Beauty And Her Beast

Chapter 16

Luka's POV:

I watched the backs of the two girls as they slowly moved out of my line of sight, the footsteps of my beta approaching me from behind.

"So?" He asked, setting a hand on my bare shoulder right as they escaped my sight.

"So?" I questioned back, turning to face him.

"So, how is it? How is she? You've had a stupid smile on your face ever since we left, so I can only assume things have gone well so far."

My chuckle stood out from the heavy breaths of the men and women around us.

Tired as they were from the sparring, I knew they would be listening in on this conversation.

"Well, I explained to her what being mated to me entails, and she didn't run off, so I'll take that as a definite win."

He rose a brow, "Did you think she was going to?"

"It passed my mind," I admitted.

Having gone decades without any sign of my mate, of course I was worried about her slipping through my fingers.

We both began leisurely walking up the slight incline to where the girls were watching us from finding some relief in the fresh spring breeze against our sweat slicked skin.

"She's been somewhat hesitant about everything so far," I glanced back to where she disappeared from my view, "but I think both her innate curiosity as well as the bond itself should keep her here long enough for us to figure this out."

He looked me over, head tilting to the left with a slight grin.

"You think that's the only thing keeping her here?"

"For now," is all I said.

His brows furrowed, his next word coming out flat, "Really?"

"What are you insinuating?" I questioned.

He stopped walking entirely, causing me to do the same and turn to face him again.

"Where the hell did my Alpha go," He began, "Where is all of this hesitation coming from? Usually meeting your mate is supposed to boost your confidence not... whatever you've got going on is."

I rolled my eyes with a sarcastic scoff.

"My confidence is fine, Milo, I'm just trying to hold myself back so I don't mess this up. I'm already reigning back half of the things this mate bond is pushing me to do because I know all of this is new to her. I jumped ahead of myself once and she got scared and ran away. We weren't even discussing the bond between us at that point, but seeing her like that is never something I want to repeat."

That and just her mentioning rejecting this has admittedly left me antsy.

Even though I was aware that she didn't know what it meant at the time

She was definitely more comfortable, and she showed that with her interest in the acceptance process.

That and I could sense her security as I introduced her to my friends, which was a fantastic shift from the uncertainty she began the morning with.

She was coming around quite quickly, but there was a difference between her accepting the community, and accepting me as her mate.

"Luna surely made me wait, but damn I'd be lying If I said she didn't give me a good one. Maybe a little too good and that's what I'm worried about."

It wasn't necessarily uncommon for mates to meet and formally accept each other within the same night.

All the hormones and overall relieved excitement of finding their other half leads the acceptance process to be over and done with quite quickly.