"A mate will love you and only you. No other can compare to you and he or she will treasure you above all and everything in the world," mommy says to me as she kissed my forehead.
I sighed dreamily. I can't wait till I find my mate. He'll be perfect...
"I don't know what you're up to but I know you are up to something Beta." Abalon says and I smile at him.
"Can't a guy take his mate out every once in a while?" I ask and I lace our fingers together while we walk along the pavement towards the local ice cream shop.
This is our third date since Abalon moved back into the pack house. The first one I had a light house rented off the coast and we ate dinner by candle light and watched the sun rise.
The second was with him and Avery. I took them to a photo shoot, the park and then we had dinner at my house.
Now today it's just Abalon and I. I get the both of us a cone then lace our fingers together again and lead him to my truck. He loved the date by the ocean and I promised to take him swimming today and I need to ask him some things.
I smile as I reluctantly let his fingers go because it took a lot of stubbornness to get him to agree to the hand holding. That and bribery.
"I got us a little beach house close by the light house. Probably twenty minutes. If you want we can go and watch the sunset." I ask hopefully as I turn onto the little road toward our beach house. Abalon would marry the sea I think. He loves it that much.
"That'll be lovely." He smiles my way and my heart sings. Gosh he's beautiful.
"What do you want to do?" I ask as I get the last bag from the tray. I look back and all I see is Abalon's body hurtling toward the waves and I chuckle as he starts kicking off his shoes and throwing his shirt and pants wildly behind him.
He whoops loudly before he dives into the water. I put away our things and lock both the house and truck and hang the bag with our towels on my shoulders before picking up the small cooler with our sandwiches and drinks.
I slowly make my way to the sand and spread out our stuff and went back for the umbrellas and my chair after picking up Abalon's tossed away items. After setting that up Abalon comes and throws his body onto one of the towels and he giggles when I smile down at him from my chair. I don't like sitting on the covered sand. It feels weird to me.
"Lay on your stomach so I can put sunscreen on you." I tell him and he does as told. He won't burn too badly due to our advanced healing but getting sun burned is still fucking uncomfortable.
"Having fun?" I ask as we finish up our dinner and Abalon smiles at me, lettuce stuck to his teeth and I chuckle. Adorable and beautiful.
"Yea. I love it out here." He grins at me and I grin back.
I'm not stupid. I know Abalon is not going on these dates with me because he's giving me a second chance. He's just doing it because he's scared my wolf would make himself known again.
"Abalon?"
"Hmm?" he's napping lightly on the patio, sea breeze blowing his hair and I sit beside him on the patio swing set.
"I have something to tell you and I don't know how you will take it." I say and watch as he straightens. His once relaxed body tenses and I take his hands in mine.
"The Enforcers are coming." I say and he frowns in a way that asks 'what does it have to do with me?'
"Tyke had to report what happened between us. They're coming with the intention of taking you and Avery away." I watch as understanding dawns in his eyes.
"But we're trying. You and me." he stutters half-heartedly and a stranger could guess it's a lie.
"Yea. But you know normally mates mark each other and perform the bonding ceremony. We... we haven't done any of that. They want to interview you and if you want to go with them to relocate to another pack with Avery they'll force me to reject you." I say and Avery huffs.
"So what? You want me to rush off into mating with you?" he asks and I shake my head in the negative.
"No baby. No. I just... I need you Abalon. You and our pup. I want the mating and the bonding. I want us to be a family Abalon but I know you're not ready for that with me." He just stares at me. That mask he's so accustomed to wearing slips on his face at my mention of family.
"I was ready for all that Javier. I wanted all that, so much, it was all I could dream about for years when I was a juvenile male." His voice is quiet. Somber. "Then I found you and you were all that my dreams could have held. But then you turned my dreams into nightmares."
His words hurt me deeply but I know it's nothing compared to what he must have felt. I can't formulate words or thoughts as we stare at each other.
"I had to look on at you, my mate, love somebody else. I had to watch you be more of a mate to Ivan than to me. I had to swallow my pride and look on as all my dreams shattered every time you looked at him as if he was your savior. You smiled with him so much I sometimes wondered how you could not smile at me?" his voice sounds so broken. Shattered beyond repair. "I cried myself to sleep so many nights asking the Goddess why you couldn't love me. You notice the smallest things and I wondered why you couldn't notice that you were killing me on the inside."
"I know." I whisper and Abalon laughs through his tears as if it was the most ridiculous thing I've ever said.
"You don't know the half of it Javier. You don't know what it feels like to have the man you love more than anything else whisper someone else's name while he made love to you." My lips press together in a thin line. "Not that what we did could be classified as love making. Guess all we ever did was fuck like mindless beasts."
He looks me dead in the eyes. "You don't know the insecurities I battle every day. Even now I wonder if you only want to try with me because we have a pup together."
I don't want to hear these words. I don't but I listen. I clench my jaws and listen. "You don't know the kind of pain I felt to drive me to the brink of insanity. To contemplate suicide. To attempt it."
Abalon breaks entirely. His shoulders heave as I gather him in my arms and move towards the sofa. "You don't know the guilt I feel every day I look at Avery and think about how I could have murdered him because I couldn't deal with you not loving me back."
Abalon sobs and my eyes fill with unshed tears. I did that. I did that to him. Before Abalon and I recognized each other as mates I always admired him whenever Tyke and I visited his pack. He was magnificent.
I took him from his family promising to give him a good life, to love and cherish him only to break him into a million little pieces instead.
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