Page 7 of Mated By the Alphas
Good advice? I’m not sure. But after gathering my courage in the bathroom, I decide I’ll go for it. He’s staring at me for a reason. I can introduce myself. There’s no harm in that. If it feels weird or I don’t feel a connection after talking to him, I’ll politely excuse myself.
I step out of the bathroom with all the courage I can muster, but then my heart sinks into my stomach. The seat he was in is empty, and so is his glass. I wait for a few minutes, just in case he went to the bathroom like I did, but after several guys go in and out, it doesn’t seem likely, so I return to the counter.
“Everything okay?” Daisy asks as she walks up to me.
“Yeah,” I say, glancing towards the empty chair. “Yes, everything’s fine. I’m ready to go, though. Walk me out?”
“Let me get Mac,” Daisy says, turning away. “Mac! Come watch the bar for a second!”
That appears to be all that getting Mac entails. Daisy walks around the bar, hooks her arm in mine, and we walk to the door. The fresh air feels good once we’re outside. Clean air, too, instead of the smoky city haze that has already made my throat somewhat scratchy.
“Call an Uber. I’ll wait with you,” Daisy says.
“I could… walk,” I say apprehensively, then a strange shudder sweeps through me. The same sensation I felt before I realized the man was staring at me. “No, you’re right. I’m wearing heels.”
I request an Uber through the app, then make small talk with Daisy while we wait. She’s excited about all the numbers I collected. She hopes I’ll actually use them. I’m still not sure. I’mnot even sure I want to call Charles after the reaction I had to the other guy.
My Uber arrives and I say goodnight to Daisy as we hug each other tightly. Even after I get into the car, I still feel the strange sensation of being watched. With it comes the tingle and the pulse. I don’t understand why my body is reacting this way to someone I didn’t even talk to. For all I know, he would have been boring or annoying.
But the way he looked at me… what was that in his eyes? Hunger? I shudder just thinking about it. Nobody has ever looked at me like that, even the guys Daisy introduced me to tonight.
When the Uber pulls up in front of my apartment building, I feel the sensation again when I step out onto the sidewalk. I quickly hurry to my apartment building, but even when I get inside, I don’t breathe an easy breath until I’m back in my apartment with the door bolted shut.
Safe at home.
That’s where a girl like me belongs on Friday night.
CHAPTER 4
Hayden
It hit me as soon as I walked through the door.
An urge. A need. An overwhelming desire to let the beast inside me free. Something I haven’t felt in decades. Not since we buried the last she-wolf, and with her, any chance of being able to mate.
The woman sitting at the counter was no she-wolf. I don’t know what she is. Her scent is faint, but it’s there. I might not have noticed if the bar hadn’t already been thick with it when I walked in. Once I caught her scent, every instinct in my body screamed to drag her outside, slam her against the wall, and take what I craved.
But that’s dangerous. She may not be a she-wolf, but she’s still a Scion, just like I am, and there are people who hunt our kind. Those of us—shifters, witches, fae—who have survived this long do so by hiding what we are. We blend in with humans and live amongst them.
I didn’t blend in at the bar. Not like I normally do. I couldn’t keep my eyes off her. I could barely maintain my Third Form. It usually doesn’t take much concentration to keep the shroud up, but it was hard to concentrate on anything but her.
I snapped out of my trance when she went to the bathroom. That allowed me to pull away, distance myself from her. I was still catching my breath on the roof of the bar when she walked outside and sent me into chaos again.
I shouldn’t have followed her home. Running the rooftops in my Natural Form. Four paws, wind in my fur, a growl lingering in my throat that was desperate to escape as a howl. Hopefully, nobody spotted me. The last thing my Pack needs is for the Crimson Templars to find out that there is a wolf shifter to hunt in Chicago. We wouldn’t survive another encounter with those wretched bastards.
I’m not sure why I followed her. It felt as instinctual as embracing my Natural Form so I could keep up with her Uber. I watched until she was safe inside her apartment. Lingered long enough to see which lights came on and watch her through the window for a while. But now that she’s turned out the lights, I need to go home.
My paws pound on the rooftops, leaps taking me from one to the next until I’m back on top of Fletcher’s Bar. I land with a heavy thud and approach the clothes I discarded when I shifted.
I step into the shadows beside the rooftop access door, where no one below can see me. Once I’m sure it’s safe, I close my eyes, concentrate, and shift.
In my Natural Form, I’m a wolf. Eight hundred pounds of raw power and unstoppable fury. My coat is a dense charcoal graythat fades from black along my spine to a light gray belly, thick enough to shrug off rain and winter cold alike. It doesn’t take any concentration to maintain this form. It’s as natural as breathing. Everything feels right, from my broad, heavy jaw with teeth that could crush bone to the enormous paws that strike the ground with a quiet, predatory weight.
I absorb all of that as bones crack and muscles twist. The man that emerges is what I look like in my true Human Form.
I tower over most men, standing well over seven feet tall, with shoulders broad enough to make doorframes an obstacle. Every inch of my body is built with the same dense power as the wolf. Thick muscles layered over a heavy frame that looks more suited for tearing down walls than walking the streets of Chicago unnoticed.
Dark hair falls in rough waves to the middle of my back as I shift, and the beard along my jaw is a shade darker, framing features that are sharp, predatory, and wolf-like, even in this form. It’s my eyes that give it away most of all. They have an amber glow, just like they do when I’m running on four paws. I know they catch the city lights like a pair of burning embers shining through the darkness.
