Mated to a Rogue

Chapter 5

-Dakota POV-

I swear I almost want to cry.

“That’s your name, right? Dakota?” He asks.

My lips quiver as I look back. I know I have a face that looks like I have seen a ghost. I somehow manage to nod.

He looks at me but there is no emotion behind his face. He keeps his serious composure.

He doesn’t say anything else and people start to pour through the hall so I quickly hide behind a group of people and bolt it out of there.

I immediately make it to my classroom and sit but unfortunately, I take this class with Aubrey—Austin’s sister— and though before I didn’t really care, now I feel weird. I look back and see her with her eyes already on me.

(What the hell is going on?)

She suddenly gets up and walks by me but heads out of the classroom and that’s when I see that Austin is there. She talks to him but then they look like they are having a small argument. He looks a bit agitated and she seems to be calming him down.

I quickly look away and focus on my book... or rather I act like I am focusing on my book because I just don’t want them to see that I am watching them.

(But really, what the hell is going on? A whole month has passed with neither of them noticing me and to be fair, I am sure Austin never even saw me. I am sure he didn’t even know I existed. And now all of a sudden, they both hover around me, stare at me and he even talked to me. What is this?)

I manage to get by in class but I was distracted the whole time. I was calmer the rest of the day because I didn’t see either of them anymore though that feeling I’ve been having of someone watching me kept creeping in.

The next day in the morning, I head to class and I am dreading it because it is the one I take with Lil and Aubrey is there too.

I walk in with the intent to quickly sit next to Lil who is always there before me but I abruptly stop in my tracks when I see not just Aubrey but Austin too. He sits next to Aubrey in the back. They both look at me and I finally react and bolt it over to Lil.

I give her a questionable look but she doesn’t understand. I point with my thumb towards Austin without him noticing... I hope.

She shrugs her shoulders and mouths out “I don’t know”

(Maybe he is just waiting with her.)

I decide to stop thinking about it but to say that I have an urge to look back is an understatement. The teacher arrives and is about to start the class but then he stops and looks at Austin.

“Austin, come see me after class. I’ll give you some notes so you can catch up on what we’ve been doing.”

My eyes widen.

“What the hell?” I whisper.

(He is in this class now? People can’t just change classes mid-semester... can they?... Oh lord.)

The teacher starts the class but I am completely out of it.

(Why am I so aware of him now? What is wrong with me?)

Class ends and after saying my goodbyes to Lil, I sprint it to my next class and this one is one of my major classes, ecology. It is a class that is specific to my major, so I feel like I am safe here. I sit and wait for the class to start but then my eyes widen.

*Dum dum DUM!*

That doom song plays in my head when on the door stands Austin. He gives a paper to the teacher and she tells him to come in.

(f**k me! Hallelujah Lord!... What the f**k is going on!!!)

To completely kill me, he sits next to me and I mean in the seat that is just right next to me. He takes a deep breath and his face turns to me.

I stop breathing and I feel so stupid because all I do is stare at the blanked whiteboard behind the teacher as if there was something important there.

“Hey Austin, what are you doing here? Did you change your major?” A girl asks.

If I remember correctly, her name is Melisa. She is one of the cheerleaders and she had a huge crush on my brother Phoenix when he played.

“Yea.” Austin says.

My body betrays me. I shiver when he talks and I hear his deep voice. This has never happened with anyone before and I am so confused. But it really shouldn’t. There is a perfectly logical explanation for it and it is that he is hot as hell. Dangerous looks good on him.

I ignore these feelings for the rest of the class. Not once was I really able to focus.

When it is finally time to leave, I quickly grab my things, ready to make a run for it.

“Can I talk to you for a second?” Austin’s voice comes even closer now.

I swear my eyes are going to end up popping out of my head for all the times my eyes had widened today. I slowly look behind me because I am thinking he is talking to someone else but I see no one.

“I am talking to you, Dakota.” He says looking serious.

I almost gasp but I don’t, I do scream inside though.

“W... why do you want to talk to me?” I softly ask.

I can see his jaw clenching; he tenses up and his eyes dart to my neck which I am confused about.

He takes a deep breath. “Never mind. That’s a bad idea.” He says. “...Not yet, anyway.” He mumbles.

My mind is going to explode with how confused I am today.

He takes his stuff and I watch him leave.

-Austin POV-

“You almost f****d it up, didn’t you?” Aubrey asks me.

I come out of the classroom and she is already there waiting for me.

“Why are you so damned invested in this?” I ask her, annoyed.

“I am trying to help you, but hey, if you don’t need me, then I am gone.” She says and starts to walk away.

“No, stop. You know I need your help.”

She looks back and smiles. “I know.”

She is the reason I didn’t pounce on Dakota that night at the party and marked her right there in front of everyone.

The moment I walked into that house, I caught her scent and I was in a trance. But the moment my eyes locked with her beautiful blue eyes, that’s when I knew she was mine, I wanted her. I wanted to take her right there. I knew I had to have her.

(She is mine.)

But Aubrey is right, she is human and this needs to be handled carefully.

“Do you still feel like you will lose control around her?” Aubrey asks.

“Yea. I was trying to talk to her just now but the moment she spoke, I had to hold my wolf back.” I say.

She gives a teasing smile. “Aww look at you, lovestruck. Who would have thought?”

“Don’t say s**t like that out loud Aubrey. People will think we are going soft.” I almost growl out.

She laughs and rolls her eyes.

“That reputation you have is the reason why your mate is scared of you, you know?”

I open my mouth to argue but I quickly close it because I am sure she is right. Dakota is terrified of me. It’s so obvious.

“Did you find anything else about her?” I ask.

“Nope. She doesn’t run with the popular crowd or any of the people I know. All we know is that she is human, drives a silver jeep, she is majoring in wildlife biology and she is friends with the werewolf pack pricks.”

I know a bit more than that like she goes to that one café every morning and always orders the same thing.

I stop now thinking of something and by the way, we’ve been following Dakota to her next class this whole time.

“Do you think she knows about her friends being werewolves?” I ask Aubrey, unable to take my eyes from Dakota.

“I am not sure. I don’t think so.” She says.

If she did, that would make things so much easier... or harder seeing as they hate our guts and we hate them.

“By the way, did you talk to mom?” I ask.

“No, she took double shifts today. We probably won't see her till night.”

“I don’t get why she keeps working. She doesn’t need to. We own the house and the property we live in and with what we make, it’s enough. She needs to take it easy.”

Aubrey and I are both tattoo artists. We work in my friend Mike’s tattoo shop but I used my vacation hours to try and figure out this whole thing with Dakota. It helps that Mike is a werewolf and understands all of this.

“Mom is just trying to distract herself. This is how she copes.” She says.

I lean on a wall watching Dakota go into her next class, which I don’t have with her. It’s not easy setting all this s**t up. I did what I could and though I didn’t want to, I had to change majors just so I could have classes with her.

“Mom is not well and has gotten worst this year.” I say.

“I know and she is going to keep getting worst. We just have to be happy for the time we’ve had with her.”

I nod knowing that it is true.

Werewolves that lose their mates end up mentally unstable at some point. She hung in there for us but I don’t think she can do it anymore.

“I have to work late today.” Aubrey says.

I nod. “Go, I’ll take care of mom tonight.”

She narrows her eyes at me as she starts to walk away. “Good, I mean, it’s your fault anyway. I have to take your clients now that you are on vacation.”

I roll my eyes. She is being so dramatic. We only work part-time anyways.

I cross my arms as I wait. I have no idea how to handle this. It seems like everything is stacked up against me.

Dakota is human, she is terrified of me and she is friends with a pack of werewolves. Werewolf packs and rogues automatically hate each other. They hate us because they think our kind just kills and destroys and we hate them for being so entitled.

I have always seen this as them being the rich entitled bastards and us being the poor criminals.

They are not wrong to hate rogues but not all rogues are like that. My mother was banished from her pack with my sister and me after my dad was killed by the Alpha because he felt threatened by my father... the Alpha was my uncle and my mother’s brother.

After that, my mother worked hard to provide for us within human society. Many rogues do that. It is the best way to survive. Hiding within humans. Living in the forest away from society and depriving that social need as other rogues do, makes them dangerous.

Mother built us a life here but it wasn’t easy for any of us. We are always looked down on by packs and we had to learn to defend ourselves. We had to learn to have thick skin, physically and emotionally.

Now it seems, I am going to have to learn to take those walls down a bit, for Dakota. This is going to be really hard.