mine,” Lyra growled at me internally. For her, there was no decision. She wasn’t too happy I was even considering walking away from our fated mate.

“You know it’s not that easy,” I replied, and while she let out a long grumbling growl, she didn’t provide any response. She wasn’t as bothered as I was about Clint’s heart being less-than-mated, but she did bristle at the idea of becoming the pack’s Luna. She’d been relatively dormant for years. She had about as much confidence as I did that we were suitable for such a task.

The tree finally resigned itself to Clint, falling almost gracefully as the last strips of trunk fought desperately against gravity to bring it back upright. His prey felled, Clint turned to face me. I’d been pretty well back in control of Lyra, but his eyes melted me just enough for a rumble of longing to break free from her powerful jaw. He smiled at us, but in such a casual manner it was almost more painful than if he had avoided the gesture all together. We burned with a need to be near him- he saw nothing special in us.

“You’re early,” he remarked. Thankfully I couldn’t exactly speak to him in my wolf form, because I didn’t have an excuse. And certainly not one that would justify why I had gone Mach 3 to get here. Then again, I had a feeling he knew the truth behind both of those questions. Perhaps that was why he didn’t voice them.

As much as I had tried to hide it, I was out of breath. Lyra panted loudly. Our casual runs hadn’t pushed us nearly hard enough to prepare for long-distance sprints. It was impossible for Clint to have missed it, but he kindly didn’t comment, returning to the tree he had brought down instead.

“Let me bring this back to the chapel,” Clint spoke again, back to me. “I’ll come back in wolf form and show you the stream. You’ll want to be hydrated before training.”

Out heartbeat, which was finally starting to calm down, picked up again. This time it was Lyra’s fault more than my own. The thought of seeing the wolf form of her mate made it hard to calm her down. The only thing stopping her from bounding around in circles like a dog promised a walk, was the exhaustion she’d brought on getting us here. As for me, I was more distracted watching Clint’s strong shoulders tense along his back as he hoisted the oak into his arms. There was no way a normal human could do that, but even outside of wolf form we had a bit of an advantage on them. Still, for Clint to achieve such a feat meant he was leagues stronger than the rest of the pack. I couldn’t help feeling a little disappointed in myself for letting my strength slip away.

By the time I connected with Lyra at eighteen, the pack had all but disbanded. While we still stayed in touch, it was more as family friends than as bonded members of a wolf pack. Training hadn’t been a focus under Leo’s rule, and it was hard to describe how losing it had hurt my sense of self. Perhaps, it was not so much the self part that was the problem- I knew Lyra ached to be freed more regularly, and that wasn’t an opportunity I had very often. Even when I did, a dash through the forest didn’t really utilise the defensive capability writhing inside her, much like driving a Lamborghini on a city commute. When I took my job at the nursing home as an assistant in nursing, it had been intended as a temporary position while the pack got itself back together. Five years later and I’d all but given up on our pack, but couldn’t quite let them go enough to move on with my life. If Clint hadn’t taken over from Leo, it wouldn’t have been long before I’d forced myself to abandon the pack and build a new life. I wondered how many other juniors felt the same.

Lyra’s ears pricked up, body reacting before she could explain to me why.

“Mate!” she cried. While the word itself wasn’t new information, I could tell that Clint had reached the chapel and transformed even before I detected the change in scent. There wasn’t much else that could trigger Lyra to react in that way.

“We’ll wait here for him, he’s coming back,” I soothed her, hoping she would stay put. She started tapping her front paws back and forth, unable to stay still completely, but accepting that Clint was on his way. While he wasn’t dashing at top speed like we did, he set a mean pace returning to us. When he burst back into the clearing, he wasn’t in the slightest out of breath. It was clear he didn’t skip cardio like we did.

Lyra bounded over to him before I could stop her. She needed to be as close to him as possible, and together we assessed what we saw.

Clint’s wolf was large, even by werewolf standards. He was a tall human, so it made sense, but it was still part intimidating and part thrilling to stand beside him. His fur was a dusty grey colour, with almost black tufts around his front paws, jaw, and tail. Lyra was bewitched by his lean yet muscular physique, but I couldn’t look past his eyes. They glowed like the moon, a shining white with soft blue pigments sparkling out. There was wisdom in those eyes, and a pain he shared with his human counterpart. I wanted to ask his name, but that would have to wait until we were both human.

Apparently Clint had noticed us eyeing him up, because as we finished he nodded towards a gap at the opposite end of the clearing and began to trot towards it. Based on what he’d said before switching, this was the way to the stream. Lyra happily chased after him. Noticing us on his tail, he sped up a little. It was still a comfortable pace for a wolf, and even after her jaunt before, Lyra was able to keep up easily.

As the human passenger, I felt a lot safer this time.