You Will Be Mine (New Horizon Book 3)

Chapter 8: Gabe

“Wait, so let me get this straight. Your wolf just up and takes over your body, and you, the future Alpha of this pack, are powerless to do anything about it?” Garrett voices his disbelief.

I’ve just told him about how I ended up spending my night trapped in my wolf’s body, snuggled up to my mate. Though admittedly, after it became apparent that she didn’t even mind, I stopped fighting him. I wanted to be there as much as he did.

“That’s pretty much the gist of it, yeah,” I confirm, reaching for the nearest thing on my desk that I can toss at his face, which turns out to be an eraser. “But you have to keep in mind that my experience with controlling a wolf is no better than a sixteen-year-old’s, except my wolf is as much Alpha as I am and he’s had all these years of training to become stronger than a new wolf. So, I’m basically getting a crash course in wolf management, and the odds are not in my favor.”

“Or Karma’s finally catching up to you.”

“Oh, come on. That’s not even fair,” I complain. “You know my reasons as well as I do, and you know what I’ve been through. Hell, even you would complain on the days when Simon would get unbearable because those were the days I was useless and couldn’t get anything done.”

“Sure, but I still feel like there had to be a better way. Maybe having a talk with him and working things out, letting him out at night before bed, or I don’t know, something other than taking every unmated female in the pack into your bed.”

“Okay, first off, I never took anyone to my bed. That’s a sacred space that only my mate will ever share with me.”

Garrett scoffs and rolls his eyes at that argument, which is no surprise. We’ve been through this countless times over the years. He’s my brother and my best friend, but that doesn’t mean we always see eye-to-eye. It doesn’t help that my bad habits have affected him so terribly, either, though that’s a matter I prefer not to bring up with him if I can avoid it.

“And secondly, I did try talking to my wolf countless times,” I continue arguing. “He would never listen. In fact, it only ever seemed to get him more worked up, not less. He hates me, I swear.”

“Did you ever try apologizing?” Garrett grumbles, rolling his eyes again. “I hate listening to you when you’re all ego too. If you never even acknowledged that you were wrong, then I can’t say I blame him.”

“I’m talking about on day one, from the very first moment he awakened, he hated me and wouldn’t listen. He was already pissed about that girl from camp, Britney or Bailey or whatever her name was.”

“You’re unbelievable. Listen to yourself, man. You gave it up to some girl who means so little to you that you can’t even remember her name, and you think you didn’t have anything to apologize for on day one?”

“Oh come on, like I’m the only guy who lost his virginity before coming of age?” I point out, not appreciating how hard he’s coming at me right now. It’s almost as bad as when we were teenagers. “Pretty much everyone does that. He can’t hold that against me, even though he tries.”

“Not everyone,” Garrett grumbles, and I can just sense what he’s about to say next. “Not me. I was only ever with Gabby, and that was because she was my fated mate. But of course, I had to find out that I wasn’t the only Bentley she had eyes on.”

And there it is. I suppose it was about time for us to hash this out again. It’s been a few years since the last round.

“I swear to you that when she came to me, she told me she hadn’t found her mate yet and was sick of waiting,” I tell him the same thing I’ve been telling him for eight years. “I didn’t know she was your mate, and I had no serious interest in her anyway. If I’d have known, if she had just been honest, I’d have turned her down and sent her back to you and that never would have happened.”

Gabby was my biggest mistake, the girl who taught me that people lie, and even when you’re up front about not wanting anything serious and a girl agrees to it, that’s never the end of the story. After her, I’ve never spent more than one night with anyone. Because of our ongoing casual relationship, she got it in her head that we had something worth rejecting my own brother for, though on the surface she acted like what she was doing with me was no big deal.

The part Garrett will never own up to is that he was wrong too. He could feel it when Gabby was with someone else, but he never said anything to anyone about it. He never confronted her, never confided in me, and never even told me that Gabby was supposed to be his. At least not until Gabby went to him with her decision and told him that she picked me. She wanted to be Luna, even though as my mother’s Beta’s eldest child, the Beta position was all but guaranteed to her.

Now you couldn’t pay me to pick her, not after she treated my brother like that and not after she tried to use me to improve her station in life. We grew up together, though she’s almost a year older than us and was a grade ahead in school, but I never even realized that such a witchy, manipulative person was hiding inside our good friend. Although it didn’t take long to figure out after the wool was finally removed from my eyes that she didn’t have many friends besides us, and most people didn’t like her. Now Garrett and I fall into that category too.

“I know, I know,” he waves me off dismissively. “It still sucks, but it’s not my point here. My point is you’ve wronged that wolf of yours most of all, and you’ve been too blind to see it. The relationship you have with him is as much your doing as his, if not more because you’re the dominant personality who controls the body most of the time. What he wants matters too, but you’ve never treated him like it does.”

I can feel how happy Simon is hearing Garrett chew me out like that, and I also know he agrees with him. He’s not commenting on it, surprisingly, but he is flooding my mind with his opinion. I’m the jerk, and my brother is the hero. I get it.

I am sorry, I tell Simon. The instant I met Jeannie, I regretted all of it, and I wish I had listened to you.

Oh wow, listen to this big bad Alpha coming to me with his tail between his legs talking about how sorry he is. Too little too late. You’ll have to do better than that.

You forget that I can sense how you really feel, and I know you’re enjoying this. I know that is you showboating, but deep down, you’re grateful that I finally acknowledge that I was wrong, and you were right.

Yeah, yeah. Keep telling yourself that. Just be sure to listen to me when Jeannie gets here. She doesn’t like the cocky Alpha you try to be. She likes me.

It stings, but I can’t argue with that. Talking to her this morning, I’ve never felt so inept at conversing with another person. She as much as told me she’s okay with Simon and not me. I suppose he’s right that I should be taking my lessons from him. And besides, I invited her here to ask questions about werewolves. I might need Mr. Expert in Advanced Werewolf Studies for any of her questions about how werewolves interact with humans.

And now that I think of it, I should probably give Garrett a heads up that I obligated him into helping me.

“Consider Simon sufficiently apologized to,” I inform my brother. “But he has his own ego he’s tripping over.”

“Of course he does. Duh, Alpha,” Garrett retorts, smirking at me. “But that’s good though. Seems like an important first step.”

“Yeah, I’m sure he intends to make me do a fair bit of groveling before this is over,” I remark, and then switch to giving him my best impression of a devious schemer to let him know I’m about to mess up his day.

“Uh oh, that look means I’m about to spend my afternoon doing something not on the schedule,” Garrett catches on, already sighing and rolling his eyes. “What is it? What task do you have for your errand boy, oh mighty Alpha?”

“I’m just being dramatic for no good reason,” I chuckle, amused by his own theatrics. “Although, I did invite Jeannie to drop in after lunch and promised her that we’d tell her all about werewolves and maybe even give her a tour.”

“Oh,” he sounds pleasantly surprised about that. “Well that actually sounds like a better way to spend the day than what’s on the schedule. Although, I do feel a need to point out that at some point, you’re going to need to start arranging things with the Elders so we can set things in motion to have you approved as Alpha now that you finally have your mate. Time’s a ticking.”

“I know,” I admit, already feeling my playful mood from before evaporating. “But I need to work on bonding with Jeannie, which is proving to be a bit of a challenge. She likes Simon, but I seem to make her uncomfortable.”

“Just drop all the unnecessary bullshit and be real with her,” my wise, slightly younger brother advises me. “She seems like a very genuine person, and she’s not impressed by all the flashy bits. Help her with her chickens or something, or maybe take her on a nature walk.”

Or a run, Simon chimes in.

“Just give her some opportunity to let her guard down a bit, and I bet she’ll start to feel the connection,” Garrett goes on. “She’s a sweet girl, and not like those other superficial women. You don’t need to try so hard.”

I hate to admit it, but they’re both right, and those are actually some good ideas. I felt like I did good inviting her here so I could show off my office and give her some sense of what a life with me could be like, but I suppose that’s just more of the showboating I was just accusing Simon of. I should have asked her to meet me outside somewhere.

But when I hear a soft knock on the door a few minutes later and smell her sweet scent invading the room from under the door, I know it’s too late to do much about it now. She’s already here.