Page 17 of Accept Me (Fate’s Choice #4)

But dear Fate… the dizziness, the rush of emotion, I had to get it under control fast!

The scent surrounded me like a veil; it was a mix of dahlias and jasmine—intoxicating, electrifying. It wrapped me, hijacked my nervous system. It took everything I had not to react, not to inhale sharply.

But I wanted this meeting to stay neutral, to get to know him like I would anyone else, not fall headfirst into a whirlwind of the True Mate’s Pull.

He reached out his hand, but I didn’t take it. I couldn’t risk what might happen, especially with my suppressants. They were fairly weak and might not block the First Touch.

As the conversation started, I watched him closely, the way he behaved, how hard he fought to stay composed and calm. And he succeeded, on the surface. But inside, he was a mess of tangled emotions.

I admired it, in a way. He tried hard to keep his dignity, didn’t let himself fall apart. I pretended to do the same all the time, so I strangely appreciated the symmetry of that.

To be honest, I didn’t even need to ask him anything, because I’d already made my decision.

How could I not? He was my fated. But I still wanted to try for some semblance of a standard conversation.

Make it similar to how these interviews usually went.

And frankly, I was curious about some things from his life. Why not take the opportunity?

What struck me most was how clearly I could read him.

But not in the usual way you sense someone’s emotions by watching their face or gestures.

His emotions were pouring out of him and hitting me on a whole other level.

My nervous system absorbed it all. Something had clicked into place.

Maybe it was the first glimpse of our Bond-to-come?

Whatever it was, it was happening in real time. The Pull was subtly igniting. All that stuff I’d read about fated mates… it was real. This weird, quasi-telepathic connection had triggered almost instantly, growing stronger as our energy started syncing, after just a few minutes with him.

As he went deeper into his horrifying story, I felt my impassive mask crack. I hadn’t expected any of this. He’d gone through real hell. First that brutal assault, then watching the person he loved get murdered right in front of him.

Something inside me ached. That wound in me, the one that opened when I saw Olaf die, started to pulse again. I understood Star deeply in that moment, even if I didn’t show it. It took everything I had not to cross the room and hold him. Comfort him. Soothe him.

But every time I tried to speak and make it sound warm, it still came out stiff and formal. So I was frustrated with myself.

Years of military service had trained one tone into me: official, firm, clipped. That wasn’t what I meant to give him. He had to think I was some standoffish asshole by now. But I couldn’t help it. My body defaulted back to its old programming. So everything I said came out sounding robotic.

When Dylan insisted that Star ask me some questions too, I was shocked that he didn’t want to.

Did he feel undeserving?

His background, his story—none of it made me see him as less worthy. There was no reason I wouldn’t consider his contract, even without the fated bond. No reason I wouldn’t open up to him the same way he had just opened up to me. I would have told him my own story if he'd asked.

But in the end, I let Dylan speak for one simple reason.

I already knew Star and I were meant for each other. So, I believed I wouldn’t let him down, even if, at this point, I was still a complete mystery to him.

The moment he agreed to my contract proposal, I knew everything would change for both of us.

◆◆◆

After we drove to my home, Star’s behavior remained very cautious, polite, formal. He looked around but didn’t ask anything too directly. Even when he brought up the question of whether we’d be sharing a bedroom, his tone stayed deliberately neutral, revealing nothing about how he actually felt.

But the most telling moment came when the topic of makeup came up. I was genuinely curious to see how Star would respond, since it was the perfect way to get a read on his character.

Would he get angry? Push back against the rule? I waited for a reaction, but he stayed silent for a few seconds.

His face, still and beautiful, remained unreadable. Even though something was clearly shifting beneath the surface, he didn’t let it show.

I wasn’t trying to be a tyrant. I had a simple reason for doing what I did. I knew that things like this, challenges and boundaries, were one of the fastest ways to understand someone’s personality, the way they think, and where potential issues might arise between us.

Was he a strategic thinker? Someone who could suppress even the strongest emotional reaction, pause, and calculate his next move before responding?

I was like that. Very little could actually push me over the edge. Take a deep breath, count to ten, and clear your head before reacting. These were the rules I lived by.

Were they his, too?

I studied his expression as he clearly worked through something inside.

Fate had brought us together. Could Fate be wrong?

I’d thought about it before. How could Fate possibly find the ‘perfect’ match for someone? Was it even achievable? Could the system make a mistake, and some flaw or hidden discrepancy slip through the algorithm?

It was almost fascinating, trying to figure out what our compatibility was actually based on. Pure biology? Or something deeper, emotional, psychological?

And then he said, "Of course. As you wish."

He didn't explode! There was even something in it that I would read as a slight pleasure, which was interesting.

And suddenly I felt a bit more hopeful.

Maybe we really did have something in common?

◆◆◆

This evening, I lay down in bed, still deep in what I’d felt the moment I saw Star for the first time. The amazement that this had happened to me after a hellish year.

I kept his photo close. It was a little bent and creased, but I smoothed it out and stared at the beautiful face of my new husband.

Beautiful, but tense.

My True Mate.

Would he ever truly be mine ? Would the walls between us come down?

Those huge, navy-blue eyes staring right at me… I wished I could claim him one day and make that tension go away.

Hope and excitement pulsed low and deep in my body. It felt like I was running on a strange dopamine flood, like I’d been stuck in the moment right before orgasm for hours.

It took real effort to rein myself in. I didn’t want to move too fast or act on impulse. I set the photo down on the nightstand and closed my eyes.

◆◆◆

The next morning, I was up especially early for a jog before my trip. I never missed a day of running, as it was literally keeping me alive, resetting me, pushing the poisons out of my system.

Unsurprisingly, the strange, bordering-on-orgasm state didn’t subside.

The thought that I had a fertile, young, beautiful omega who smelled like sin and was my fated mate living under my roof now, seemed to keep me in a permanent state of low-grade arousal.

So I almost sprinted the whole time to calm myself down, but it was in vain.

After my jog and a much-needed shower, I just had to jerk off. Twice.

Then I headed down to the kitchen and found a full breakfast waiting on the table.

Crispy bacon, eggs, pancakes, and coffee.

But what really stunned me was how Star looked. His hair was tied back in a simple braid. He wore a plain white T-shirt and basic sweatpants. And he wasn’t wearing any makeup.

His face looked like someone else’s entirely: bare, pale, younger. He didn’t seem older than twenty. His eyelashes and eyebrows were dark blond or maybe light brown, and if you leaned closer, you could just make out a few faint golden freckles on his cheeks. His full lips were a natural pink.

He was still beautiful, maybe even more so, at least to me. But now he looked like an elf, not a makeup ad.

Star really had followed my request without saying a word, which was interesting.

I stared at him.

Our eyes met.

A pause. He was waiting for my reaction.

"You look beautiful, Star. Fresh and young. Thank you for respecting my request, even though I can imagine how it must have sounded at first," I said, tilting my head slightly, squinting a little as I studied him.

He stayed quiet. But again, I felt it in his energy. My words gave him a strange kind of pleasure, something that almost brushed up against the erotic.

Or was I imagining it?

It could’ve been my own arousal creeping in, crawling out from the edges of my awareness. I’d always had an astronomically high libido, though it had stayed buried for the past year. Was it starting to rear its hungry head?

As we stood there in silence, his scent surrounded us, dizzying me with that sweet jasmine with a hint of dahlia, and my dick throbbed in my pants. Fuck. Stop, Hunter!

The bare skin of his arms caught the morning sun pouring through the windows, making it glow with a golden sheen. Soft peach tones rose in his cheeks. The shape of his upper lip… for a second, I got swept up in it.

But then another face suddenly layered itself over his, more haunting, far more painful.

Damaged by the explosion.

Destroyed.

Olaf.

I closed my eyes tight and swallowed hard, then stepped back.

Too soon.

"I won’t be able to fully remove the dye from my hair. It’s bleached," he said softly.

I gave a slight, meaningless nod, shaking off the spell his body and his Allure seemed to have cast over me.

"I figured. Just let it grow out. I’m not asking you to do anything special with it. Just please don’t cut it without talking to me first. I really appreciate long hair on omegas."

I knew I was pushing a little, but the words slipped out before I could stop them.

Star stayed silent. Those deep navy-blue eyes kept his emotions hidden.

"As you wish," he said quietly.

That strange, sweet obedience again granted me another throb of my wayward dick.