Filed to story: Sorry Alpha I Am Wolfless Novel
“Yes, I am technically that much older than you, but I froze in time when I was just about your age. Time has moved on, but I have not.”
“And what happens when I begin to age? What happens when I become an old man? What happens when I die?” This seemed to scare him as his eyes darkened with fear.
“I can’t answer that right now, because I don’t know what will happen in that regard. There are options, things that can prolong your life and give us more time together, but now is not the time to talk about that.”
“And what about a family? That’s something that every wolf wants but we can’t have that.”
“There’s options for that too. Nothing is the end of the line. And we have plenty of time to figure it all out.”
“And then there’s the fact that you’re the leader of the vampires. You’re their Emperor for crying out loud. What would that make me? How would your people react to this situation? Won’t they reject me? Won’t we be considered freaks among them?”
“I think you underestimate us vampires. For one, we don’t often settle down, there are a lot of vampires who never find their true mates. So when it doesn happen, no matter who it’s with, no one really questions it. At least not the majority of them.”
Shawn looked away from me then, a sigh escaping him as he attempted to exhale the negative feelings, or at least that’s what I thought he was doing.
“How could I be gay without knowing it?” He sighed again as he said these words.
“Do you have to put a label on it? Can’t it just be that you’re a man who was looking for love, no matter where that love might lie? When you look at things as having a concrete gender role then it can make you forget what matters most.”
“And what is that?” He looked at me again, his eyes showing me the question he had just asked, curiosity all but dripping from them.
“Together we can be happy. Separate, we will always be searching out our other half. It doesn’t matter if the person you’re fated to be with is a man, a woman, or a purple blobby alien from Jupiter, as long as you’re happy and your partner is happy isn’t that all that matters?” I heard him laugh at my words, it was the first time I had heard him laugh. That laugh mixed with the smile that spread across his face lifted my heart so much that I felt the need to clamp my mouth shut so that it didn’t float right out of my mouth and keep going until it reached Jupiter itself.
“I really hope that you don’t turn out to be a purple blobby alien from Jupiter, honestly that might turn out to be a little too much.” That mirth filled laughter that he spoke with continued to make my heart swell and cemented my grin in place, I didn’t think that I would ever stop smiling after this night.
“As far as I know I’m not. But I guess my alien side could just be in hibernation mode or something.” Shawn chuckled then, his laughter bouncing off the rocky mountain side and coming back to me in a musical chorus.
“We’ll have to be on the lookout for it I guess.” He was still laughing, that was a good sign.
“Shawn.” I said his name with a semi-serious tone of voice, causing him to look at me cautiously. “Can we work on this mating together? Will you give us a chance? I promise that I won’t force anything on you. I won’t rush anything.” I saw the nervousness in his eyes, the apprehension and fear that had settled in him when he realized our mate bond.
“I won’t not work on it.” His double negative made me want to laugh but I stopped myself at just a smile. “I can’t promise you anything, not yet, but I won’t reject you out right. I know that the Goddess chooses our partners for us, and everyone I have ever seen that has been mated is happy and enjoying themselves. I would like to have that someday. I didn’t think that I would want that, but I do, I really do.”
I grinned at him, hoping to convey just how happy his words made me.
We spent the rest of the night talking there on the mountain, getting to know each other. I kept my hands to myself, not wanting to frighten him or anything. When the sun started to come up we sat there in silence, watching as it slowly moved above the horizon.
After we watched the sunrise I offered to walk him home, which he did not refuse. The walk was mostly quiet, with just a random question thrown out here and there. When we got to the sidewalk for his apartment building it was time for us to separate.
“Sleep well, Liebing.” I grinned at him as I pretended to brush a stray piece of grass from his cheek just so I could feel him one more time.
“Good night.” He said as he started to walk away.
“Gute Nacht mein Schatz.” I returned his words and added on my darling as I began to walk away.
I smiled the entire way back to Joaquin’s Alpha Estate. I had found my mate. He hadn’t rejected me. And I had spent the entire night talking to him and getting to know him.
****
Shawn
****
I had not expected to spend the entire night talking to Dietrich, but it was surprisingly easy to talk to him. Dietrich wasn’t a bad guy, which was a good thing. And he genuinely seemed to want to make this whole mate bond thing work. I just didn’t know what was expected from me.
What was I supposed to do with Dietrich? Which role was I supposed to take on? I am not effeminate, not in the least. Yeah I may not be the extrovert partying type of man that most women think of when they think of a man in their twenties. But that didn’t mean that I wanted to be wooed, wined and dined, and doted on like I was the woman in the relationship.
UGH! What am I going to do? This was going to be hard.
Then there was the mate bond itself. I hadn’t known how strong it would be. It was like an instant pull. That connection, that sense of being complete just by being in the same place as the person on the other end of that tugging line of fate, it had its own way of making you feel satisfied.
The entire night that I had spent with Dietrich, all the talking we did, I never once felt bored. I never once felt like I couldn’t wait for it to be over just so I could go home and read a book alone. That’s how I felt with every date that I had had in the past.
NOT THAT LAST NIGHT WAS A DATE! No, far from it. Last night was just us talking, just us getting to know each other and trying to figure out exactly what was going on between us. It most definitely was not a date.
So, why then, was I wanting to do it again? Why did I feel like it was one of the best nights of my life even given the shock of what had happened to me? What was I thinking?
It was my day off today, and since I didn’t get home until dawn I was taking advantage to get some extra sleep. That was, until I heard the pounding on my door that woke me up just before noon.
I dragged myself from my bed and shuffled like a zombie from the bedroom into the hallway, down to the living room, and then into the entryway. I didn’t even care that I wasn’t wearing a shirt, or that I was still wearing the black cargo pants from the day before.
When I finally made it to the door, the knocking now incessant, I was slightly pissed off. I whipped the door open and growled at the person who was standing there.
“What the hell do you want, Shane!”
