RAIDEN ||

I wasn't expecting that to say the least.

I found my mate. My better half. The beat to my heart. The air to my lungs. The sight to my vision.

He's beautiful and he's all mine.

I thought the last 7 years in my solitary lifestyle was the best thing to have ever happened to me. It's not an unknown fact that felines are solitary creatures, I mean except the Lion shifters, but we won't bring up those big bastards, all except for one.

My father is a Lion and my mother is a Leopard, strange combination for mates I know. I guess our Gods and Goddesses thought their pairing made sense at some point in time.

So I don't believe all Lion shifters are assholes, just the ones that try to kill my breed for absolutely no good reason.

The women in my fathers pride always joked about the fact that I'm abnormally large for a Leopard and of course... the whole abnormality of being a Black Leopard. I guess it has something to do with the fact that I'm a mutt of some kind.

"We are not a mutt Raiden." Onyx, my leopard growled at me.

"Well we're not exactly purebred are we?"

"Yes we are. We have larger genetics due to our father yes, but that doesn't make us any less of a Leopard like our beautiful mother."

All I could do was smile at Onyx. He really is the best friend a guy could ever hope for.

My mother is a regularly coated Leopard, just meaning she doesn't carry the recessive gene and her coat is more of a sun kissed tan, while her black spots are more prominent. I'm the oldest of her 4 cubs. My twin sisters and younger brother all being lions. It's strange again, I know, but I guess they inherited more of their true form from our father than I did.

My mother says the Gods and Goddesses blessed me a black Leopard because I'm special enough to handle such an honor and special enough to carry the recessive gene that makes our coats appear black in color. Our spots never fade, but you wouldn't necessarily see them unless you're close enough. Which by the way, I don't recommend.

Leopards are known to be very territorial once we've found a section of land to claim as our own, but the whole solitary lifestyle was always forefront to anything else.

Onyx came to me at the age of 13 and I've always been a pretty chill, laid back, tend to stay alone type of person. So I didn't understand how my mother was able to cohabitate in my fathers pride as well as she did.

Being around our close family is a lot different, if it was just my father, mother, sisters and brother then everything would make sense with mom wanting to be around us because we're her immediate family.

It was just weird watching her when I was growing up knowing that she felt the same way I did, but pushed everything to the side and tried to compromise with my father a lot because of their bond.

She understood that he was the pride leader. He was the King. He couldn't just leave his pride, they wouldn't survive without him, so my mother and my father came up with a truly heartwarming compromise for her wanting more time away from the other lionesses.

After all, Leopards don't do well in crowds, she was snapping a lot and fighting with the lionesses every single day. It was a lot worse when she was pregnant and had her cubs. She was full on "protective mother" and "intolerable leopard mode."

Seeing this made her and my father come up with their thing. She would take a week every month and go off by herself or sometimes my father would go with her and leave my sisters, brother and I with the lionesses to watch over us.

It really helped my mother with her anxiety of crowded areas or the institution of prides a lot more and because of it, their bond flourished.

My father was truly selfless to allow his mate the time she needed because he loved her with everything he had. Their bond was beautiful to watch growing up. However, the moment I reached sexual maturity, things changed between my father and I.

Prides don't have more than one fertile male at any given time and I understood that, but we fought a lot because of it. Eventually after 2 years of constantly being at each other's necks, I left and went out on my own. I knew my father and his Lion meant no harm. It was natural and it was their instinct to ensure I wouldn't mate with any of the lionesses.

I understood it, doesn't mean it hurt any less.

Knowing the same thing would happen to my younger brother when he became of age scare me a little though. He looked up to me, we spent our whole childhood together and when I left it hurt him the most.

Mom and dad told me everytime I left after a visit, he would act out and cause issues in the pride. Killing and hunting unnecessarily, not allowing the lionesses to do their jobs. The little booger even thought it was ok to back talk our parents, which almost caused an uproar in the pride. The lionesses wanted to defend their King, but we're conflicted because my brother was their King's son.

At that time I reached sexual maturity, my fathers love had disappeared when his instincts kicked in, but after I left, our relationship got so much better.

I've visited my family all of the time over the years, missing their faces, but not the annoyance that it was living in a pride.

Way too much noise, too many lions and way too much touchy feely-ness. Lions are super clingy to each other. Always wanting to touch or cuddle, nuzzle and sleep on top of each other. If you seen one, the others weren't far behind. I never stayed long during my visits, my mother understood me better than anyone else because we shared a breed of course.

The last 7 years, I've been alone. Just me and Onyx in our own little world and loving life. Going where our paws took us and doing what we please, that was until my angry Alpha quite literally stumbled into my life today.

I wasn't expecting to find him right after a kill. Right after Onyx had drug our deer up the nearest tree with the best perching branches, but there he was and he was a wolf none the less.

My parents taught me all about mate bonds and how not to pride ourselves on a preference of gender, species or likeness. Our mates could be anything or anyone, even human. Thank the Gods and Goddesses he wasn't though. We're not even getting into the hatred felines have for humans...

When he first ushered that adorable little "hi", I about choked on my own breath. I remember looking down through Onyx's eyes and seeing his beautiful blue hooded eyes. Onyx couldn't help himself jumping off the branch and pretty much mauling our mate. He truly was breathtaking and his scent was just as mouth watering.

Honey and Lemon... the strangest combination to me, but for him, it made total sense. It was like sweet and sour, the perfect Ying and Yang to us clearly.

Our species are starkly different, a canine and a feline mated to one another, it's crazy and were such polar opposites.

As were our personalities I was starting to realize in just the few moments of being in his presence.

Dylan seems like the more take charge, tense, "I'm not gay I can't be mated to a guy" type of man. Onyx said his wolf was just as "bull headed" as his human, which again didn't surprise me knowing now that he's an Alpha wolf.

I haven't came into contact with many Alpha wolves, but I can tell you by the way that he tried to use his aura to dominate or intimidate me, that he wasn't taking well to the fact that I'm also an Alpha and my aura is stronger than his.

Feline shifters, all except lionesses are Alphas because we all live solitary lifestyles. We go where we want, do what we want, when we want, how we want, claim our own territory, hunt for ourselves, take care of ourselves and don't answer to anyone. It only made sense that our Gods and Goddesses granted us the blessing of having such powerful auras.

My pups clearly didn't like that fact though.

The pull to him was strong already, I didn't want to leave his side and I never wanted to be anything for him but perfect, until he tried to his aura on me, then Onyx forced me to show him that we were stronger. I didn't want to, I didn't want to hurt him, but I knew if I didn't then Onyx would have.

It only backfired on us though, when my beautiful wolf said that our bond couldn't happen and essentially rejecting me with his hurtful words.

I never in my life dreamed of having my mate, I didn't know if I would ever meet them being such a drifter and only being able to tread through territory that wasn't claimed already, but the moment I found Dylan, my Dylan, I wanted nothing more than to love him and show him all that I could give him.

Call me crazy, but I felt like I loved the one inch shorter than me, brown haired, bare faced, blue eyed beauty already.

Even with that though, I didn't want to force him into a bond with me if he wasn't comfortable. Telling him to reject me was the most pain I've felt since the last time I fought my father. It hurt, it hurt unbelievably bad. I didn't think I would find my mate and lose them in the same day, the same hour, but that looked like what was happening.

So I was determined to let him know how much I would have loved him before he could reject me. I wanted him to know how much my heart called out to him, he was the blood to the dang organ that held my life in its every beat.

The moment that my Pups actually said that he wouldn't reject me. My heart skipped a beat, butterflies filled my stomach and I couldn't stop the biggest, goofiest grin that crept up on my face.

He fought me a little bit, but finally agreed to a compromise of a time to meet back here in the forest by the stone waterfall.

It had been a favorite place of mine for a few months now, but I only came here during the mornings because I knew the territory was unclaimed, it had the best game for hunting and I'm a total sucker for a beautiful view.

Much like the view of my breathtaking Alpha wolf.

Knowing that I met my Dylan here, the place would now have a permanent spot in my heart. It would forever be the place that I found the other half of my soul.

I can't wait until tomorrow morning.

9:30am.

The time that I would get to see my Dylan again.

The time that would be etched in my memory as the second best damn time in my existence. The first clearly being here right now at 10:37am when I met the one wolf that would quickly become my world.

He may be just one Wolf in this world, but he's the world to this one Leopard.

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