Boys are Pups, Men are Wolves

Chapter 22

“Convince you?” Dominic said incredulously.

I nodded. “Convince me. Tell me why we’re mates.”

He was shocked stiff and I knew he didn’t know what to say. It was a ridiculous request, even I would admit that. There was just no explanation when it came to mates. We can’t choose our mates and once a mate is chosen for us, there was no backing out. Two mates would never be able to ignore the pull towards each other, no matter what.

So to tell Dominic to tell me why we were mates was seemingly…impossible. No one can explain that part, but the convincing part was another story. Sometimes, it did take a little convincing to really acknowledge a mate. Just like Sunshine and Patrick. Or in this case, me and Dominic.

“You need convincing?” he growled. “Turn back to your human form and I’ll show you just how convincing I can be.” He slurred the word, and I knew exactly how he would convince me, but I shook my head, even though there were butterflies in my stomach from the image.

“No. Without touching. I want words, Dominic.” He looked surprised again by my request, but I continued. “Tell me why you never admitted that we were mates for all the years we’ve been together.” I gave him a start.

Dominic sighed heavily and began to pace back in forth in the shadows. “What the hell was I supposed to do, Helen? You were a kid. I couldn’t exactly touch you at that age.”

“Touch?” I said confused. “What are you talking about? You touched me all the time.”

His eyes looked at me. “Not that kind of innocent touch.” He whispered. “The touch between true mates. The touch between a man and a woman.” When understanding dawned in my eyes, he nodded his head, his point made. “Besides, I didn’t exactly find out you were my mate until I was around nineteen, nearly twenty.”

I blinked in shock. “What?”

“You should know the mechanics of finding a mate by now, Helen. The stories we were told as kids over exaggerated the mate finding and bonding process.”

Slowly, I nodded my head in agreement. When we were children, we were told plenty of stories about finding our mates. Most of the stories consisted of two werewolves meeting, and at first sight, they knew immediately that they were mates. Sometimes, a bolt of lightning would light the sky or a clap of thunder would fill their ears.

Abnormal things happened around them and the werewolves knew without a doubt that they were made for each other.

But reality wasn’t that easy. Finding a mate wasn’t really that different from falling in love, and love took time. Of course, there were special cases where werewolves knew their mate from first sight, but most of the time, finding a mate wasn’t that dramatic.

“Then how did you find out?” I asked.

Dominic bitterly laughed. “Trey Crawford.”

“Trey?” The shock didn’t stop coming. “But…what did he do? If you were almost twenty, then that was around the time when he just joined the Crescent Moon Pack.”

“It was also around the time when you started hanging out with more boys. Most specifically Trey. You were fascinated by him and every time we saw each other, you’d bring him up in our conversations.”

I blinked. “Did I?”

“Yes!” he exclaimed. “No matter what, it was always about Trey. How he looked at you. How he said hi to you. How he let you hold his hand.” Dominic growled lowly. “How you two spent your first mating season together.”