The Alpha’s Pen Pal (Crescent Lake Book 1)

WESLEY

“Are you going to reject me?” I asked as I followed Nolan and Haven to the door.

“What?” Haven asked.

“Are you going to reject me as your mate?”

She stopped and looked at me, her eyes scanning my face, taking in whatever she saw there.

She swallowed. “I don’t know.”

Then she turned and walked out my front door, with Nolan right behind her.

I slammed the door shut and banged my fist against it twice before I leaned my forehead on the cool glass of the small window. I couldn’t even feel her anymore. She’d cut me off from her emotions without even knowing she was.

I had no one to blame but myself. I mean, sure, I could have blamed my dad, but when it came down to the bare bones of the issue, it was nobody’s fault but my own.

I turned and slumped down to the floor, my back against the door and my arms draped over my knees. I sat and sat, waiting to feel even the tiniest bit of something from her end of the bond, but there was nothing.

I already missed her. Missed her scent, her sassy attitude, and her smiling face. It had only been seven and a half minutes since Haven had walked out the front door, but as Maddie would say, it felt like it had been five-ever.

“You’re her gamma. You will call her by her title,” I mindlinked Nolan, reminding him to speak to her with respect and hoping maybe he’d give me at least a brief insight into what they were doing and how she was feeling.

Not that he would be disrespectful. I just wanted him to call her “Luna.” Because that’s what she was. My luna. Until she rejected me, I wanted everyone to call her luna.

“Please convince her to accept me,” I added.

He just snorted at me through the mindlink. “My luna is mad at you, so I’m mad at you. If you want to fix it, you need to fix it on your own.”

“Fuck you!” I exclaimed, hitting the door with the back of my head. Then I sighed. “Damn it, you’re right.”

And he was. Again. It was up to me to fix what I had broken. I had to grovel. Again.

But unlike the first time, I knew what I wanted to do.

“Reid, Maya,” I said, reaching out to both of them through the mindlink. “I need your help. Come to my house. Please.”

I closed the link and walked down the hall to throw a shirt on. Then I went into one of the two extra rooms in my house, the one I used as my home office.

I got straight to work dismantling the furniture and moving it into the other bedroom. That room was plenty big enough to hold the computer desk, rolling chair, and bookshelf I had set up for my “office.” I rarely used it anyway, and it would get more use with what I had planned.

“Knock knock!” Maya called out as the front door opened and shut.

“I’m down the hall!” I yelled back to her. “Is Reid with you?”

“Aye, aye, Alpha!” Reid said from the doorway, where he leaned against the frame. “What do you need? Are you moving?” he asked, looking at the furniture I had taken apart.

“Just moving this furniture into the other room,” I told him.

“What do you need us for?” Maya asked.

“I need the two of you to go to your apartment and get some things for Haven. Clothes, shoes, whatever else she might need or want.”

“No can do,” Maya said, shaking her head. “Your dad forbade non-ranked pack members from leaving the pack grounds while there are two very pissed-off lycans running around. He doesn’t want anyone leaving until they’re caught and brought in.”

“Or dead,” Reid added. “He said ‘until they’re apprehended or dead.’”

“Fuck,” I muttered, sitting back on my heels. “I’ve been so focused on Haven, I didn’t think about them both still being out there. Have you heard from Seb?”

“No, the last I saw him he was just leaving the grounds with Levi and a few other warriors,” Maya said.

“You?” I asked Reid.

“No, and I’m not looking forward to seeing him.”

“Why?”

“I owe him some money. I lost a bet,” he said, not meeting my eyes.

“You do realize he wins every bet he makes, right? He only bets when he knows he will win,” I pointed out. Reid shrugged. “Do I even want to know what the two of you bet on this time?” I sighed.

“It was an old bet. One of the first we made, actually,” Reid said, rubbing his neck, still avoiding my eyes.

I narrowed my eyes at him. “Really? So you were, what, twelve?” He nodded. “Tell me,” I commanded.

“We bet on whether you and Haven would be mates!” Reid rushed out, then covered his mouth with his hands, his eyes wide. “Damn it, Wes!” he mumbled from underneath his hands.

I threw my head back and laughed and heard Maya cracking up along with me. “And you bet against me?” I said, still chuckling.

“Dude, we were twelve! It didn’t seem possible at all. She was a human, from another state, and you were both so young! I never thought you’d meet your mate that young!”

I put my hands on my thighs and shook my head, still laughing at him. “Okay, well, Maya, can you at least tell Reid what he can grab from your place for her?”

“She has a bag of clothes and a few other things that she always keeps by the front door,” Maya muttered. “She never told me what it was for, but I assume it’s a habit from when she lived in foster care and had to be ready to move all the time.”

That comment put us all back into a more somber mood. To think even this many years later, she still kept a bag ready like that. I shook my head again and rubbed my face, hiding my watering eyes from my friends.

“I’ll go get it,” Reid said softly, then he pushed off of the doorway and left.

“And then… then Maya, I’ll give you my laptop and credit card, and you can order her whatever else she needs and have it shipped here,” I said to her.

“She’s going to hate that,” Maya laughed. “She hates when people buy her shit.”

“I’ve noticed.” I chuckled as I stood up and carried the desk pieces into the other bedroom.

“So, why are you moving this stuff to the other room?” she asked as she followed me.

“You’ll see,” I told her with a smile.

**********

I was fixing up the last bit of our dinner in the kitchen when Haven and Nolan walked back into the house. I took in several deep, slow, calming breaths as I waited for them to enter the kitchen, for her to see what I had prepared for us to eat.

I turned to look at her, her eyes traveling over the large pot of tomato soup and the fresh off-the-griddle grilled cheese sandwiches. My heart worked double time as I waited for her to react, to see I’d remembered her favorite food.

Her gaze finally met mine, her face blank and her voice void of emotion. “We had pizza.”

I clenched my fist around the spatula in my hand, glaring at Nolan as Haven looked down at her feet to kick her shoes off by the island. No, wait—Maddie’s shoes. Those were definitely Maddie’s shoes and Maddie’s clothes. And her curls were soft and wild, the way I preferred them, which meant she’d taken a shower.

“Well, I’ll see you later,” Nolan said, lifting his hand in a wave.

“Where are you going?” I asked, walking after him with the spatula still in my hand.

“Home. To be with Rachel. My wolf is calm now that he knows his luna is safe, and we’ve had some time to bond. And she’s with you, so there is no reason for me to be here.”

“But—”

“Put your big girl panties on and talk to your mate,” Nolan said through the mindlink. “I’m not going to hold your hand for this. No one is.”

I gulped, then nodded.

“Bye, Haven!”Nolan called. Then he left.

I frowned at his casual use of her name instead of her title. I had ordered him to call her luna instead of Haven. But I would have to deal with his ass later because I needed to finish groveling.

I walked back into the kitchen, where Haven sat on one of the barstools, staring over towards the window above the sink. I put the spatula in the sink, then picked up the plate of grilled cheese sandwiches.

My head pivoted between the food and Haven, who wasn’t even looking at me or paying attention to me. She was still blocking me from her emotions, too, although I was positive that was unintentional.

I walked to the trash can and dumped the sandwiches inside, then tossed the plate in the sink. My lycan whimpered at the loss of food and at how our plan was failing, but I wasn’t ready to give up.

Phase one was a bust, but I still had phase two. The part that would be the real winner. I hoped.

“What else did you and Nolan do besides eat pizza?” I asked as I leaned against the counter.

“We walked around. Talked. Talked a lot. He took me to the packhouse, and I took a shower,” she said, shrugging one shoulder.

“I noticed that,” I said with a soft, dry laugh through my nose. “Well, since you already ate, can I show you something?” I asked.

She glanced at me and shrugged again. “Sure,” she said as she stood from her barstool.

I tried to keep my giddy, eager smile off my face as I turned and led her down the hall to the newly remodeled room in my house. Our house. Or at least, I hoped it would be our house.

I opened the door and let her step inside first, watching her as she looked around the room. My stomach bubbled, and there was sweat on my palms as I waited for her reaction.

She was quiet as she walked around and examined everything. Her bare feet padded on the hardwood floor as she moved towards the line of narrow, hanging mirrors I had placed along the far wall. They stood one right next to the other, varying in height and width, but together resembling a full wall mirror. Almost.

The wall opposite that I had left empty. But on the wall opposite the window, I had hung framed photos of her dancing that Peter had emailed me, as well as framed copies of some of her letters to me. She ran her fingers over one, her head tilting to the side as she looked at it, a small frown on her face.

“How’d you get these? You gave them all to me a few weeks ago.”

“I made scans of all of them before I moved in here,” I admitted, rubbing my neck. “Just in case something ever happened to the house.”

She nodded but didn’t say anything else, just stayed silent as she continued to take in the room I had created for her.

“I’m going to put a barre in over there,” I said, gesturing at the wall opposite the mirrors. “And I ordered a nice speaker system for you. And I’ll put in a real wall mirror too. But that’s all I could do on short notice.” She nodded again. “It’s a dance studio,” I added. “For you.”

“I figured that out,” she said, glancing at me with a twitch of her lips. “It’s small,” she observed.

“Yeah, I know. Eventually, I want to build you a real studio, but I want you to design it and pick out everything so it can be exactly how you want it. Plus there wasn’t really enough time to build an entire building in one day. But I want you to have your own space here, somewhere you can practice ballet or whatever, so you can keep your position in the company for as long as you want. I won’t make you give that up, I—”

She pressed her lips together and looked at the floor, her eyes twinkling, and I groaned and cut myself off. Always with the fucking rambling around her. I didn’t even know if she knew I only did that when she was around.

“This works fine,” she muttered.

I breathed out a sigh and relaxed a little, stepping into the room with her.

“I know I dumped a lot of information on you this morning,” I said, putting my hands in my pockets.

“Yeah, it was kind of a lot,” she agreed, crossing her arms and lifting her head to look at me. “Nolan explained a bit more, too.”

I was getting more and more frustrated that I couldn’t feel her emotions or sense what she was thinking, and my lycan didn’t like it much either. He wanted to be connected to his mate, because the bond was one way we could protect her.

I clenched my fists in my pockets. “Well, did you have any more questions you wanted to ask me?”

“Just one right now,” she said, and I gestured at her to continue. “When is the next full moon?”

My stomach dropped. The only reason she would want to know that was if she planned on rejecting me. I swallowed to keep the growl or whimper—I’m honestly not sure which one was working its way up my chest—inside. “Next month,” I said.

She nodded. “Are there any special words I have to say?”

“You just say, ‘I, Haven Kenway, reject you, Wesley Stone, as my mate,’” I said quietly, not meeting her eyes.

“And what if I want to be your mate?”

I didn’t dare to look at her or even hope. “Same phrase, just ‘I accept you’ instead of ‘I reject you’. And it doesn’t have to be under the full moon. Only a rejection has to be done under the full moon,” I replied.

Every word felt heavy on my tongue as it left my mouth. I didn’t want her to reject me, but if I didn’t tell her how to do it, that would make me even more of an ass. And I deserved it. I deserved her rejection for not standing up to my dad when he ordered me to completely ignore her.

I heard her take a deep breath, and she came and stood in front of me. She held my face in her hands and lifted my chin so I looked her in the eyes.

There was a determined set to her jaw and a tiny sparkle in her eyes. “I, Haven Kenway, accept you, Wesley Stone, as my mate.”

I dropped my forehead to rest against hers as I took in a shaky breath, tears pooling in my eyes. My hands came out of my pockets and my arms wrapped around her, pulling her into me, clinging to her like I was a drowning man and she was a raft. Her arms came around my neck and I breathed in her scent, her scent that told me she was mine.

It was what I had hoped for. Her acceptance. But I had not expected it so soon. I had thought she’d make me work for it more, make me suffer, and beg on my knees for her acceptance. It was what I deserved, after all.

“I’m so sorry,” I murmured as I buried my face in her hair, my voice thick as my tears fell without restraint. “I’m sorry for everything. I wish there was a way I could take it all back. I was a big, ugly meanie, and I was stupid. So, so stupid.”

“Yes, you were,” she said.

I breathed out a weak laugh, relief flooding through me at her teasing. If she was teasing me, then she hadn’t been all that mad at me to begin with.

“But I’m sorry I made you think I would reject you,” she added.

“I would have deserved it if you did,” I admitted.

She shook her head. “No. You didn’t deserve that. After everything you’ve done for me? Even the things you did for me when you didn’t know if you would ever see me again? I could never reject you. There was no way I could have done that. The thought of it made me physically ill. I’m too—I’m too much in love with you. I can’t imagine my life without you.”

I wrapped my arms even tighter around her, a choked sob coming out of my chest and my hand gripping the hair at the back of her head as I clutched her to me. “I love you too, Sugar Plum.”

My body shook with my cries as we hugged in her little dance studio. Only with her would I allow myself to be vulnerable. Only she would ever get to see this side of me.

Her body melted into mine, fitting seamlessly against every hard line of me. She was a perfect fit with me, truly my other half. She was my everything, and I resolved myself to do everything I could to keep her.