~~

Shawn

~~

I was sitting in the restaurant, across from the girl that my brother had set me up with. He had insisted that I try to date, to get out there and be with people. I just didn't see the point in it.

Why should I go out there and find a girl, get to know her, maybe even love her, just for it all to come crashing down when one or the other of us finds our mate? I couldn't do that to a girl. I couldn't stand to break someone's heart like that.

Honestly, if it wasn't for my brother's insistence I wouldn't even be here right now. He had told me he thought she was my type, that he hoped she would be my mate. But if she couldn't be my mate then she could be my distraction. My brother could be so crude and vulgar, sometimes. I found it hard to believe that we were twins with how differently we acted.

"So what do you do?" The girl, Kelly, was pretty enough. She had long platinum blonde hair and pretty hazel eyes. She was skinny, and tall, and amply endowed on the chest. But nothing about her appearance did anything for me. Maybe I just wasn't going to have a type until the Goddess chose the girl for me. Or maybe I would just never mate with anyone.

"I'm a warrior." I answered her, she was a wolf and would know what that meant.

"A warrior?" She seemed to like the sound of that. "You must be strong. And good at fighting." I could see her eyes darken and fill with heat.

Things always started this way. The women were always interested in my career, interested in a man that was in a burly type of position. Every time they found out that I was a warrior they perked up a little.

"I do quite a bit of training, yes." I knew where this was going. They would want to hear about the work that I do, the missions that I go on, and those things were confidential.

"Where have you gone? Have you ever been in any interesting fights?" I knew it, it was just like all the other times. "Ooooh, do you work with the Alpha and Luna? I can't believe their wedding is coming up."

"I can't talk about all that. My work can be sensitive and it's confidential."

"Boo, that's no fun at all." She pouted. "Well what can you talk about?"

"Anything but work."

"Well, what do you do for fun?" She didn't look so happy now, like I had deflated her somehow.

"I read mostly. I never know when I will be called back into work. That's the life of a warrior. You're always on call."

"Boring. Don't you like to go out? Go to concerts? Have fun?"

"Not really. I prefer to read, listen to or play music, or watch a movie quietly at home."

"You don't sound fun at all. Your brother is a lot more exciting than you are."

"Sorry, but that is just the way that I am. I am not a very outgoing person. I prefer peace and quiet."

"That's so blah. How can you be so uptight." That wasn't the first time that I had heard that I was uptight. "Ugh." She was upset now, venting her frustrations as she put a bite of her food into her mouth.

"When dinner is over I can drop you off at your place." I offered.

"No thanks. I will walk or get a ride."

"Whatever you prefer." I had had this happen to me more times than I would like to admit.

After the meal was finished I paid for the bill and we walked out of the restaurant. She stormed off to the opposite end of the parking lot. This, too, had happened to me several times. I was used to it.

I was in my car, driving to my apartment alone where I would spend the rest of my night alone. I lived alone, spent all my spare time alone, and that was fine with me. I enjoyed the calm and quiet of my own company.

I had just gotten home, shutting the door behind me, when my phone rang. I knew who it would be and didn't even bother to check the caller ID.

"Hello Shane." I sighed into the phone.

"What the hell, Shawn?" He demanded of me as he yelled into my ear. "How could you strike out with her? She's a guarantee, man. She likes everyone, dude."

"That's not what I want."

"What the hell do you want, Shawn. What is it that you want from a girl?"

"I don't know, Shane. I just know I haven't found it yet."

"Bro, you need to meet more women or you're never going to meet your mate."

"I don't care. Why do I have to focus so much on finding a girl right now?"

"It's what we do, Shawn. It's the way wolves do things."

"Maybe I'm just not meant to follow in that path. Nothing ever works out for me."

"You're so fucking pessimistic, you know that. You need to think positively."

"Fine, I'm positive that I don't fucking care about finding a mate right now."

"You're hopeless."

"Thank you. Now, can I go to bed?"

"Yeah, go pull one off in frustration before you fall asleep."

"Ugh, you're so disgusting."

"And you're a prude." He laughed at me as he ended the call.

When I woke the next morning I was thinking about what my brother said. Was he right? Was I doomed to be a lonely prude for the rest of my life. Should I get out there more? Should I try to meet more women?

It didn't matter what it all meant or what I should do. Today was going to be busy. We have the leader of the vampires coming today and all of the Luna's guards were supposed to be there to protect her.

~~

Dietrich

~~

Was für eine Überraschung! Oh what a surprise it was when I had that video call with the Alpha Reece Gray. I had known the Gray family for generations. Ever since their ancestors had still lived in the old country as they would say. Back when the boy's great great great grandfather Irél Liath had run his pack in the Irish countryside.

Over the last few hundred years my relationship with that family had remained strong and flourished. Around the start of the twentieth century we each started a new business venture. I worked with them to bring their company to Europe and they in turn helped to lead my company into the Americas. We had both profited quite a bit from our mutual cooperation.

And as all that time passed I had watched as the head of their family changed from son to son. From Irél Liath to Finian Liath to Caelan Gray (this was when they changed from the Irish word for gray to the English word) to Brennan Gray, to Collin Gray and now to Reece Gray.

The family had had a strong run of Alphas in their blood, and I had remained loyal to them all. I just know that something special will come to this family soon enough.

And here I was being asked to come and assist the new young head of the family. To help him with his mate, his half witch half wolf mate. They were also having trouble locating some missing children that were taken by a group of warlocks that were led by his mate's evil warlock father.

This was shaping up to be quite interesting indeed.

But, alas, this young new Alpha and his curious mate were not what had made my video call so interesting and surprising.

No, the thing that had interested me, excited me, and surprised me that day was the man named Shawn who had been in the background of the video call.

It had been such a long time since anyone seemed to call out to me. Not verbally of course, but spiritually. The man's essence was reaching me even through the digital waves that were passing across the world from me to him and back again.

His heart was already calling out to me, he just didn't know it yet. I know wolves needed to have the scent to make them notice their partner, but I was not the same as them. I was older, stronger, and more powerful. And in all my five hundred and twenty-eight years I never once felt a pull as strong as the one I was having for him.

His looks weren't bad either, if I'm being honest. When you're as old as I am then you've tried all types of people. Women, men, manly women, effeminate men, cross dressers, and of course people from every possible group of the shadow world. I would know good looking when I saw it, having seen the beauties of the world for the last five centuries. And Shawn was a beauty.

His eyes were a gorgeous gray that looked like the clouds blowing off the ocean right before a winter storm, and his hair, so bright in the light of that room, that hair that almost looked silver. The body I could see through his clothes was toned and slim, so athletic looking. And best of all, he had such an innocent look to his eyes, surely he couldn't be as pure as he looked.

He wasn't the only one in the room with that look. He seemed to have an identical twin brother there with him. But even though they looked the same, looking at the brother did nothing for me. That was another proof, another way for me to tell that this man, this Shawn, was meant to be mine.

Ohh, but I was beginning to look forward to this trip. And so, it was with those thoughts running through my head. My driver, a human subjugate of mine, was guiding us up the driveway at a steady, though agonizingly slow pace. I wanted her to hurry. I wanted to see that man in person.

~*~*~*THE NEXT COUPLE CHAPTERS WILL HAVE BOTH SHAWN'S AND DIETRICH'S POV OF THE SAME SCENES SO THE CHAPTERS WILL BE QUITE LONG, HOWEVER I THINK IT IS VITAL TO SHOW WHAT BOTH WERE THINKING AT THE TIME*~*~*~