My Rogue Mate

Chapter Four: The Missing Piece

I woke up in a bed that wasn’t my own. I sat up and blinked a few times, trying to adjust my eyes to the darkness. In the dull light of the moon coming through the windows, I could make out the shape of a man sat at the end of my bed. I sat up straight.

“Mate?” I asked curiously, but no smell of pine or campfires met my nose. I rubbed my eyes and looked back to the figure slowly making out the shapes of his face. Oh… All the sudden I remembered. The party. Nate’s face when he realised that he wasn’t my mate, and I wasn’t his.

“Nate… Nate, I… I am so sorry” I gasped, trying to hold back the tears. “I wish I could change what happened, I really do - I am so sorry”. The tears started streaming. It wasn’t like I wanted to be with Nate forever, but he has always been in my life. The idea of him being sad hurt. The idea of our families reactions hurt even more.

Nate turned to look at me, tears in his eyes. “It’s not your fault” he whispered, “really it’s not”, I nodded thankfully, at least he didn’t hate me. “I just don’t know what to do now”, he looked to the floor, shame plastered all over his face.

“What do you mean?” I asked, “we are going to find your mate, and they are going to be amazing - as amazing as you are”.

He shook his head, “no, I mean, I don’t know what to do right now…” I didn’t understand. I tried to catch his eyes but he looked away quickly.

“Our families still want us to try to mate” He said sadly.

—

I looked around the room, finally noticing where we were for the first time since waking up. We were in one of the many guest bedrooms of the pack house, this one was large and painted with silver and dark blue. A fireplace sat unlit in one corner, the embers still sparkling from where a fire must’ve been lit hours ago. The bed was four poster and huge. The sheets were all silky white, a white lace curtain hung above the bed and rose petals were scattered over the floor around the bed. This was the honeymoon suite. I looked down at myself, I had been taken out of my red party dress and put into a loose sheer silver dress.

“WHAT!?” I stood up and back away from him, shaking my head in disbelief. “You have got to be kidding!? Our families wouldn’t even let us hold hands and now they want us to mate?”

He stood and walked over to me, “Why don’t we just ignore what happened at the party, and just do what we planned? We can still be together. We can still unite our packs” He placed his shaking hands on my hips drawing me closer to his body.

I couldn’t believe this was happening. I had always dreamed of what my life with my mate would look like. Living together, having children, leading the pack. In all of my daydreams, my mate was always Nate. But the one thing missing from all of my daydreams was love, and passion. I didn’t have that with Nate, only the life our parents had planned for us.

“Nate… it is not right” I pleaded with him, “the moon goddess…”

He cut me off “the moon goddess must’ve been wrong, she had to be wrong”, he looked as though he wasn’t sure himself.

I placed my hand on his face. This was the closest we had been since we were small children playing together. “I can tell you don’t want this either. Nate, you deserve a mate who loves you, you deserve a mate like - like the way our parents are. Please, Nate. I do actually wish things were different, but they’re not.”

He slowly looked up at her, tears streaming down his face. “What if I never find my mate?” He said lowly, his voice breaking.

I wrapped my arms tight around him, holding him close to my chest. “You will find your mate, I know it.”

I loosened my grip and we looked to each other. He nodded his head slowly, “we will always have each other, won’t we Aleynia?”, I took a deep breath and nodded in agreement. We hugged in the darkness, both too scared to face our families just yet.