Page 160 of Alpha Mates

It takes punching the heavy bag until it snaps free of its chains and flies across the hotel gym for the knot in my chest to finally loosen.

I try to catch my breath, looking at the slumped bag of sand. The other people working out are avoiding me like the plague, and so far, the staff have been too scared and/or too turned on to come say anything about me destroying hotel property. Perks of incubi staffing. But from the way their fingers are tapping furiously on their keyboards, I know we’ve gotten a new charge to the room.

Flexing my fingers, I walk over to the bag and bring it back to mystation. It takes a minute to hook it back up, but once I do, I take my stance and start again.

I’d come here to work out the anxiety and burn the edge off without breaking something that matters, and it’s doing the job. But it’s been hours since I last laid eyes on Julian, and the effects are starting to wear off.

He’s mad at me—I can feel it in the bond like a roaring fire in my blood. I’m mad too, at him, and at the mess of emotions wracking me.

I did crazy shit all the time, but that was me. I barely cared about the consequences before Julian, only just started really fucking caring about myself again. But I care about him. I wanted him safe and whole, but he wanted to put his life in danger.

He’s his own person, I know that. I know I can’t control him or tell him what to do, but fuck! How could he risk himself when he’s soimportant?

If something went wrong and he got hurt, it would literally kill me. Just imagining it made my limbs lock in fear.

I wouldn’t accept a single second less with him than I’m destined have in this lifetime. I just want that—am terrified to imagine anything else, but I know he doesn’t see it that way. He probably thinks that I’m trying to control him, but I just want him to be safe.

How could I get that across? How do I tell the guy I’m falling for that he meant the fucking world to me?

Maybe I should’ve just said that—exactly that—instead of leaving. But it felt easier to leave in the moment. It doesn’t anymore, hadn’t really when I felt his pain in our bond at being left behind.

“Ugh!” I stop myself from punching the bag as that would probably make it burst.

Enough of this shit. He has to be done trying to get himself killed by now. I grab the water bottle I’d gotten from the desk and head towards them with what I hope is an apologetic look.

“I’m sorry, about”—I glance back at the swaying, sad-looking bag—“that.”

“It’s fine,” the succubus stammers out with a wobbly smile. Their feelings towards me are still decidedly mixed, and I don’t want to find out which comes out on top.

I head out with a one-track mind focused on finding Julian. Odds are he’s in our room, but I head to the Goddess-forsaken aquarium first, just in case.

The place is empty, so I head up to our room instead, trying to get some sort of conversation starter ready in my head before I actually see Jewels.

I’m still pissed, and I’m shit at hiding things, but I hate us fighting morethan anything else. Just this once, I much prefer to take the blame along with whatever insults he threw my way so we could be good again.

“Hey, Jewels,” I call the second I enter our room. “I’m sorry.”

There. That wasn’t so hard. Only, there’s no response.

Tossing my shit on the counter, I take a quick look around, but I’m the only person here. I can’t even tell if he’s passed through ’cause it looks just as clinically clean as when we’d left.

Sighing, I grab my room key before heading back out, clicking the elevator button about a million times before it finally opens. Only when my fingers reach for the buttons inside do I falter.

Where the fuck do I even start?

Julian, the weirdo, doesn’t have a phone, and this place is fucking massive. I could track him, but that would mean searching each floor one by one until I catch a fresh scent. Goddess knows how long that would take, but I press a random floor and resign myself to doing just that.

One thing I know for certain is that Julian is here.

He wouldn’t head out without me, which means I just have to be patient and find him.

Sadly, patience isn’t my strong suit, but it’s forced to become one as I search floor by floor for my mate, giving in to every wolf stereotype out there by keeping my nose high as I look.

I’m sure I look like an idiot. I feel like it too, following every hint of lemon I pick up until it finally grows stronger. I don’t even know what floor I’m on when I finally spot a familiar golden head turning from side to side in a hallway with his nose to the sky, just like me.

I let out a laugh that’s mostly a breath of relief.

“Julian!” I call, and he turns immediately.