I took her back to the house and she hid in her room. I didn't regret her—How could I?—but it would have been so much easier with a female who had been expecting to find me, a female who had not been pressed into hiding herself by her circumstances.

Since I was sixteen, I had looked for my mate in every pack we had contact with over the years, to no avail. If only I had known where she was, I would have saved her sooner. The image of rescuing her from her circumstances—even if I had too been a kid—when she had been abandoned ran through my mind. If only I could have known who she was then.

But the past was beyond my control. She was jumpy, and she was fighting what pulled between us, if she even felt it at all. Maybe she had wanted me to kiss her, but she was more certain she wanted to leave, and I didn't know how to convince her otherwise. Every time I tried to get closer, she shied away, leaving me with a wolf constantly pushing for control in my head. The one time I'd let him slip he'd terrified her, and I didn't want a repeat of that.

Still, she had seemed relaxed enough as I showed her around my territory. It was only once we were alone that she had become resistant again. My frustration ate at me. Nothing I did seemed to be right.

I would just have to keep her around other people until she let down her guard with them and hope that the mate bond would drag her towards me despite the contrary ideas in her mind. Anything other outcome was intolerable.

Since I needed something to do, I headed to my office where I found Oliver under the piles of paperwork that I had dumped on him. He had lost his goofy grin, and I smiled to annoy him as I entered. No matter that he was my beta, once in a while it was just satisfying to mess with my irritating younger brother.

"Have a good time?" he asked.

"Yes," I said shortly.

He switched to the mind link seamlessly as he did whenever he did not want to be overheard. "Did you get anywhere with her?"

"None of your business. Why are you so invested in my mate?"

"She's our future luna."

"That's my problem."

"That's all of our problem. What if she does still decide to leave? You'll—"

"I'll be fine. I've ruled for years without her and I'll manage fine after she's gone if it comes to that."

He frowned at me with concern. "You know it's not the same."

I really did not need to be reminded that everything I wanted could slip through my fingers. I already regretted the first hours after I found her and I feared that she would never be able to trust me, or anyone. Her life had been difficult and I had made it no easier. I blocked out the mind link so my brother would be forced to stop hounding me.

"So what's left to do?"

"Just this pile," he said. "And your advisors want a meeting tomorrow."

I could have groaned at the thought of dealing with their nonsense, but we needed to make a new plan to try to get Silvia and Arthur back, if the hunters hadn't already relocated them after the disaster of the last mission.

Still, I did not regret finding Amber. If I hadn't been there, that piece of shit would have killed her or done who knows what else to her. The thought brought a hot wave of renewed fury rushing through me and I calmed it with the memory of his blood staining the ground.

"I'll finish this up. You go on," I said. Maybe I could focus if I was alone, but then she wandered through my mind again. I was lost.

—————

I worked until supper, and I left my office to find that she was there at the dining table with the dozen or so others who usually ate around my table. She was withdrawn as ever, but her presence soothed me nonetheless. I wondered who I had to thank for her presence, perhaps my brother, perhaps one of the cooks.

I would already have announced her formally if she had been pleased to be my mate, but it seemed strange to do it if this situation were transitory. Surely half my pack had figured out the situation by now and had gossiped about it to the other half. I didn't mind, I was used to being the centre of conversation, but I didn't know how she would take the attention.

Again I noticed that she seemed to be relaxing in the group, or at least dropping some of her intentionally submissive mannerisms. She looked over at me and caught me watching her. I didn't look away since she already knew, and instead she blushed and dropped her gaze to her plate.

My wolf half had no patience for this. He wanted to simply hunt her down and have her be as much mine in truth as he knew her to be. I ignored my instincts and began to eat, while people around the table talked about the upcoming harvest festival.

One of my cousins, Sarah, met Amber's eyes. "You'll come to the festival, right?"

She looked like a deer in the headlights. "Sure."

"You'll love it," she told Amber and started babbling on about what usually happened. I was glad Sarah had brought it up because Amber would be there without any intervention from me. How would she react? Would it make her withdraw, or would the festivities help her relax? The image of dancing with her, and then more when we were alone ran through my mind, her straining under me as I—

"Are you going?" Oliver cut into my straying thoughts.

"Do I have a choice?" I asked nonchalantly, trying to hide my hope of an opportunity to get closer to my mate.

"Yes. Who's going to force you?"

"It's good for group cohesion," I recited the words of our father at my brother.

"I thought you'd like to go because she's going," he opined.

I ignored him and shut the link between us again.

—————

After supper I caught her alone in the hall. She stiffened in her unease and my frustration grew. I willed myself to patience, but it was difficult. If she had been a wolf raised amongst wolves the bond would not have been so unexpected to her.

We hadn't spoken since she had thrown my near miss back in my face, and if I had done it, it would have been inexcusable and unforgiveable, but I did not do it. Still, I didn't want to leave her alone. Deep down she surely wanted me, or would want me as much as I wanted her, and leaving her alone had not helped her to see it before.

I wanted to be near her, but then she gave me that look as if there was no one she would rather be near less than me and I faltered. I muttered some farewell and retreated to my office, deciding I might as well keep ahead of everything.

A while later, there was a knock on my door and with it came a jolt of irrational anticipation. "Come in," I said.

A feminine head poked in my door, but it was not Amber. I was only disappointed because of my irrational hope. Deep down I had known it would not be her.

"Megan, do you need something?"

She sashayed in and leaned against my desk, giving me a perfect view of her cleavage. "The question is, do you need something, Alpha?"

I smiled faintly at the familiar question. "Sorry, Megan."

She laughed at my refusal and took the seat across from me. "So, is she your mate, then?" she asked curiously, looking at me directly with those wide blue eyes.

"She is."

She did not seem upset in the slightest. "Not making much headway then?"

I laughed harshly at the question.

"Want me to help you with her?" she offered.

I considered. I'd probably be smartest to keep my previous indiscretion well away from my mate, but I actually trusted Megan beyond that. We'd been friends long before we'd been lovers. "What could you do?"

"I could tell her how good you are at—"

"No thanks." Imagining that conversation was enough to drive me to drink. There was probably a bottle of fairy juice—magically fortified liquor—around here somewhere.

She looked at me innocently while trying to hide her teasing smile. "How good you are at leading your people and defense and alpha stuff like that."

I chuckled in spite of myself. The girl was incorrigible. She was going to drive some poor wolf crazy some day.

"But seriously, Devon, I can try to help break her out of her shell. She doesn't need to know about anything in the past. It is in the past, right? Like, we don't need to talk about it or anything."

"Definitely."

"Then I'm only jealous that you've found your mate before me. I was hoping to find mine and leave you crying in the dust. Now you owe me."

"Oh? Do I?" I smiled at her declaration.

"Yeah. You need to let me go with you every time you leave the territory until I find him. You don't think I could be stuck with a hunter, too, do you?"

"Not likely."

She leaned back in her chair and tapped her chin thoughtfully. "I should start coming on missions, certainly."

"Start training then," I said and raised my eyebrow. Megan had many virtues, but deep dedication to training was not one of them. I wasn't complaining, since after all, it took many kinds of wolves to make a pack. Megan wasn't a fighter, but she was fast and good at what she did.

She groaned at the thought of more training. She was so predictable. "Maybe you could organize some interpack activities?"

"Why don't you organize some interpack activities? I have enough work to do already. Come up with a good idea and I'll approve it." She could handle it.

She smiled at me slyly. "I could try to include your mate in the planning."

"Don't push her."

"We're going to be great friends," she announced, but her words sounded unintentionally sinister to me.

"If you scare her away..."

She rolled her eyes at me. "You'll banish me, blah, blah, blah. If anyone's scaring her, it's you. I'm not the one who kidnapped her, kept her prisoner, and spends all his time around her growling."

"I wasn't going to leave my mate with the people who almost assaulted her, I've let her out of the house, and I don't just growl."

"Gold stars all around for you."

She was really pushing her luck. "Enough, Megan. I'll find some way to win her over."

"I'm going to help you."

"No thanks."

"Are you ordering me not to, Alpha?"

I groaned. "No. Just don't make things worse for me."

"Oh, I won't make things worse. And I'll be back with that interpack proposal soon."

I already regretted everything the conversation represented. Things were already bad enough between Amber and I and I couldn't afford for them to get worse. The only comfort I had was that Megan would never deliberately undermine me.