Mate: A Dark Wolf Shifter Romance, page 1
MATE
SARA FIELDS
KOREY MAE JOHNSON
CONTENTS
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Chapter 29
Chapter 30
Chapter 31
Chapter 32
Chapter 33
Chapter 34
Epilogue
Afterword
About Sara Fields
About Korey Mae Johnson
Books of the Dragonborne Kings Series
Books of the Alpha Brotherhood Series
Books of the Omegaborn Trilogy
Books of the Wolf Kings Series
Books of the Vakarran Captives Series
Sci-Fi and Paranormal Romances by Sara Fields
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Books of the Kept as His Series
Mafia and Billionaire Romances by Sara Fields
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More Stormy Night Books by Sara Fields
Mafia and Billionaire Romances by Korey Mae Johnson
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Copyright © 2024 by Stormy Night Publications and Sara Fields and Korey Mae Johnson
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher.
Published by Stormy Night Publications and Design, LLC.
www.StormyNightPublications.com
Fields, Sara and Johnson, Korey Mae
Mate
Cover Design by Korey Mae Johnson
This book is intended for adults only. Spanking and other sexual activities represented in this book are fantasies only, intended for adults.
CHAPTER 1
Caelum
“What’s got you in a mood?” I asked my second-hand, Ryker, who stood in front of my window, looking out at the university and glaring at it. A sour expression had been quietly fixed on his face for about five minutes, and now he was beginning to pace.
“I’m not in a mood,” he finally denied, loosening his tie like it was choking him to death. “I met with The Politician.”
I groaned. I’d never met her, but The Politician had been a pain in the ass from day one. For some reason, the tuition board had given the brat a full scholarship. The worst part was that it was only October, and she was only a sophomore. That meant that there was the better part of three years still to go.
“You’re really bad at intimidating her for some reason,” I told him, grinning. Every time he had a meeting with The Politician, his whole week went into the toilet. She was one of those people that should be in Harvard grabbing a law degree, with the rest of her ilk. Instead, she was wasting her time arguing for funds to cover extra vending machines in the student lounge.
It had started with the French Club, but now half of the clubs were asking her to be the president just so they didn’t have to deal with Ryker or any of the paperwork. She was frighteningly good at paperwork. And loopholes. And she had a talent for handling Ry, who was normally the person the university, and mostly me, sent down to say no to people. Normally they would take no with grace. Or they’d piss themselves. One of the two.
“Oh, I didn’t tell you,” Ry grumbled, pulling a cigar out of his pocket and biting down on it. “Her brother’s in an MC. So, she’s used to feeling intimidated and pushing right on through.” He huffed as he lit the end and pushed out a plume of smoke. “I could put her across my knee. I’d love to. Just say the word, boss, and I’ll put her in her place.”
I snorted. This was something that we joked about all the time, because back in our separate packs that wasn’t unheard of. Females normally toed the line around males. They were more submissive. And when they weren’t, their mates or family were expected to control them.
Not in the human world. Nope, human society was a magical place. A wild west without rules. Everybody just said and did whatever the fuck they wanted. “What did she get you to agree to?”
He shrugged. “Too much. But she’s threatening to appeal to the boosters to build a new student building with the funds earmarked for the new law building.”
“Making money with a university is hard,” I replied with a weary groan, trying not to get stressed by Ry’s concession. It wasn’t a bad idea. We needed more areas for groups to study and host events. But we also had to get the best teachers in the school, and that meant earmarking our funds for that, rather than making the current students happy. And honestly, it was easier without students like The Politician that saw the problem and saw their legacies in being a pain in my ass. “I feel like the bad guy in Animal House,” I groaned.
“You’re not. I’m the bad guy in Animal House,” Ryker said, being the provost. He stretched his neck to the right and then the left, obviously trying to release some tension in his shoulders. “In fact, I’m the bad guy in almost every movie about colleges,” he reminded me. “How did I let you talk me into this shit gig?”
“You’re an asshole, so you were made for it,” I teased, but I could tell he wasn’t in the mood to assure me that he was a badass. He wasn’t feeling intimidated by her for the most part. That particular student just made him feel like he’d been castrated. “Do you want to send her up to me? I can play hardball.”
“Nah. I just feel unsettled because she makes my dick feel hard and useless. I keep forgetting she’s kinda cute. Besides, damage is done. Next time I’ll just get my head more in the game.”
“So sure there’s gonna be a next time?” I asked.
“Yeah, she’s not just head of the Student Union and the Student Council this year. She’s head of three different clubs. Which isn’t weird when you look at her high school resume. It was the same fucking thing. And normally that makes a type—you know, sort of focused, strait-laced, tennis bracelet, that sort of thing—but that’s not her. She is way too fucking relaxed. Being in charge is fucking easy for her, and everybody knows it, that’s why they make her the head of everything.” He turned his head and grinned at me. “She’d drive you fucking nuts. She doesn’t respond to positive reinforcement and she’s impossible to intimidate. And she’s hot, so then you’ve got a hard dick the whole time and you’re trying not to do anything creepy.”
“So she’s a living nightmare.” I grin in a consoling sort of way. “Look, I got a date tonight—”
“As do I. I need it, too. My brain needs to be liquified a bit,” he grumbled.
“But tomorrow let’s let our wolves out. It’ll be good for you, loosen you up. A bunch of the gang are going—blood moon tomorrow.”
He put down the cigar to grin a toothy grin. “Blood fucking moon,” he said as if that was exactly what he needed.
It was true for me, too. A run on a full moon felt good to any wolf, but on blood moons we got a little wild—in a good way. If our wolves were at peace at the end of the night, we’d wake up feeling relaxed as hell. After starting the new school year, I needed it.
“What the fuck socks are you wearing right now?” he groaned as he watched me cross my legs one over the other.
I looked at them, but I didn’t have to. I was very deliberate with my socks. “They’re pumpkins. It’s October.”
He leaned closer. “Are they being chased by wolves?” He looked up at me and raised an eyebrow. “You dating a chick tonight?” He never appreciated my socks. He came from a pack where personality and individuality were not appreciated, and there was still a lot of that baked into Ry.
I flipped him off. “You’re just jealous,” I said, grinning and lighting my cigar. “Believe it or not, you’ll be feeling like your normal asshole self by Sunday.”
He shrugged, conceding it. He didn’t have to be facing down girls who were particularly good at jumping through loopholes to be on edge by Friday night. Ry wasn’t like me; he wasn’t drawn to human culture because of human knowledge and human history.
Instead, he’d gotten into human music. That was his whole downfall. For years he’d hidden his fascination with pop culture and only listened to music on his headphones and learned to play drums to partake in pack ceremonies. And then he left his pack to try out for a band, his pack found out about it, the dream didn’t pan out, he was excommunicated from his pack, and before you knew it, he was a huge, trained wolf without a pack or an ass to kick. That was when I was able to pick him up and persuaded him to be my beta.
We were quite the odd couple at first, but n
My wolf and my human self were perfectly at odds, and always had been. Never been a problem for me. Life was exactly how I wanted it to be. Wolf on the weekends. Bachelor on the weekdays. A badass human with power and a whole university of sycophants. What could fucking be better than this?
CHAPTER 2
Kaci
“Pretty spooky night,” I mentioned to my little sister, Macy, who was nominally staying in my dorm with me for the weekend. Our folks were out of town, and despite the fact that my sister was obsessed with everything scary, supernatural, paranormal, and witchy, she was also still scared of being alone at home, especially in the dark.
“Super spooky,” she agreed, coming around behind me to stare out the window. It was early October, but there was definitely a chill in the air already as autumn began to sink in. “Actually, I swear I heard wolves a bit ago.”
“Probably coyotes,” I grunted. It wasn’t as if I didn’t believe in wolves. It was a small college town, and people would sometimes say they saw huge wolves around here, but there was also a ton of drugs going around, so I was suspicious and more predisposed to think that they were the same animal that seemed to go out of its way to attempt to get hit by my car every night.
“It’s not coyotes. Coyotes sound different,” my sister said like she was some sort of weathered canine expert.
Well, whatever she heard earlier, we sure as shit couldn’t hear now. There was a party going on.
We had already hit up the kegger that the guys below me were in the middle of throwing. I had glad-handed everybody in there until I was certain that I knew everyone there, that everyone had been introduced to my sister, and that I was cool enough to get invited. And then we came back to my room and tried to ignore the sounds of the party.
We were still ignoring the noise. What we were staring at now was the moon.
The moon looked like it had been painted in the sky by a first grader who didn’t understand proportionality yet. It hung up in the sky like a big, red grapefruit.
“Blood moon,” my sister explained, then squealed with excitement. “This is gonna be epic.”
I grunted when I heard someone downstairs throwing up off of the balcony with a dramatic gagging noise. “Yeah,” I agreed skeptically. “Epic.”
Macy wanted to do a spell she’d found in a book she’d bought from Little Mama’s, which was a witchy boutique store nearby. I think Macy liked that book because it had missing pages and was so dusty that I felt like I needed to shower promptly after handling it. It looked like a prop made for a fantasy movie. To her, the creepiness made it feel legitimate. To me, it promised a dust mite infestation in my dorm.
I could never say no to her, though… Actually, I said no all the time, but I didn’t think she was capable of hearing it. Despite it being so easy to get my peers to do whatever I wanted, it never worked on her. Although she was more than a little bit on the cooky side, she had a strange ability to force her optimism through to reality.
“Get me that amulet you got today. It says you need one,” she told me as she found the page in her book she was looking for.
I raised my eyebrow. “Amulet?” I cocked my head to the left and looked at her distantly, trying to translate her crazy. “Oh, you mean the necklace I bought today?”
“It’s an amulet,” my sister informed me with a certainty I wished I had when I was doing something as simple as ordering a coffee at Starbucks.
I snorted. “It’s a necklace,” I assured her. It was a cool necklace. I’d give her that—it was going to look really good with the black halter-top I’d ordered on Amazon. It was really a circle-like shape that hung from a long chain that ended right above my navel. Still, I wouldn’t have bought it if it hadn’t matched my shoes so well (I liked to match accessories). But the guy who I bought it from had been a rando with a bad vibe.
I squinted, thinking about the guy and how I was inwardly describing him. I didn’t believe in vibes, or auras, or feelings. And the man hadn’t had anything really wrong with him except maybe he was a little big and had a five o’clock shadow and a cocky expression. He’d wanted me to have the necklace because he said he’d been watching me and my sister and that it would suit me better than it had his ex-girlfriend.
Okay, maybe he’d just been creepy because he said he was watching us… It wasn’t like I didn’t like being watched. I was always strangely popular, but most people didn’t tell me that they were watching me.
Besides, when I was with my sister, looking was off-limits. She didn’t like attention, and I didn’t like her getting attention, either.
“I need it to cast this love spell that’s been dog-eared in here. Looks perfect for tonight, anyway. I thought you came here for the good-looking guys!” she lectured me from the floor, as if not finding a boyfriend by now was some sort of personal failing on my part, something that I must have gone out of my way to not achieve.
“I have two things so say to that,” I said, wagging my finger at her. “Firstly—no. I did not come here for the boys; I came here for the full-ride. Secondly, that’s not even the rumor. This place is not known for hot male students.”
She raised her eyebrows, looking like she was about to argue me on that.
“It’s known for its hot male teachers,” I clarified. “And that much is true—they do cause a lot of thirst. That being said, they ain’t settling down with anyone, and they don’t date anyone but grad students. There’re a lot of girls on this very floor that feel that they’ve been catfished into coming here. What good is a sexy man if you can’t climb him like a tree?” I winked at her since she was giggling now.
Although, that’s how I felt. The provost of the university, for example, was huge—huge—and sexy as fuck, but I knew for a fact that he didn’t take out undergrads, so I was forced to read his tension as asshole-tension and not sexual-tension like my pussy wanted to interpret it as. So, I easily switched tactics and treated him like he was an idiot, which made him disgruntled and then made him make mistakes in his argument. Now the student union was getting a lot of events paid for outside of our budget.
“The teachers are hot, though?” she asked, as if this was very important to clarify as crisply as possible.
“Well, sorta,” I wobbled my hand back and forth in the air. “I’d say there’s over a dozen teachers and staff and whatever that are quite above average. Hell, even the president here is a fox.” I threw up my hands, “But those don’t matter—they’re just out there to tease us with their hotness. The guys that study here? We’re looking at the national average, Mace. It’s gonna take a bit to dig through the weeds.”
“Well, this spell says it will help with the weed digging! Help you get a good one!” she claimed optimistically as she watched me go through my purse, where I had dropped the necklace. “How slow are you moving right now?” Macy groaned as I looked through my purse for the amulet. “I want to do this, and then you can take me out to get an ice-cream before the coffee shop closes.”
“Or we can not do spells like we’re twelve,” I suggested, “and go eat ice-cream now.”
“No, it talks about doing it while the moon is full and just past the horizon. Have to do it now, or else it won’t work,” my sister chirped, letting my skepticism slide off of her like water off a duck’s back.
I squinted, but I wasn’t going to explain the obvious: it wasn’t going to work anyway.
Macy was one of those people who bought lottery tickets and didn’t hope they were going to win, but decided they were going to win against all odds. I wasn’t a big prayer, but one thing I did pray for was Macy to find a boy eventually that would keep her from making stupid choices somehow.
Maybe that was hypercritical, since my mother always thought I was the weird one in the family likely to make bad choices, but Mom didn’t know Macy like I did. I really thought she was worse… After all, I’d at least gotten myself to college, and I was doing okay here. I was surpassing my whole family’s expectations for being the family loser. They’d definitely expected me to be knocked up by sixteen, which was hilarious because I’d only lost my virginity at the end of high school. I just liked to show my belly button; it wasn’t a crime.
