Chapter 6 6.

KAYDEN.

Two days without sleep and I was missing passes a sophomore could catch. So that was going well.

My wolf hadn't quit since the locker room. Not once.

It was a repeat of her lips against mine and the heat that came after it. 

My wolf had been composed for eighteen years and it lost all of that in about two seconds flat. 

Two days of an unacknowledged mate bond and it was running my entire life.

I couldn't stop watching her at school and it was getting embarrassing. My eyes found her before I'd decided to look. 

In the hallway between second and third period. In the library at lunch. In the parking lot after last bell. Every time, without permission.

She moved away when people got too close. Not dramatically, just enough to put space between herself and whoever it was. She always sat with her back against a wall. Her sneakers were worn through at the heel and she hadn't replaced them. I noticed all of it and I genuinely wished I hadn't.

Reese caught me staring at her during study hall. He raised an eyebrow, said nothing, and looked back at his textbook. I did the same and we left it there.

Practice was a different story.

I missed three passes back to back and the sophomores on the line went quiet in a way that told me they were going to pretend they hadn't seen any of it. Coach Brennan blew his whistle from the sideline and looked at me with an expression I hadn't seen aimed at me since I was fourteen.

"Lachlan. Where are you today?"

"Here," I said.

He didn't believe me and I wasn't going to argue with him about it because he wasn't wrong.

Reese fell into step beside me after, once we were off the field. "You sick?"

"I'm fine."

Reese never pushed back when I did that and I knew it and snapped at him anyway and felt bad about it the whole walk to the locker room.

––•––

I drove down to my family estate that night.

It happened the same way it always did when I crossed onto Lachlan territory. Something in me shifted into a different gear without being told to. The part of me that was a nineteen year old who'd just dropped three passes at practice went quiet, and what replaced it knew exactly what it was and how to carry itself.

I parked, got out, and the nearest enforcer had already straightened up and was watching me cross the courtyard. Two pack members coming the other way dropped their eyes. I gave a nod where a nod was needed, made eye contact where it was expected, and kept walking.

My father had said it to me so many times it had stopped being words and started being reflex: you can be the man they fear or the man they revere, and the ones worth keeping will give you both. 

The moment anyone thinks they can overstep is the moment you've already failed them.

An enforcer near the entrance came to attention as I reached him. "Prince Lachlan. Your father is in his study."

"My brothers back from school?"

"Just returned, my prince."

I went inside and walked straight past my father's study.

Axele and Rito were on the floor going at it about something on the screen, both talking at the same time, neither one listening. They looked up when I walked in. "Tell him I disconnected on purpose," Axele said. "Don't tell him anything," Rito said. "I won." "You did not win."

I sat on the edge of Rito's bed and let them go because this was the first time in two days that something had felt normal and I stayed longer than I needed to because of it. My father had been trying to put edges on these two since they were old enough to cause damage, which in their case had been very young. 

I'd been quietly getting in the way of that at every opportunity.

"Is our mom back yet?" I asked when they ran out of breath.

"Tomorrow," Rito said. "She called this morning."

Our mother had been across three pack territories all week on official luna business. "Are you staying for dinner?" Axele asked.

"Yeah."

That was enough for him. Rito went back to the controller. I stayed another twenty minutes and didn't go anywhere near my father's office.

I wasn't in the right headspace to sit across from my father and be unreadable tonight. He noticed everything and I had too much going on behind my face to risk it.

Finding your mate at eighteen was supposed to be straightforward. 

I was not ready to open that door tonight.

Dinner was loud the way it always was when Axele and Rito were at the table. I said the right things at the right moments and kept my expression unreadable. My father looked down the table at me once and held it a beat longer than usual. 

I looked back and gave him nothing.

An hour after dinner, one of the house staff knocked on my bedroom door.

"Your father would like to see you in his study, Prince Lachlan."

His study was the kind of room that had ended careers. 

He was behind his desk when I walked in and he waited until I sat before he said anything.

"You turned eighteen two days ago," he said.

"I know."

"Has anything unusual happened?"

The locker room. Her lips against mine. 

My wolf screaming one word at me with the kind of certainty I'd never felt about anything in my life and hadn't been able to outrun since.

"No," I said. "Nothing unusual."

He looked at me for a long moment. I'd seen that look make grown wolves forget how to speak. I held it and kept my mouth shut and didn't move.

He dismissed me.

I went back to my room, opened my laptop, and pulled up the pack library. I typed fated mate bond into the search and started reading, because whatever was happening to me, the two nights without sleep, the wolf that wouldn't quit, the way my eyes found her across every room before I'd decided to look, I needed to know if it got worse.

Based on the last two days, I already had my answer.