Broken Mates

Chapter Three

After two hours of pouring themselves into carbs and a few episodes of Supernatural later, Kaiya was ready to go home. When she made it into the woods and saw no one was around, she stripped out of her clothes and put her belongings into a backpack she kept inside of a hold of a specific tree and shifted into her wolf.

Kaiya’s wolf, Sarai, was white with a black spot on the chest and had black fur on all four paws. Yes, white was not very common, but the females in her family always had some white variation on their coats. Though, she seemed to have more white than her mother’s coat.

“Sarai?”

“Yes, Kai?”

“What do you think about dating other guys while we wait for our mate?”

Sarai kept quiet for a moment while running through the trees toward home.

“It’s not like I would give myself up to any of them, but at least it would give me an opportunity to get to know someone other than our mate, you know?”

“I know what you mean.”

“But you disagree.”

“Well…how can I not?” Though Kaiya had always wanted to wait for her mate and not waste her time with relationships that would end in heartbreak, something felt different tonight. Maybe it was the constant reminder of Roman, maybe her brother’s constant antics, or maybe even the idea of the delivery boy himself. In the end, maybe it was time to just let go and let things happen as they may. She knew how the mate bond worked. If her mate had already matured and knew who she was, had some sort of connection to her, she wouldn’t feel it herself. However, she would feel it when she turned seventeen in two weeks. If she had one out there that betrayed the bond after establishing the connection, she would feel it. The pain. What she saw Roman doing and assumed he had done over the past two years, she knew it would rip her apart. Something told her though, call it instinct, that he wouldn’t be her problem when she changed.

“I highly doubt our mate is waiting for us. If I could guess, it definitely wasn’t Roman, but most wolves don’t really wait for their mate anymore. I just wouldn’t mind getting myself out there, you know? Having any type of fun.”

“You’re right. So long as we aren’t falling in love with someone that’s not our mate, I guess there’s no harm in it.”

“So if the delivery boy happens to take me out tomorrow…you wouldn’t object?”

“Definitely not.” She smirked to herself thinking about the cute delivery boy who offered to beat her brother up for her.

She made it back to her street, seeing the lights on in the house. Her parents wouldn’t be back for two days, so naturally Callum and Kellan were using the freedom of the house to “entertain.”

When she neared the house, Kaiya snuck to the side and shifted back, getting dressed. As she approached the front door, it opened before she reached the handle and two girls she easily recognized from school, both human, were giggling as they were walking out while Kellan and Callum placed their final “goodbye forever, it was nice rubbing our genitals together” kisses on the girls.

Kaiya rolled her eyes and walked past the scene she wished she didn’t witness as often as she did. Not only was it nauseating how often they did this in front of her, but how openly the two did these things around one another. She only ever caught them halfway naked with a girl each once and at that point realized that they were so comfortable as best friends and as man whores they didn’t even care if they were around one another. Something about that just didn’t sit well. Like it was a competition of sorts.

When Kellan felt her brush past him he hurriedly ran up to Kaiya. “Kai, wait!”

“WHAT!” she turned to him. She emitted some sort of aura that caught him off guard.

Once he recovered he was able to speak. “Just let me say, I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to bring up the past and I was just freaked out hearing you scream. I just hate that I wasn’t there for you when it was happening and when I heard it, it brought back memories and I jumped into action. You’re my sister and I love you and would do anything for you. You know that.”

“Whatever, Kel. I’m tired and I have-“ she was cut off by her ringtone. An unrecognized number. Kellan and Callum were both standing in front of her at this point trying to get onto her good side but she didn’t seem to care once she answered her phone.

“Hello?”

“Kaiya? It’s Alex.” She instantly recognized his voice and knew she loved his name. She was glad she caught it so she didn’t sound like an i***t that agreed to go out with some guy and not know his name. She couldn’t hold in her giddiness but needed to get away from the one person who couldn’t seem to stand to see her happy.

“Alex?!” Her brother and his friend looked at one another confused. They knew one Alex from school and it was a girl, one that just left, actually. This Alex had a male voice, rendering them confused.

“Yeah, I was calling to see if you were still free tomorrow?”

“Umm, hold please,” she said in her nicest voice trying not to sound rude. She muted the phone, left the guys downstairs as she walked upstairs, and turned to them before she disappeared into her bedroom. “I’m going in my room to scream. This is a good scream so don’t even think about coming near my room. Not even for the rest of the weekend. I don’t want to be around an arrogant, egotistical alpha male or my slutty, hypocrite of a brother. Just f**k your sluts and leave me be. Kay-thanks-bye.” With that, she left them both with their jaws dropped and their feelings hurt. Neither would admit the latter to one another, but they surely didn’t expect some stranger calling Kai, nor that she would call out Kellan for basically being a hypocrite. That was new and at this point she was losing her veil of caring about her brother’s feelings.

Kaiya and Katelyn were best friends with Kellan and Callum for the entire fourth grade through Sophomore year until at a party the girls caught Kellan naked with some girl in a spare bedroom. Katelyn was devastated for months, especially since Kellan had made it seem as though he liked her beyond that. Obviously he was leading her on, and Kaiya knew it.

From that point, the foursome broke into pairs, separated by gender and behavior. The guys did their thing while the girls focused on repairing Katelyn’s broken heart and moving on from their nonsense. It was the “bigger person” in Kaiya to drop her twin and the boy next door she grew up with for the girl they all knew was basically drawing “Kel and Kate 4Eva” in her notebooks since they were ten. More than that, both had experienced the same thing: heartbreak.

Kaiya spent the next hour on the phone with Alex figuring out a plan for what was, in fact, a date, but neither called it that to one another. Once it was figured out, Alex asked about picking her up and if she had a curfew. Did she have a dad that had a shotgun he planned to dig out and set beside him on the front porch when he got there? It was time well spent making her laugh and forget about her troubles.

When she got off with Alex, it was near 1:30 in the morning and she decided to head to the kitchen for some water and some sort of snack. The house was quiet so she figured the guys either went to bed or were at least in Kel’s room being quiet. She had smelled some alcohol on them when she got home so they were likely passed out.

Being the house she grew up in, she knew every square inch and didn’t need the light. She was also in an old t-shirt that she kept from Roman and some boyshorts. She intended to get rid of it, but it was a Harvard shirt and she loved that deep maroon color and it was a little long on her. His scent barely lingered but she liked to think it made her stronger somehow. If anything, she’d be able to smell him a mile away with how well she knew it.

She filled a glass with some water, humming to “Levitating” by Dua Lipa that she put on her phone after she checked the coast was clear and looked through the fridge to see what sounded good. She settled on two apples and a banana. She could never just have one apple for some reason.

As she turned around to head back upstairs, she walked into a hard wall that has never been there. She looked up at Callum. He was out of his mind wasted. She wondered how he was even upright at the moment. “Cal, you should probably go lie down on the couch or something.”

He reached out and hugged her. The smell of alcohol and whatever he did with the girl from earlier mixed together made her sick. His warm hands rubbed up and down her back. Not inappropriately in any way, but just friendly. After all, he wasn’t the one to split the friendship up. That was between the girl in his arms and her i***t brother who had a chance at happiness even if it was until he found his mate.

Callum always tried to keep some sort of minimal friendship with Kaiya, even if he rarely got to speak to her. Sure, he would check her ** when she was out or going places with Katelyn and their other friends from school. But they never had anything meaningful to talk about. Not anymore. He always recalled the look of disappointment on her face when she was at his last birthday with some hopes that she would turn out to be his mate. In all honesty, he had always hoped for the same, but he always knew she was too good for him. He would never deserve her.

“I wanna know” he slurred while leaning over her while she walked him to the living room.

“What do you want to know?” she asked, annoyed.

“Who is he?”

“Who is who?”

“Alex,” he said with a mocking tone as she dropped him onto the sofa.

Kaiya scoffed and walked into the kitchen to grab him some water and a large bowl to vomit in when he woke up.

“Where did you meet him?”

“What exactly does it matter to you? I don’t ask you about the millions of cockroaches you and my brother feed off of on a daily basis.”

“But it bothers you,” he started to sound more sober as he sat up against the back of the couch with his hands covering his face as a means to come to terms with reality.

“Yeah and?”

“Why does it bother you?”

“Because Katelyn has been in love with him for years and he played her. He purposefully hurt her because she’s human even though he f***s around with humans regardless. He hurt my best friend and now that she’s moving past it it’s just disappointing to see him act this way. He’s supposed to be a leader in the pack and his behavior speaks volumes. He is supposed to take on this role in a year and so are you. Both of you need to grow up.”

“You’ve clearly had a lot of time to think about this.”

“Well, considering both of you are the ones who will inherit your titles and I will just be me the rest of my life. Without a title, why should I be the only one setting the example? Maybe some part of me hopes that if and when you two find your mates, my future sister-in-law and future luna that I don’t have to hear about their hatred for your behaviors for the rest of my life.”

What little sober part of him was conscious waited until Kai was upstairs before he sighed and said to himself, “we don’t deserve either of you.”