The Sixteenth Moon: A Rejected Mates Romance

Chapter 7 (Revised): Turning Point

***The following chapter has been revised for plot and continuity.***

Another Year Gone....

The first streaks of morning light slid over the ceiling, casting away the shadows of the night. All along, he'd been watching. Unable to sleep, unwilling to make himself vulnerable to his dreams. To his emotions.

Emotions were messy. A weakness. Something to be avoided at all costs, even to his detriment. No matter what, he was to put the will and good of the Pack over anything as feeble and inconsistent as emotions.

No matter how fucking much it hurt.

And Fate, did he hurt. He ached. Fate, did he ache.

Sounds of shuffling and then movement in the kitchen made him turn toward the closed office door. He was spending more and more time in his home office, hiding away from his mistakes. Ingrid was out there making coffee, then she'd head into town to meet with her friends, where she'd spend most of the day shopping for things she didn't need. But he couldn't complain—if she was in town she wasn't at home where she could stare at him with wounded, angry eyes, and try to corner him into conversation about their future. About him slowing down, delegating his duties as Alpha to give them more time together, to assuage some of the stress that was hurting their chance at making pups.

The truth was, in their two years together, they were bound by contract and nothing else.

That first month, despite his wolf's rabid rage and disgust, he had fucked Ingrid three times a day. The following month, he'd done the same, and the same with the month following. After six months without a single pregnancy, he'd begun to tire of the constant battle with his wolf who couldn't stomach the fact that he was fucking someone who wasn't their true mate. The constant battle with his own thoughts, his own body, was draining. Eventually, he couldn't even...perform. Of course, biology would do its job, making his cock hard for the mating, but as soon as he saw that the woman beneath him was blonde instead of brunette, leggy instead of curvy, with blue eyes instead of caramel, he would deflate as fast as a popped balloon.

He hadn't had sex in more than a year. His body was willing, but his wolf, his spirit, his head...just weren't in it.

And it begged the question: the Ancestors had blessed their binding, hadn't they? Hadn't the Elders spent months in council with the Ancestors, carefully searching for his perfect consort, the one the Ancestors had wanted for him?

Except...now, he wondered if their consort matehood hadn't been as destined as the Elders had wanted him to believe. If he and Ingrid were really meant to mate for the betterment of the Pack through the siring and raising of strong pups, then why hadn't they gotten pregnant that first six months? And why had his wolf, an aspect of the Ancestors themselves, vehemently rejected his mating to Ingrid? If the Ancestors had chosen Ingrid, why hadn't they passed that along to his wolf?

In his shame, he couldn't admit to his consort mate that he couldn't fuck her because his wolf hated her, so he simply let her believe it was the stresses of being Alpha that were causing issues. Yes, Ingrid was beautiful and desirable but.... In the beginning, his body performed as it should, giving them both pleasure and filling Ingrid with his seed. But, even in those first six months, as he "performed," his thoughts always drifted from the woman beneath him, moaning his name, to the woman he'd cast out into the cold and dark. The woman who'd claimed to be his fated mate. The woman who couldn't possibly have been the one he'd been waiting for all those decades.

Because if she was, he'd just spent the last two years betraying her, ignoring her, shaming her.

Because if she was, he'd just wasted two years trying to sire pups with the wrong female.