Her Forever
Chapter 19

Sadie

My mouth is agape at this point. Never in my wildest dreams would I have thought that werewolves were real. Seriously, they are real! Come to think about it, though, the signs were all there.

The growling, the freakishly tall people, muscles everywhere, and the way this town was so secluded from everywhere else, and they didn’t let people in regularly.

I’m not scared, I should be. I should run for the hills and never look back. If they were going to hurt me, it would have been some time ago, right? These are my friends that I just recently made, and they wouldn’t want to hurt me!

Seth is still sitting on the bed next to me, rubbing his thumbs over the tops of my hands. He is waiting for me to say something or let the information sink in. I’m pretty sure my brain just crashed, and it is waiting for a reboot.

“Sadie, love, say something.” Seth pleaded.

“I, I, am not sure. This is a lot to take in.” I kept my head down, glancing at Seth’s hands in mine. They are so rough and calloused, but it makes my small hands feel so warm, so safe. “I’m not scared, if that is what you are waiting for me to say,” I reassured him. He let out a sigh.

“That’s good, that’s fantastic.” He took his hands and ran them through the top of his dark hair. His haircut really suited him. Short on the sides, long at the top, and so unruly. I just wanted to run my fingers through those locks.

Hold up, back to information overload.

“I think I might need some questions answered,” I whispered. He nodded in agreement. “Why was that guy going to bite that girl?” I bit my l*p in hesitation.

He huffed, “going for the hard ones, I see.” I tilted my head in confusion, waiting for him to answer. “They are mates. They found each other tonight, and they wanted to complete the mating bond. Just like in the story, it’s very sacred, and there is a bit of a ‘private ceremony’ for it.” I nodded, beckoning him to go on, but he looked conflicted.

“To complete a mate bond, you have s*x, and then the male and female have to bite each other on the neck.” My eyes grew wide, and I felt they would fall out of my sockets. “It doesn’t hurt!” he quickly added. “In fact, it can be quite pleasurable.” He smirked.

“Looked like they were pleasured enough before they did the nasty in my bed!” I huffed and crossed my arms. He gave a loud laugh as he threw his head back. Wow, his laugh was amazing. I wanted to hear more of it.

“Oh! And why did Rebecca pull my arms so hard?!”

“She probably saved your life; in the middle of mating, wolves can be very territorial; he would have killed you if she hadn’t.” I could hear him whimper slightly. “We all care about you, and we would never let you get hurt.” Seth then embraced me in a tight hug while he buried his head into my neck. I giggled when he pulled away.

“What?”

I stopped giggling, “why do you sniff me like that? It tickles!”

“My wolf and I like to smell you. Everyone has a smell, and yours smells the best to me. Your smell can calm us both down when we are sad, upset, angry. You are my are my other half. I’m not the nicest wolf around here. I’m pretty ruthless, they say.” He said in a somber tone.

“I don’t believe that for one second,” I scoffed. “You have been nothing but sweet to me,” I whispered. Feeling the red come up my neck and to my cheeks.

Seth smiled at me and continued to rub my cheeks with the pads of his thumb. This man had me under a spell I couldn’t understand. It was like he was always supposed to be there all along. Had I never known he existed, I would have walked through life partially empty. Now that he is here, I don’t want him to leave.

“Seth?” He sighed when I spoke.

“Yes, love?”

“Are we are mates?” His eyes went wide for a moment, shocked etched into his face. Did I say the wrong thing? He must not feel the same with me, and he is just a nice person to me. But then he smiled. He didn’t have many smiling lines on his face, and I knew he had to really think about smiling at me.

“Yes, love, we are mates.”

Time stopped for me right there. We were mates. It all made sense that feeling I had for him at the club that night. Normally, I would never approach a guy, but he was supposed to be mine, and I was going to be his.

I smiled.

For once in a long time, I felt wanted, needed. I felt like I belonged. I was supposed to be here.

The tingles! The tingles, just like my aunt always told me about. That was the one thing that she had always told me in finding someone to love. That they would give you tingles with their touch, your world turned upside down, and you would be comforted and feel safe with their embrace.

I threw my arms around Seth’s neck without thinking and started laughing. My mind was going a million miles a minute, but the only constant that seemed to stay was the realization he was my soulmate. Werewolf or not, he was.

We were each other’s other half. The half I never knew that I was missing.

“My aunt told me to wait for the tingles I would feel on my skin! That’s why I always waited for someone to make me feel this way!”

Seth’s hold only grew tighter as he picked me up and carried me into his arms. “I’m so happy, Sadie. So happy!” Frantic k****s on my cheek made me giggle.

Seth abruptly stopped for a moment. “Wait, your aunt? She told you about how a mate’s touch feels?” Seth looked at me questionably. Before I could answer, a loud hurried knock sounded on the door. Our celebration ended quickly when Seth barked out, “I said we do not want to be disturbed!”

The vibrations from his chest oozed authority, and I found my body reacting to it. It was a strange but a perfect feeling. A blushed face was going to be permanent if this keeps up.

Seth quickly looked down into my eyes, and I buried my face in his chest. He held me close and put my head under his neck, and laughed, almost forgetting someone at the door.

“Alpha, there is an unauthorized entity at the Pinecreek borders, and Alpha Adrien requests of you. You shut off your link, and I couldn’t reach you.” Marco spoke with a shaken voice.

He grunted in annoyance and pulled my face from his neck, and put me back on the bed.

“I’m coming. I need guards surrounding this room NOW.” Seth boomed. I was quickly set down, and his chaste k**s was put on my forehead. “I need you to stay in this room. Do not leave until I come back. Do you understand, Sadie? It’s for your safety.”

He’s leaving? Right now?

“What right now?” I couldn’t help but feel hurt. He just told me I was his mate, and he was leaving. I sounded like some clingy teenager, and this is too much. “When will you come back?”

“I’m sorry, love, I’ll be back soon. Don’t leave this room, do you understand?” speaking softly and rubbing the side of my head with his hand. “This is a lot, but you have to trust me, OK?” I nodded, and with long strides, he walked to the door.

His muscles rippled through his still tattered dress shirt. Before he left, he looked at me and smiled. I buried my face in my hands, hiding the heat to my face.

I curled up on the bed, still in my pink party dress and large sweatshirt. The adrenaline and the events of the day finally took a toll on my body, so I curled up and try to sleep until he came back.

***

The light streamed into the open window beside the king-size bed. Having time to look around the room, I realized it was warm, inviting. An enormous fireplace sat on the other side of the room, with a magnificent faux fur rug at the base.

Large columns of stripped wooded trees held the magnificent walls and rafters. The room felt raw, like it was built exactly from nature. None of it was tampered with a chemical of finishing paint. You could still smell the pine that oozed from the meat of the tree.

Deep burgundy reds, navy blues, and tans decorated the duvet and the room that I had been sleeping in. The room was warm, and I didn’t even need a blanket to cover up from the night, which was strange because I was always cold.

A loud knock came from the door as if someone was listening, and I saw Rebecca’s head poke out from the door.

“Awake now, sleeping beauty?!” she said in a cheerful tone.

“Rebecca! Get in here! You have explanations I need!” I tried to look angry, but she laughed in my face.

“You look like an angry chipmunk!”

“I do not!” feeling flustered. I threw one of the large pillows and chucked it at her face.

“So I didn’t hear any screaming in terror last night from you. Have you come to accept our ways?”

“Your ways? Is it like a cult or something?”

Rebecca laughed, “No, but by definition, I guess we kind of are? We all live together in small communities, the Alpha being our leader. We take care of each other and look out for one another. Hard to accept newcomers, since we are all basically like a family.”

“Then how did I get here? I’m human?”

I remember how awkward and weird my first day here was. It was like me moving into town was such a big deal. I had frequent visits from the ‘mayor,’ and people looked so skeptical of me while I waited tables. That finding someone new in their town was almost unheard of. Now, with the werewolf business, I now know why.

“That’s the question that Alpha Adrien or ‘Mayor Adrien,’” Rebecca did air quotes with her fingers, “has been trying to figure out. You had a cabin given to you by your aunt, so obviously, she owned the land in our town.” Rebecca trailed off towards the end of her sentence. “Your aunt lived here with other wolves. Alpha Adrien woke up one day finding the house bare and had no signs of life. They didn’t tell anyone where they were going, just vanished.”

“Wait.” I could feel the gears turning in my head. Something was off. This is werewolf territory, meaning she would have had to be one in order for her to have rights to the cabin. Was I living with a werewolf for most of my life? Is that why I had been comfortable around everyone here? “Was my aunt a werewolf?” I gasped.

Rebecca came closer to the bed and sat beside me, crawling under the covers with me.

“Yes, she was,” she replied somberly. Rebecca put her arm around me as I put my head on her shoulder. “They looked for her and your uncle, but they lost the trail.”

That’s why Alpha Adrien looked sad. He knew who she was, but couldn’t tell me why. Her death must have been hard since he had known her since childhood.

The information from last night about werewolves being real, finding my mate, and finding out that one of my own family members was a werewolf created stress in me. My whole life, my aunt, kept a secret from me. A huge secret!

That is why she kept telling me about mates and how she was so in love and would love no one but Jeremy, her soulmate. The depression of losing her mate really did kill her. How she could hold on so long is beyond my understanding.

I’m not a werewolf, though! I am human! I’ve had no emotions of wanting to frolic in the woods and change my appearance. I’m in no way in any shape, or form beautiful, tall, and built athletically as my friends. I’m their clumsy fox, as they like to say. What of my parents, though? My aunt was my mother’s sister. Would she have been a werewolf too? Maybe even my father? She would never bring up my birth parents, and I never really asked. She was my Maria. I’ve only known her.

My head began to hurt, and I felt like a pencil stabbed into the back of my eye.

I leaned forward, holding my left eye, and did a slight g***n. Not knowing what to do, Rebecca held my head up to see why I was covering half my face.

“SADIE! Your eye is bleeding!”

“What?!” I screamed. I pulled my hand away and saw b***d on the palms of my hand. “What is this?” Tears swelled into my eyes and dripped into my lap. These tears weren’t crystal-like in coloring but b***d red.

“Make it stop!” I panicked. My breaths were uneven, and Rebecca looked tinged red because of the b***d dripping from my eyes.

Before I said anything, a team of werewolves in attack position came barging in. Most were only in athletic shorts, sweating profusely and scanning the room for a potential threat.

The duvet was ruined with my bloody tears, and growls were engulfing the room. My breath hitched as the pencil-like stab now in both of my eyes scorched through my brain. The scream hurt even my own ears, and I could not imagine the werewolves in the room with their hearing.

The sounds of thudding footsteps, orders being barked about, and the small cries from Rebecca became fuzzy. I was gently laid back into the bed with a warm hand that went around my back. It cupped the back of my head, and my cries of pain stopped.

Opening my eyes once more, I saw Seth. His eyes were struck with worry and pain. He held me close to the bed. All sound was now void from the room, but I knew there were others present. I wanted to hug him back, but my body could not move. My voice was caught somewhere in my throat.

Knowing that Seth was there and helped me relax. The tears stopped flowing, and my breathing started to even back out. My headache was becoming less thunderous. I could see him speaking to me, but I still could not hear what he said. My eyes gently closed, and I saw the blanket of darkness cover me.