Mateless and Home Bound

Chapter 43: Instinct

He raced down the hallways, eager for as much distance as possible. He couldn't believe what had happened. He couldn't believe what road that wound up going down. His body was on fire and his heart was racing.

It was so difficult to pull away at that moment. He had almost made the greatest mistake of his life. Not only was he about to take things farther than they've gone before, at a time when Sage wasn't feeling well.

He was about to mark him.

He didn't know how powerful that instinct was until that night. He thought that it wouldn't be so bad since he always wound up sleeping in the same room as him every night. He didn't want to overwhelm Sage with something like that. They were just starting out their relationship, and he had made sure that no one told him about mates and the things that involved so that he would be the one.

But there was just something about the fear of losing him. It was worse than the first time, because the first time he wasn't trying to run from him. Sage running from the place that he called home hurt more than any physical wound could. He didn't just want to keep him there so that he would be safe. He wanted to live with him. He wanted to be able to come home to him every day and be able to talk about anything under the moon and back. He wanted to hold him at night let his calm breathing lull him to sleep.

He had fallen so hard for him he was getting dizzy. The more he thought about it now, the more it seemed like it wasn't just something that happened within the past month or so. It felt more like he had loved him since he first met him in school. Like a part of him already knew that he was going to be his mate before the rest of him was allowed to know. They were already a piece of each other's puzzle.

Which was why he had gotten so angry about his father.

His parents had done everything they could to make him out to be their perfect little angel. They wanted him to be what they couldn't: the leader of the pack. And, while Reggie truly wanted to do that himself, long before they started encouraging him, he wasn't going to listen to everything they had to say. If he did that, then he truly would be miserable.

He knew that Charlie wasn't telling him everything when he came out of that room. There were too many tear stains on his shirt for it to simply be him freaking out. When he followed him and Max to his parent's suite, that set off every alarm possible.

Reggie thought that out of all the things that happened just in this last month, that he had figured out what his greatest fears were. He didn't expect that it would be his own parents driving the other half of his soul away.

It seemed harsh to disown them. He knew that Scott would be trying to find him at some point to talk him out of it. But he couldn't. He couldn't love the ones who wouldn't even accept his mate. Sage was his other half. Them not accepting him was like them not accepting Reggie.

As if they hadn't done that already.

All of his emotions came out like a tidal wave as he weaved through the halls. They flashed through his mind in the blink of an eye as he rushed to the kitchen. After being forced to stay away from Sage the whole day, and not even being able to comfort him, he was already antsy and ready to race back there. Everything was just making him more possessive. He never wanted to be, but it wasn't like life was making this any easier.

"You're mine," he kissed his neck, "all mine."

"I'm okay with that."

His voice was so intoxicating. Almost as much as those moans were when he tried to massage the knots out of his neck. It was giving him a whole new need for the man. He was so wanting. The man was like putty in his arms. Everything he did made those arms wrap tighter around him. With how raw his nerves were already just from not getting to talk to him about what happened, or comfort him, his instincts were completely taking over.