The Alpha’s Hidden Mate

Chapter 1: Mae

I’m running through a heavily wooded forest, I can hear the drumming of my feet against the ground and the wind whipping through my hair and body. Even though it is night I can see every leaf on the trees and I can smell every plant, flower, bug and animal around me.

I come up to a clearing with a large lake, I can see the moon’s light shimmering on the water. I walk to the water to take a drink, my reflection looking back at me. A wolf.

My eyes are bright yellow, my fur is a pure white that seems to glow in the light of the moon. My paws are bigger than a man’s head.

I lift my head up in the air and let out a loud howl.

Beep beep beep beep

I opened my eyes in my bedroom. My phone woke me up in time for my last week of classes. I sat up and turned my phone off and swung my legs to the side of the bed.

“Another wolf dream,” I thought to myself. I frowned as I stood up to look at myself in the mirror of my vanity. Looking back at me was not a wolf, but my honey-brown eyes and my curly brown hair in some serious need of taming. This was the second dream this week of being a wolf, and I’d lost count of how many this month. I loved wolves, always had, but recently I had so many dreams about being a wolf, I wondered if my subconscious was trying to tell me something.

I rubbed my eyes and wandered into the bathroom to get ready for my classes.

My last class, I reminded myself. Graduation was in two weeks.

This morning’s lecture was going to have a guest speaker, a particularly important one for the type of work I was hoping to do after school. I was double majoring in architecture and agriculture science. My dream was to build houses and communities that were able to grow and produce their own food. Our guest speaker was old friends with my architect professor and had huge contracts across the state for creating new buildings, including neighborhoods and new developments.

I started throwing product in my hair and worked my fingers through my curls to get them to behave. I threw on my favorite pair of jeans with an olive crop top that made my eyes pop. I was wearing my pendant that my birth mother had left with me when I was a baby. I never took it off, as it was the only thing that I had of either of my parents. I didn’t know anything about them, and had briefly tried to search when I was in high school, but when I hit wall after wall with essentially no progress, I figured there wasn’t much use in continuing. Besides, my adoptive parents were wonderful and had given me such a full and happy life, I never wanted them to think that I wasn’t happy with them as my parents. But if I was honest with myself, it always felt like a small part of me was missing, not knowing anything about my parents.

I finished putting my outfit together, and gathered some books and notes for my classes. I was surprised at how excited I was for this lecture, I could just feel how important it was going to be. Sometimes that happened to me, I could just feel how a moment or situation was going to be good, or maybe bad, and I had learned to trust that instinct. I had met my best friend Lilly when I was seven years old because I knew I needed to walk into a particular ice cream parlor, and I met her, with her older brother, and had immediately become friends when she offered me a spoonful of her blueberry ice cream. I had a feeling of dread when thinking of going to the bank to deposit a paycheck my junior year, so I decided to do it the next day, only to find out the bank has been robbed and most likely had avoided the whole fiasco.

I left my small apartment and drove to campus. Luckily today was easy to find parking, and I was able to get to the lecture hall with a few minutes to spare. I scanned the seats and saw that Lilly was already seated in the third row. She was also majoring in architecture but had dreams of adding to the city skylines with impressive sky scrapers.

I made my way down to her, and flopped into the seat to her left.

“Mae, have you checked out this guest speaker? I did a search and his portfolio is beyond impressive, not to mention he is a total babe!” Lilly started to tilt her phone towards me, when our professor dropped his briefcase on the table at the front of the class and the room hushed.

“Good morning everyone! I trust you are all prepared and excited to meet our guest speak today. I hope you all understand how lucky we are to get on his schedule, he is an incredibly busy man. Ah, Liam! Please join me at the front! Class, please welcome Liam Neal.”

I looked to the right of my professor at a side entrance door, and I felt my breath catch in my throat. There stood a man who was at least 6’5” with broad shoulders and impressive arms. His hair was jet black, with green eyes and caramel, sun-kissed skin. I had never seen a more attractive person.

He walked to the front of the class and shook hands with Professor James, then turned his attention to the class. I could hear murmuring throughout the classroom, mostly from the women. A strong wave of jealousy crashed over me, thinking of the other women looking at him. I also realized how insane that was, I had never even spoken to this man.

“Thank you for having me. Professor James has been sculpting the next generation of architects for a long time, and has helped me in some of my more challenging design issues. I -“

He stopped suddenly, his eyes narrowing slightly, he lifted his head a fraction as though he smelled something. Suddenly his eyes locked on mine. He was trying to figure something out, I could see it as his eyes searched mine. But then he picked up as quickly as he cut off. Lilly leaned over to me.

“What was that?” She whispered to me. I gave my head a little shake. Truly I had to idea, but the brief interaction was making my palms sweat. My mother’s pendant felt warm too, but it could have been the blush creeping up from my neck.

Liam continued to talk about his work, how architecture works into it, and other things that I’m sure were important, but I couldn’t retain anything. I kept staring at his lips, his jaw, chest, hair, eyes. The dirty thoughts wouldn’t stop, and at the same time I kept yelling at myself to get it together. The 90 minute lecture flew by and before I new it the class was packing up.

A group of women had made their way down to Liam to chat him up. I was slow to put my things together, I didn’t want to leave but I was also much too nervous to approach him.

“Mae, hello?!” Lilly hissed next to me. I pried my eyes off if Liam and looked at her.

“Are you ok? You haven’t heard a word I said.”

“Yeah! Yes, I’m fine, I just really enjoyed this lecture.” It was a half truth. I had no idea what was said during this lecture. I did enjoy it though.

“Yeah, I bet you did,” Lilly said, lightly swatting my arm. “Are you going to the farm?”

The farm was the nickname for my agriculture final project. In reality it was a green house where I was growing produce. I had convinced the cafeteria manager to let me install food waste collectors and was using the excess food left over from students to try different types of fertilizer, with great success I might add. Not only did my new fertilizer technique create more produce, but on average they were 30% bigger.

“Yeah, it’s my final day of recording produce sizes and then I have to start moving the pants out.”

“Ok, do you want me to grab your graduation gown? I can drop it by your place later tonight.” Lilly was already typing away in her phone. She kept all her schedule together on her phone.

“Yes, that would be great. Thank you!” One less thing on my to-do list before graduation would be wonderful.

Lilly nodded while still on her phone and she turned to walk away. I glanced at Liam again, only to find his eyes on me. He was still talking with the group of women but his gaze was intense. I felt myself blush and turned to follow Lilly out. She gave me a quick hug as we parted ways and I made my way across campus. It was a bit of a hike but I was completely lost in my own thoughts, trying to figure out why Liam seemed to make me into an absolute mess. I arrived at the farm before I knew it.

When I walked in the smell made me smile. Earthy and light, it was a little oasis on campus. I was only a few minutes into collecting weights and numbers of some zucchini when I felt someone gaze on me. I turned and saw Liam standing at the entrance.