Page 202 of Alpha Mates

“It’ll be fine,”I’d promised instead as we’d walked into the hall already packed with girls hoping to be the beta’s mate.

They, of course, had all been disappointed when the clock struck midnight, and Emitt hadn’t even blinked before running straight into Beckett’s waiting arms to lay one on him.

“Those two …” Julian had said, the most shocked of all. “But Beckett—two guys, again? What?”

I’d rubbed his shoulders while I steered him and everyone else out of the hall since Emitt and Beckett had shown absolutely no signs of stopping. For all I knew, they mated right there, but I didn’t stick around to find out.

Since then, they’d been joined at the hip, overly tactile, and we all suffered for it.

“It’s already close to dinner, so what do you say to us going out tonight?” I suggest, and Julian pauses with his hand on the lid of a pot of something that smells divine.

He blinks owlishly at me, surprised and already trying to work out what I plan to keep from him a little longer. “What for?” he asks carefully.

“A date,” I say, casual, reminding myself to breathe easily. If I slip up, he’ll catch on in a heartbeat. “We’ve already done the classics—restaurants and movies. Now, I’ve got a surprise for you.”

Suspicion knits his eyebrows together.

“It’s in pack borders,” I add, and that relaxes him.

“Should I be scared?”

“No. I think I’m going to make you cry tonight,” I gloat and he scoffs, offended. “You’ll see.”

“Uh huh,” he drawls, still smiling, still blissfully unaware, which I thank Goddess for.

I’m not really a surprise person.

I’m not as anal as Julian about things being in a particular order, but surprises still weren’t for me. They make me feel out of control, off kilter, and I have enough of that in my life as it is. But Jewels is different—he loves them. I realised that after the big getaway he arranged for us and the way he stared at me at every interval, watching for my reactions and then beaming when they were positive.

It seems only right I do the same for him, and at least try to make him just as happy as he makes me. I just hope he likes it.

He’s going to love it,Max promises quietly, but his presence is loud enough to make me growl.

Not another word from you,I snap, tugging an apologetic whine from him as our bond trembles.

I said sorry!he complains.

Not going to cut it,I growl, and his sulking hum fades to the back of my skull.

The morning after those twobeastshad their time together, Julian and I couldn’t walk.

I knew wolves were a bit rougher than us when they were intimate, but they’d gone at it so hard that even our natural healing couldn’t save us. I recovered quicker, since I’m not the one on the receiving end, but poor Julian … I’d had to carry him to the kitchen to get some food.

Imagine my fucking surprise when there was no kitchen to go to.

The sink’s pipe was burst with water flowing out of it like a fucking fountain. The fridge doors had a body-sized dent on one side, and the other half was lying across the room. The kitchen counter was littered with imprints of their hands, and the island had a crack running straight down the middle.

I went to put Julian down in the dining room, and you know what the fuck I found?

Wreckage. Pure wreckage.

The dining table was shattered, every chair broken. Why every chair? Only Goddess knew.

Claw marks scored the walls all the way to where the bookshelf had been before it toppled like a corpse.

We only just got the place and they’d already fucked it.

I was pissed, but Julian was much angrier since he was the one who couldn’t walk for the entire day. Instead of facing the wrath they surely knew was coming, those two little shits disappeared for a week—found the darkest corners of our minds and buried themselves in them. There they waited for our rage to die down before slowly creeping back in with a, “Hey there, my favourite best friend I’ve had for my entire life …”