Finally Her Turn

As the power of their new Alpha washes over the pack assembled before the sacred altar, the cheers are deafening. Owen winces from the force of it assaulting his ear drums, and turns to the side to see that his own mate is one of the Alpha’s loudest and most enthusiastic fans. “The role really suits him,” Anita comments excitedly, grasping his arm as if to try to force him to share her enthusiasm. “He’s practically glowing up there.” “He already has a mate, and so do you, so this girlish crush of yours is sadly misplaced,” Owen grumbles, the wolf within him as displeased as he is to see her still fawning over his cousin like this. Especially since she’s never looked at him that way or remarked about anything that suits him or makes him seem appealing in her eyes, not even when he spent an entire paycheck upgrading his wardrobe to imitate Kane’s style, or when he had his hair cut and styled the same way his cousin usually keeps his. There seems to be nothing at all that he can do to compete with the man she seems so unusually fond of, despite Kane never even turning his gaze in her direction or giving her the light of day. When Anita’s father announced that he had arranged a mate for her from the Bentley family tree, she actually let herself hope for a minute that he meant her mate was from the Bentley family, maybe not Kane or his older brother Max, but possibly their first cousin Emmett. But no, her father had gone shopping a little further away from the root than his announcement implied, choosing a descendant of Kane’s great-uncle, so distant from the man himself that her intended mate’s tendency to refer to him as a “cousin” is laughable. It was impossible for her to hide the disappointment she felt when she first met Owen Carter, whose last name isn’t even Bentley, and who she had no idea was even distantly related to the Alpha family. He may be descended from Alphas, but he’s much shorter and slighter in build than his “cousin.” His hair is ruddy and coarse instead of dark, glossy, and luxurious, and his default facial expression seems to be a scowl. The best way to describe him is rough around the edges, and not at all her type, but the agreement had already been made. And at the time, she didn’t have any better options. He may not have been as connected and influential as her father led her to believe, but at least he was strong and had a decent enough job. He was also eager to please, which she liked about him far better than she ever let on, and he provided a good life for her. It could have been worse. Though it was Owen who won the pleasure of taking home this beautiful mate with the long, silky brown hair and sapphire eyes, he never really felt like the winner of the invisible competition with his cousin. Anita never ceased to feel like someone well out of his league who he had no business even associating with, and his inability to win her attention has weighed heavier on him every day of the year he’s spent with her. Now that Kane is the pack’s Alpha, Owen knows there’s no chance of him ever winning her favor. He can already see the future before him – Anita, spending all her time at the packhouse cozying up to the new Luna and getting herself on the invitation list for every event she possibly can, just trying to win more glimpses of the man she wishes she could call mate. The one that she’s told Owen she can almost pretend he looks like if she squints and turns her head a certain way. “I think I’m going to skip out on the rest of the festivities,” Owen mutters, his signature scowl firmly in place. “Oh come on, you never want to have any fun,” Anita complains. “So what if your ‘cousin’ didn’t pick you for Delta? It wasn’t meant as a slight. He probably doesn’t even know you exist.” She laughs as if it is supposed to be a funny joke, but he isn’t amused. “Feel free to have enough fun for the both of us,” he mumbles, already turning and making his way through the crowd, leaving her behind to celebrate her beloved’s new job. But instead of spending the rest of the evening at home in bed as he planned, Owen has an urge to be adventurous and do something he rarely does. He goes out, not even bothering with the village near his home. No, it’s the human town that interests him tonight, a place not far from home where he can abandon all thoughts of Alphas and mates and anything werewolf for a little while. He finds a sign advertising a club that boasts live music acts on the weekends, and never having been to any sort of live musical performance before, it draws him in. Only minutes later, he finds himself face-to-face with a door bouncer who is large and intimidating enough to be an Alpha, but the smell of him is human. “There’s a five-dollar cover charge to get in, and I’ll need to see some identification,” the man tells him dryly, seeming to find him completely uninteresting as long as he can pay and prove that he’s of age. Luckily, he can and he is. Inside, he quickly realizes that the deafening roar of the crowd that gathered to watch Kane become the new Alpha can’t even compete with the sound of the club’s live music. But instead of being deterred, Owen draws in a deep breath and takes a moment to adapt to the noise. At least the smell in here is pleasant and not putrid with the bitter scent of humans the way he feared. Standing at the peripheral of the room, he decides the sound isn’t so bad either. The only problem is there are no drinks for wallflowers. And he’s going to need a drink or two before he’ll be inspired to go back home to Anita. Maybe seven or eight considering that it's probably human booze they're serving here. There’s a young woman tending the bar who smiles warmly at him as he approaches and slides into an available stool. She’s tall and strong-framed with auburn hair that she keeps pulled back in a long ponytail, and her pale skin almost looks like porcelain if not for the spattering of freckles over every inch of exposed skin. “What can I get you?” she asks cheerfully, locking eyes with him for a moment. He can hear how her breath catches the same as his, and the frenzied beat of her heart matches his own. Her eyes are green, and he knows the moment he looks into them that he has finally found his fated mate. That explains the pleasant scent of this place, strong enough to cover the smell of all the humans and the few other werewolves who have gathered inside the club. It’s her mate scent, the smell of vanilla and roasted nuts, delicious enough to eat. Except he isn’t free to have a taste, not if he wants to keep his job and the life he’s built back home. Anita might not be all he ever wanted in a mate, but at least she’s one of his own kind, and his connection to her has opened a lot of doors that would have otherwise remained closed to him. Can he give all that up for this pretty human standing before him? And would it even be worth it? He doesn’t even know this girl, but what he does know is that getting close to a human mate is a challenge. It’s a challenge that comes with no guarantees and might just leave him brokenhearted and mateless in the end. Humans are fickle creatures, usually best left rejected and forgotten. “I, uh, I’ll take a whiskey, neat,” he tells her less than gracefully, hoping she’ll just do her job and move on from him. “You got it,” she smiles, and it takes everything in him to fight back his wolf who wants nothing more than to claim her. Now. But once she brings him his drink, setting it on top of a napkin that features the club’s logo, his fate is sealed. She’s scribbled an address on that napkin, with a note telling him her shift ends in a little under an hour. It’s an invitation, and one he’s powerless to refuse. “I’ll just go there and tell her I’m married,” he tries to convince himself, but even his own wolf doesn’t believe him. “I’m going there to reject her, I promise you that,” he declares a bit more confidently. He can talk all the big talk he wants, but when he sees her disappear into the back and she doesn’t come back out to the bar, he knows the time has come. He follows her to the address, which turns out to be only a couple blocks away, and all that resolve evaporates as soon as he sees her standing in the doorway and smiling at him again. There’s a warmth to her that he never gets from Anita, and talking to her comes as easily as breathing. It doesn’t take long for them to end up in her bed together, and though he eventually comes to his senses and remembers that he has a mate waiting for him at home who probably knows exactly what he’s been doing because of their mate-link, it becomes exceedingly difficult for him to find the motivation to leave the human girl’s bed. Maureen, that’s her name. Maureen, his fated mate from the Moon Goddess. Against every bit of his better judgment, by the time morning rolls around, he’s already confessed to Maureen everything about his life – what he is, how he lives, and what she is to him. But to his dismay, she doesn’t seem to feel the same about him that he does about her. “Listen, I won’t tell anyone the stuff you told me, but I don’t want to be getting involved in all that,” Maureen admits uncertainly, not even meeting his eyes anymore. “But Maureen, you have to understand,” he pleads with her, begging with his own eyes for her to look at him. “I’m choosing you, and that’s a big deal. When I go home, I could lose everything because I decided to come meet you, and I’m fine with that if I get to keep you in the process. But if you’re rejecting me then –” “I am,” she cuts him off. “I am rejecting you. This was fun, and I like you, but this was never meant to be a forever thing. And all that you were saying … I mean, it’s too crazy for me to even deal with. You have to understand that I have a whole life going on too, and I’m not giving it up for some guy I met last night.” Both he and his wolf are devastated to hear that, but surprisingly, he doesn’t feel what he knows he’s supposed to after a rejection. There’s no lightning bolt of pain ripping his body apart, no sickness in his belly, nothing. It must be because he already has Anita. Anita. He realizes in horror that he still has to go home and face her, and it can’t be put off any longer. His human mate doesn’t seem to want him to stick around any longer anyway. Back home, Anita didn’t sleep a wink herself. It worried her when he didn’t come home by a reasonable hour, and eventually she discovered why. When the pain hit her in the gut and reverberated through her chest, coming and going in waves for hours after, she knew what had happened. She had selfishly driven her mate into the arms of another woman. She knew that her fascination with Alpha Kane bothered him, but she never relented with it. It was a game to her, to see how far she could push him, how much she could gain as he showered her with gifts trying to win her affection, and secretly, she hoped that she could inspire the Alpha in him to become jealous and claim her in a passionate frenzy. But that’s not Owen, and it was never fair of her to treat him that way and try to shape him into someone from her girlish fantasies. She recognizes that now that she’s terrified she might be losing him. Silently praying to the Moon Goddess with every hour that passes, whispering promises to treat him better if she’d only send him back to her, she starts making good on those promises almost the instant her mate’s car pulls in the driveway. Much to Owen’s surprise, it is Anita’s grateful, relieved arms he eventually comes home to, and it almost makes up for the fact that his long-awaited fated mate rejected him after only a night. “I’m so sorry,” she repents tearfully, lunging for him as soon as the door is open. “What?” he wonders, confused, knowing that he’s the one who should be apologizing. “I know you only did it because I haven’t been good to you,” she explains, burying her face against his chest to hide her shame. “I’m the one who should apologize,” he insists, pulling her far enough away from him so he can look her in the eyes. “There’s no excuse for what I did, and I am sorry. But you should know that I only did it because she was my fated mate. I tried to convince myself to just reject her, but one thing led to another and before I knew it, it was too late. But you should also know that she’s no threat to our relationship. She’s already in the past.” His confession feels like a punch to Anita’s gut in ways she can’t even fully explain. It hurts to hear him confess to being unfaithful, but it somehow hurts even more to learn that he had to reject his fated mate to be able to come home to her, the person who may not even deserve it. She resolves right then to start being someone who does deserve him, and who he can be happy and even proud to come home to. Someone who is worth rejecting a fated mate for. And for a while, their guilt and their resolution to make it work carries them forward. They’re happier together than they’ve ever been, but below the surface, the resentment is building on both sides. Once the fear of losing her mate fades away, it finally sinks in for Anita that he spent the night with another woman. Fated mate or not, that’s still cheating. It’s still unfaithfulness, when he promised to always be faithful to her and no one else. She realizes she should never have let him off the hook so easily. And once the grief over his rejection fades, Owen realizes something too. He never would have rushed his confession with Maureen if he didn’t feel like there was a timer on their relationship. He knew that they may only get the one night together, and he had to make it count. He comes to blame Anita for his loss, though it’s something he tries to push aside knowing that it’s not entirely her fault. Their fragile reconciliation holds together fairly well until the day months later when a tall, auburn-haired, heavily pregnant human woman shows up on their doorstep, and Anita answers the door. “Yes?” she says impatiently, already hating this woman on sight. She’s too pretty for her liking. “Your uh … well, okay,” the woman begins awkwardly. “So those guys over there let me come over here, but they’re only giving me five minutes. I need to speak with Owen, and quickly.” Anita looks and sees that the woman is pointing to a couple of the on-duty guards, who are standing off to the side observing the human woman. Whatever is going on, she’s getting an increasingly bad feeling about it, especially since it involves Owen and this sickeningly beautiful woman. “He’s not here,” she answers dryly, trying not to sound as hostile as she’s feeling. “I’m right here,” Owen contradicts her, suddenly appearing at the door. “Oh, Maureen. What are you doing here? And you’re … oh.” The fact that he knows the woman by name, and the sound of whatever else he knows but isn’t saying has Anita’s heart sinking and stomach flip-flopping. This is bad. She already knows it. “Yeah,” Maureen answers him. “Can we go somewhere and talk?” “No you may not,” Anita cuts in sharply. “Whatever it is you have to say, spit it out right here.” She doesn’t trust Owen to tell her whatever it is that’s brought the woman to their doorstep, and she can’t bear the idea of waiting even a minute longer to find out. “Alright, fine,” Maureen answers icily. “I’ve been looking for you for months because, well, this,” she gestures to her swollen belly, “is as much your doing as mine, and I thought you should know. I also thought you should know that because of you, the mother of your child is out of a job and a place to stay, and feeding this creature you put inside me is getting to be too much for me. So, if you intend to keep her, then you’d better start contributing. Otherwise, I’m handing her over to the state the instant she’s out.” “You’re his fated mate?” Anita questions in disbelief, not even considering any other part of the news that Maureen just dropped yet. “A human? How did you forget to mention that, Owen? And how did you forget to mention that the girl knew where we lived and could drop by any old time she pleased?” “You must have missed the part where I said it took me months to find him,” Maureen retorts, glaring at Anita. “Miss, your time is up,” one of the guards steps forward and cuts in. “We need to escort you off the property now.” “No, I want her to stay,” Owen speaks up. “She’s carrying my child, and I need more time to speak with her.” “Then we’ll have to inform the Alpha,” the guard insists. And from there, Owen’s life as he knew it becomes unrecognizable. Anita rejects him and moves out, eventually leaving the pack entirely. Maureen moves in with him, and for the just under a month that it lasts, it’s wonderful. But when labor finally comes, she meets him outside with her packed suitcase, the same one she brought when she first moved in with him. “I want to go to the human hospital,” she demands, not wanting to take the risk that accepting the werewolf medical services she’s been offered might interfere with her plan to leave. “That seems like a heavy overnight bag,” he comments nervously as he helps her into the car and loads her suitcase in the back. “Well, that’s because it’s more than an overnight bag. I’m not coming back, Owen. I already told you I don’t want anything to do with this werewolf stuff, and I don’t want the creature in my belly. She’s all yours, and I’m gone as soon as she’s out.” Something in him had let him hope that after spending so much time together, she might have changed her mind. But it appears she didn’t, and he also learns that rejection hurts a lot more the second time around without his mate bond with Anita to protect him from it. Or maybe it’s that the Moon Goddess didn’t accept Maureen’s first rejection because she didn’t really know what she was refusing then. Now she does, and now it counts. The baby is a girl as promised, and Maureen confesses that she had already decided on a name before she found out the baby was a werewolf pup and decided she didn’t want her. Marissa Lynn, that’s what she planned to name her. Owen decides to stick with it, hoping that when the girl is older, she’ll come to appreciate that her mother at least contributed that much. But as the girl gets a little older, he comes to regret keeping her. Marissa looks so much like her mother that it hurts, right down to the auburn hair and green eyes. Every word she says, every smile she gives him, it all reminds him of the mates he lost. He eventually comes to blame his own daughter for the mistakes he’s made, and as his fondness for alcohol begins to consume him, it gets increasingly difficult to separate his daughter from her mother in his mind. Some nights when he’s had far too much to drink, he can’t fight the urge to punish the little girl who looks too much like her mother for her own good, some twisted part inside of him taking secret pleasure in the pain he can see on her face. Her mother’s face. It’s as if by punishing their daughter, he’s also punishing Maureen for the way she’s made him suffer. And in the mornings, when he’s forced to face what he’s done, it breaks his heart. He hates the monster he’s become, and there’s no more harrowing journey than the one he’s forced to make down the fourteen steps that lead to the basement, where he’s left his daughter in a fractured heap. “Someday, you’ll find your way out of this place,” he promises her one morning, gently lifting her tiny, crumpled body into his arms and carrying her back upstairs. He takes her to the bathtub hoping she can just wash away the terrifying night she must have spent huddled on the cold floor all alone in the dark, but knowing there's no remedy for such betrayal by her own father, the one she's supposed to be able to depend on to care for her. “But then you’ll be alone,” she says, reminding him of what an innocent and loving heart she has, despite all he’s done to no longer deserve that love. “Promise me that when that day comes, you won’t hesitate to just go and forget all about me,” he insists, provoking more argument from the little girl who still loves her father, even if she hates the monster inside him. “Promise me,” he insists more firmly, until finally she does.