Hate Mates (The Alpha Shifter)

“She is … she is … I hate her, and she hates me. I don’t know why you all keep thinking that we’re going to be mates. We’re never going to be mates. Not ever.”

“Where does this hatred come from?” Marcel asked.

Landon opened his mouth, closed it, and then shrugged. “I don’t know. It has been so long, I can’t remember. I just wished people would stop treating us like we’re soul mates or whatever.”

Marcel was aware of his son’s girlfriend, or whatever she was, as Landon never said if she was his girlfriend or not. Cheryl wasn’t a nice girl. She was cruel and weak but stunningly beautiful.

“Okay, fine, but whoever took her clothes, they’ll pay for it.”

“It wasn’t me.”

Marcel nodded and left the bedroom, but he kept the door ajar. Then he watched and listened to his son.

The drawer beside his bed slid open, and Landon sat on his bed, staring at something, but Marcel wasn’t sure what.

Landon went to screw up the picture but then tossed it back into his drawer and got up.

Marcel heard the shower running, and with his son distracted, he stepped into his son’s room and went to the drawer. Sure enough, the picture Landon had been looking at was one of Alexa.

It had to have been taken a few months ago, as she looked roughly the same age as she did now. In this picture, she was laughing. It looked like someone had zoomed in the camera to get a good shot of her.

If his son hated her so much, why did he have this picture of her, which was clearly taken without her being aware of it?

****

Three years later

Graduating high school was a lot easier than this. The transition was never sugarcoated. The experience was going to be painful. Since their seventeenth birthday, they had been preparing for this. As per pack Alpha Marcel’s training, for the moons leading up to their transition, they had to be present with the pack. They had to witness their fellow wolves, as well as their seasoned wolves, turn into a wolf.

New wolves screamed, fought, and struggled, and the experience was pure pain. For older wolves, it was like being a second skin. No pain, just acceptance of what was going to happen.

Alexa closed her eyes as another wave of pain came, and she didn’t want to fight it. Her mother had said the biggest problem new wolves faced was being afraid. She closed her eyes and breathed through the pain, trying to contain the screams as her body broke, shattering the bones and then melding them together.

Curling up into a ball, she panted. Not too far from where she lay was Landon. They were the only two to have their birthday this past month. Shared as so many others were, and she heard him scream. An odd, unmistakable need to go to him, to help him, started to overwhelm her.

The feeling lessened as more pain erupted throughout her body.

She wasn’t going to fight it. Not ever.

I’m at one with my wolf.

She kept on chanting it, picturing her wolf. Her parents had told her a wolf’s coloring was normally down to their natural hair color, and she imagined a dark-brown wolf, trying to picture what her wolf looked like.

The moon gained power as it went high up into the sky. The pain seemed to go to unimaginable lengths. Then, a sudden jolt, a tearing of flesh, and Alexa was a wolf. She turned on her four legs and stared at the ground, becoming aware of so many things all at once.

Especially the wolf a few feet in front of her.

Landon.

Looking up, she noticed he was already staring at her, and she knew what her parents had been saying since their birth was correct. Landon Gorman was her mate. The flash, the awareness, the needs within her wolf to go to him was so strong, but she held herself back. The boy she’d hated for so long, who was now a man, was her mate.

No.

This couldn’t be happening. She refused to accept it.

They moved together as one and glared. Underneath it all, Alexa couldn’t deny the attraction she felt. The overwhelming need to feel him surround her.

It was strong. Impossibly strong.