Page 2 of Hayes

As he adjusted his tie in the mirror over his dresser, Hayes smirked at his brother Isaac. “Make fun of me all you want, but I’m prepared for my mate. You have sixty-seven days to get your ducks in a row before you meetyourmate. Maybe you should start putting the nursery together.”

Isaac was lounging on Hayes’s bed, propping himself up with one elbow. “That’s more than two months. Not everyone spends years preparing. Some of us prefer not to overthink everything. How many times have you changed the paint in that nursery?” he teased.

Hayes rolled his eyes. “I’m observant, okay? She changed her favorite color from pink to yellow. I’m just trying to be thoughtful.”

“A fact you only know because you’ve been spying on her. That’s frowned upon, you know.”

Hayes turned to face his brother. “The only hard-and-fast rule is that we aren’t allowed to make contact. I never approached her. All I did was snoop into her preferences from a distance. I used the same location Arion used to watch his mate as she came of age. My girl has no idea I’ve spied on her. Besidesit’s to her advantage. She’s got a yellow room instead of pink now because of it.”

“You could have waited until after the ceremony, asked her what her favorite color was, andthenpainted her room.”

“What’s the fun in that? Besides, because of me, you’ll be able to learn secrets about your own mate. You’re going to need them. Sixty-seven days, my man…”

Isaac shrugged. “Eh. Maybe I’ll just wait until she’s here to do anything with her room.”

Hayes shot his brother a knowing glare. There was no way in hell Isaac intended to wait two months to do any preparations. He liked to pretend he didn’t care much about his upcoming mating, but he was full of shit. He cared.

Hayes looked down at himself. “How do I look?”

Isaac laughed as he stood. “Like a man in a suit,” he joked before patting his brother on the shoulder. “Good luck today.”

As Isaac left the house, Hayes wandered toward the doorway of the nursery and looked around. He’d had his house built so that this room was attached to the master bedroom. He’d also made sure the windows were large and had the best views in the house so his Little girl could sit and look out at the mountains if she wanted. He’d positioned her crib under one of them and a yellow loveseat under the other.

He wouldn’t admit it out loud, but he was nervous. He was thirty-six years old. He’d been sixteen when his mate had been born. It had been strange at the time because Isaac was four years older and had not learned of his mate’s birth for two more months. Fate had her reasons. She arranged for the Alpha Protectors to meet their mates at exactly the right time.

There was no doubt matings were not random. There was a reason behind the timing of every union. Whatever that reasoning was, no one knew.

Hayes had known for years that his mate was best friends with Isaac’s mate. The two girls had grown up together. He was grateful they’d had each other since girls born with the mark of an Alpha Protector were often ostracized by their peers.

It was a shame. Why did girls have to be so petty and rude? It wasn’t Rylee’s fault that she’d been born with a mark. Nor was it Amber’s. Thank goodness they’d grown up in the same school and had met at a very young age. They’d had each other.

If Hayes had watched his mate being bullied and alone from a distance, he wasn’t sure he would have had the ability to remain in the shadows. He might have been inclined to do something to make her life easier.

He suspected the two women had been stressed for some time over their upcoming separation. He’d seen them hugging each other more than usual lately on the playground.

He’d had to be pretty sneaky to figure out what color Rylee preferred since all girls wore the same ugly gunnysack dress to school for the entire twenty years. That was the strangest custom in the valley. It was meant to eliminate class distinction, but there was no way to avoid the fact that the mark of the Alpha Protectors created its own distinction.

Girls didn’t expose their marks very often. The ugly dresses they wore had long sleeves that reached all the way to their hands. They also had a high collar and touched the tops of their shoes.

Mated women in the valley no longer dressed in such drab, boring clothing, but nothing compared to the way women dressed once they were mated to an Alpha Protector. They had far more freedom to express themselves through colors and styles.

Granted, Hayes had already filled his Little girl’s closet with adorable dresses, but he could always get her more once she discovered her own preferences. Until she arrived, she couldn’tknow what she might like. She’d never had the privilege to consider her options.

Except the yellow. He’d noticed she often had a small yellow bow pinning the front of her long dirty-blond hair back. She also carried a yellow lunch bag. Hopefully yellow was a color she enjoyed. If not…if it was actually her mother or someone else who provided her with those things… Well, he’d change the room to suit her.

It was time to go. This was it. When he returned to his house after the ceremony, he would have his pretty mate in his arms. From this day forward, he would rarely be alone. His overly quiet house would be filled with conversation and laughter.

At least he hoped so. From what he’d seen from a distance, it seemed Rylee smiled a lot. She also laughed with her friend. They chatted with each other in equal exchanges, leading him to believe his Little mate wasn’t introverted.

He didn’t have enough evidence to be certain, of course. Just because she was animated with her friend didn’t mean she would be that way with him. She would be nervous at first. It might take her some time to open up. But he genuinely hoped, given time, she would lean on him and consider him her most important confidant.

He would never deny her the friendship she already had with Amber. He would provide her with ample opportunity to maintain that relationship. But he believed in his heart that the connection between him and Rylee would be even stronger than either of them were currently capable of understanding.

In a few short hours, they would know what it meant to be mated. Not the kind of ordinary mating experienced by the average wolf shifter in the valley. No. Their bond would be far stronger.

It would turn both their worlds upside-down.

Hayes couldn’t grasp what that was going to feel like yet, but he was well-aware from his friends and elders that the bond he would experience with his marked mate would surpass anything in the valley and bring him to his knees.