Page 26 of Mate

Before I can go in search of one, he tugs at my wrist and pulls me between his knees.

My ass hits the hard muscles of his quads none too gently, and his left arm loops around my hips, the back of his hand resting on the upper part of my left thigh.

He angles me so that my legs occupy the slice of space between his.

“Let’s just get this over with,” he grumbles, low against my ear. My heart skips around for a minute, and there is no way he misses it, but . . .

Okay. Sure. Fine. Just one chord. He picked it. He won it, fair and square. “Any objection to C major?”

“Nope.”

“Cool.” I swallow. Take his right hand in both of mine and gently splay his fingers— thumb, index, ring.

“Here,” I whisper, and they seem to fall on the white keys instinctively, almost too easily.

Maybe someone else tried to teach him how to play in the past?

Maybe there is some knowledge of the basics, deep in the recesses of his brain?

“Now, you just press— like this. Yeah.” The simple chord rises up, enveloping us. “You did it. Look at you.”

I grin wide, lift my eyes to meet his, and find that he’s already staring at me, black eyed and voracious.

“Look at you ,” he says. At least, I think so. I could have imagined it, because it’s little more than a whispered growl, quickly followed by a much lighter question. “Now what?” he asks.

I take a deep breath. “Now you just, um . . . I don’t know. Repeat the chord over and over, and play the most boring song in history?”

His eyebrow lifts. “I think I’ll do that. It’s what my roommate deserves.”

I snort and watch him hit the C chord ten more times in quick succession, his this is what you get look boring into me and making me laugh even harder. I’m so busy being amused, it takes me a second to realize that his left hand, the one on my thigh, is moving, too.

It’s not unpleasant. His fingers press lightly into my flesh, the warmth of his skin branding through the cotton of my pants, a rapid beat that makes my heart speed up.

It’s almost as though he’s walking through the chord, stepping up and down and up again in a sustained rhythm, skimming closer to the crease where my thigh and my abdomen join, and . . .

With a sharp exhale, I snap my legs shut. It’s an automatic gesture, one that traps his fingers there, right between the soft fat that wraps around the inside of my thighs. I look up at him, confused. All at once, I’m hot all over. Liquid.

Koen’s face, on the other hand, is etched in stone. “Serena,” he murmurs, scent spiking, voice otherworldly, and it feels like . . . I don’t know. A question, maybe. An invitation. A turn in the road, and the beginning of something.

We could kiss. If we wanted to, it would be the perfect position, the perfect situation.

We can’t , I scream inside my head. Are you insane?

But that’s not true at all. I can’t, because I have no time left. Koen’s Alpha. Koen can do whatever the hell he wants. Koen gets to decide if—

“I told you,” he says calmly. All of a sudden, he’s ice cold. “I’m not interested.”

My stomach hollows. The words reverberate through me, harsher than a slap.

“Alpha?”

I turn to the door. A man with gray-streaked temples and a kind, weathered smile is studying us curiously. I make to leap away from Koen, but his fingers free themselves to tighten around my hip, stopping me.

“Sorry I’m so late. John asked for more and more stories, and . . .” The man’s gaze catches on me. The way I’m perched in his Alpha’s lap. “That’s my six-year-old.”

I try to stand again, and at last Koen lets go of me. I rise to my feet and take a step away, not hasty but determined.

What the hell was I doing?

“Bedtime is still your favorite part of the day, huh?” Koen asks breezily, and the man lets out a low, pain-filled groan.

It’s like nothing just happened. Because nothing happened , I remind myself.

He just said that he’s not interested . And it wasn’t the first time .

“Mai, this is Serena. Serena, Mai is in charge of our northeast borders. You’ve been keeping him busy. ”

“Me?”

Mai nods. “We stopped eleven Vampyres from entering our borders in the last two days.”

I gasp. “ Eleven? Is that a real number?”

“Would you like to see their bodies?” Koen asks.

“No.”

“Good.” His smile doesn’t reach his eyes. “They’re not in great shape.”

I swallow. “Did you figure out which councilmember sent them?”

“Nope. They were all independent agents interested in the bounty and didn’t know much. But I bet whoever’s behind the reward is getting impatient. They’ll make a stupid move soon enough.”

“Good. Well, not good , but . . .” I wince. My heartbeat seems to have stabilized. “Thank you, Mai, for . . . keeping me safe. And I’m sorry that you got stuck with the Vampyre-killing job.”

“Are you kidding? I love it.”

“Do you?”

“Mai is my eldest second,” Koen explains. “He gets his pick of assignments.”

We chat for a while. Mai pulls out his phone to show us a few pictures of John, who looks adorable, and a menace, and wants to be Koen when he grows up— like most children in the pack, apparently.

But something needling and confusing sticks to the walls of my head, a thought that won’t let go, not even hours later, when I’m alone in bed under the covers, surrounded by home-decor-store quantities of pillows.

Mai is my eldest second , Koen said. The problem is, Mai looks half a decade older than Koen, tops. Which would put him around only forty. Not eldest material.

Unable to sleep despite my exhaustion, I retrace the last few days.

Every step I’ve taken since entering Northwest territory.

Every person I met. And when the realization hits me, I want to take my lack of observational skills and drown it in the nearby river.

I can’t believe it took me so long to notice how young everyone is.

This is not the typical age distribution for a pack. I’ve now met most of Lowe’s seconds, and a third of them looked old enough to be his parents. Not to mention that Lowe’s house was somewhat of a revolving door of Weres of all ages seeking audience for all sorts of problems.

So it’s something else. I turn inward, gears spinning. When it comes to the Northwest, I have a lot of pieces, but I’m not sure how they fit together. Yet.

On impulse, I reach for my phone on the nightstand and type a text.

U up?

Misery: I’m a Vampyre and it’s the middle of the night.

I roll my eyes. Can you ask Lowe how long Koen has been Alpha?

The reply comes in seconds. I won’t.

Serena: Why?

Misery: Because I already know the answer.

I roll my eyes harder. Misery, how long has Koen been Alpha?

Misery: So nice of you to ask! Twenty-one years. Why?

I set the phone aside.

Koen was fifteen when he became Alpha. Fifteen. And around the same time, something big happened— something that killed Brenna’s family, destroyed pack records, and gave the Northwest a reason to reunite.

I’m not sure what the age of majority is among Weres, but I’ve seen the way young Were members are treated in packs, and I can’t imagine anyone would be happy with a fifteen-year-old becoming Alpha, least of all the fifteen-year-old in question.

Unless . . .

Unless there were no alternatives. Unless there were no dominant older members to take over. Because everyone who was past their late teens left, or was . . . eliminated. Some kind of accident? An attack? But how does that happen? What slices a pack with such surgical precision? Who does?

I grab my phone again. Ask Lowe how a boy of fifteen managed to unify an entire pack.

I fall asleep several minutes later, still waiting for the answer.