5. Raphael

CHAPTER 5

Raphael

“ F uck, fuck and double fuck!” I shift back so fast that it feels like my body goes to jello. My limbs are shaking and trembling from the speedy shifts and my brain is stuck in a gray limbo of cotton wool.

But none of that matters because every muscle and spark in my soul is focused on my mate and I catch her body before it hits the ground, my superhuman speed finally coming in handy for something more practical than fighting. Taking care of my little sprite and making sure that she doesn’t get hurt.

I lift her high in my arms, my head turning left and right. I have no idea what the fuck to do at this point. I mean, I don’t want to put my mate down when she’s vulnerable and soft like this. Every instinct in my body is fighting that. But I don’t want her to wake up and find me naked and rock-hard. Because there’s no way in hell I could touch my mate and not get turned on. My dick is so damn hard it’s throbbing against her soft ass where it’s touching my stomach. Her sweet scent, almost like candy canes and sweet tarts mixed together wafts up and wraps around my soul, feeling like it’s sinking into my dna as I stand here.

She whimpers and stirs and my dick jumps, slapping my belly and making me groan. I turn left and right and I still don’t see anyone around us. So I take the chance and gently lower her to the fancy deck chair that’s out on the patio. I quickly scramble into my tux and then grab her still-inert body.

I stride off the patio and into the woods surrounding the elegant ballroom. There’s nobody that I can see out here and I can’t walk back into that ballroom with her in my arms. There’s no way that any of the paranormals in there would believe that she is one of us.

The cool night air brushes my exposed skin. I didn’t bother doing my shirt up…just threw it on. And I didn’t put my shoes on. The rough feel of leaves and broken twigs under my feet doesn’t have any impact at all on me. My skin has been hardened so much that nothing breaks it when I’m tramping through the woods.

The woods are black as midnight, no moonlight breaking through. My wolf’s eyes have no problem seeing to guide me into the verdant depths. The smell of wood and moss comfort me and I breathe it deep. But not even that can calm my wolf’s need to claim my mate. He’s pushing hard, straining at the last feeble remnants of my control to bite her, mark her as mine so that there are no more questions. She can’t get away from me.

But I can’t do that. I well remember when I got old enough to realize that my parents hated each other. Most fated mates were over the moon when they found their fated one. Not my mom. She wasn’t ready to be mated and at eighteen she had just barely passed the mark where the mate call became an actual thing. Before you turn eighteen, a mate call doesn’t exist. You may feel something for the one who will become your mate but it’s not an incessant hunger fueled by a need so intense that it can’t be shut off.

I glance down at my sleeping mate and that hunger roars to life inside me, whipping up like a hurricane and blowing apart all my reasons that I should wait.

But that way lies hell. My mother never forgave my father for marking her before she was ready. Logically I understand the way she felt. The anger a teenage girl had for the almost thirty-year-old man who claimed her without waiting to see what she wanted out of her life. She was pregnant from that first time. The sex was consensual but the marking? No. That was my father’s fault entirely.

On an emotional, spiritual level, I feel what he felt. He needed to claim my mother. Needed to know that wherever she went, she had his mark and all other shifters and paranormal folk would see it and know that she was his, would smell him on her.

He panicked at the thought that he might lose her and he did something that we all regretted for the rest of our lives. I’m still paying for his mistakes on some level even though my parents are long gone, killed by a car accident when I was ten. I went to live with my cousin’s family and finally saw what a real fated mate-love match looked like. They were so sickly happy that it was enough to make you want to throw up sometimes.

But you couldn’t help but be happy for them. Which is why it’s been a shock to my aunt that her son hasn’t found and claimed his mate yet. Although I’ve got my suspicions that he has found her and he’s waiting for some reason. Maybe the same reason that’s now plaguing my decision-making.

I have a feeling she’s human and innocent too. So although we were raised differently, I think we’re both in the same boat now.

I break into a lope, heading for a small cabin that I’m staying at while I’m in town for the masquerade. I shouldn’t take my mate there because I can only hope that I can control myself, but I need to know that she’s safe and close to me.

I won’t mark her without her consent but that doesn’t mean I can’t try to convince her that I’m right and we’re meant to be.

Fated mates forever.