BECOMING

7

7

Kade

After

     TWO THOUGHTS RUSHED TRHOUGH KADE'S MIND WHILE HE WAS STARING AT HIS MATE'S SKETCHBOOK.

     First, he had thought one thing. 

     One word.

Beautiful.

     Every single drawing he had looked at was simply beautiful. Kade couldn't say he was a fan of art or of drawing, but that was stunning.

     He imagined her working on it, with a look of concentration in her face, her piercing green eyes locked on the blank pages, and her fingers curled on a pencil, or a paintbrush, or whatever material she used. The thought made him smile.

     His second thought was a completely different thing. Another word.

Fuck.

     Although the drawings really were breathtaking, he hadn't found a single one that would give him a hint about his mate's whereabouts. He was beginning to get anxious.

     He cursed under his breath, starting to feel a slight headache. "How are we going to find her?" He asked his wolf. "There's nothing useful in here."

     "The clues are all there." Emmett answered. "I can sense it. We're just not looking hard enough."

     Kade sighed, pulling his hair lightly. "How can you be so sure?"

     "I just know it." His wolf wasn't hesitating. He was completely sure of himself. "I really can't explain it; I just know. I know this just how I knew our mate was close in the forest. I could feel it deep within my bones."

     Kade thought about how he had found his mate. How he had been running in the forest, just like so many times before, when he got a feeling, a sort of wild hunch, that told him to go further and further into the woods. His wolf was going crazy with excitement, and Kade knew it could only mean one thing; he had found his mate.

     It was completely unexpected. In fact, Kade was starting to think he didn't have a mate. He was almost twenty-four, and almost every male werewolf that age had already found his mate.

     Luckily, Kade thought, he did have one. And he had found her. And she was beautiful.

     He kept on looking at the sketchbook's pages for a while. He flipped them, one by one. He was almost halfway through the whole book, when one specific drawing caught his attention. It was a sketch of a boy. He looked younger than Kade, about twenty years old,  and he had a strong jaw and soft eyes. He was smiling.

     Kade took a closer look at the drawing, and his heart dropped. It was him; it was a drawing of him, only some years younger. 

     He was impressed by the quality of the drawing. It was better than all the others he had seen. The traces were so precise, the drawing so detailed, Kade felt like he was looking at a black and white picture of himself.

     He kept on staring at it for a minutes before he turned the page, wanting to know if there were more  drawings of him, but what he saw next impressed him even more. There was another drawing, but this time it was of a boy and a girl. The boy was looking at the girl intensely, and the girl had a dreamy look in her eyes. Their noses were touching, and their lips were only millimeters apart.

     Kade recognized the boy and the girl. The whole world stopped in that moment. It was his mate and him. It was a drawing of both of them, almost kissing.

     Kade was stunned. He was literally speechless. He softly traced the drawing with his long fingers, his heart swelling with something he couldn't recognize. At first he thought it was desire, but it  was so much more than that. What was it? Need? Longing? Kade wasn't sure.

     At the bottom of the page there was a simple sentence, written in a beautiful, delicate calligraphy, that made his pulse rise. 

'Come find me'.

     Three words. Directed at him, and him only. It wasn't a petition, or a suggestion, but it wasn't a challenge either. Not even a dare, no. It was an instruction, a command. She wasn't asking him to find her, she was ordering him to.

     Kade thought how ridiculous the whole thing probably looked like. He had never seen or heard of such a thing before. His mate had drawn a picture of him -a very good one-, without even meeting him, without even knowing how he looked like, and then, she had left him a message.

     Kade let out sarcastic, almost panicky laugh. Everything seemed surreal, almost impossible. For him, it felt like everything had been planned, like it was all part of a big scheme. But no matter how the rational part of him was suspicious, deep in his heart it felt right. Even Emmett was telling him that was how it was supposed to happen.

     Before, Kade had believed that everything was just an enormous coincidence, and that all his decisions led him to be who he was. But right then, looking at his mate's drawing of both of them, his beliefs changed. It was no coincidence, he thought. It couldn't be. That thought left him uncertain. He didn't know anymore what he believed in, but he did know he believed in something. Something bigger.

     He closed his eyes, feeling like a new man. Kade concentrated, until he felt the bond between him and his mate. It was weak, small, barely noticeable, but it was there. He relaxed, letting himself get dragged more and more into the bond. "Little mate." He whispered. "You can't run from me."

Kade took a deep breath. "I will work everyday to make the bond grow stronger, and I will look for you everywhere, no matter how long it takes." He smirked, knowing that somehow, the message would reach her. "Don't you worry, 

I 

will

find

you...

It's a promise."