To Save A Mate

The library emptied slowly that night, like it always did during midterm week, one exhausted student at a time until only the diehards and the desperate remained. I fell somewhere between the two. My finance textbook sat open to a chapter on capital structure. I'd read through it three times without retaining a single formula, because my mind kept drifting to the number circling like a countdown in my head.

Fourteen days.

Fourteen days until I turned twenty-one.

Fourteen days until my wolf, sleeping inside, finally wakes up. 

Fourteen days until my claim on Marcus Rogers becomes permanent and unbreakable. 

I closed my textbook and rubbed my eyes, the fluorescent lights buzzing faintly overhead, and imagined it for the hundredth time that week. A wolf inside me, waiting. A bond locking into place. A life where someone would look at me and decide I was worth keeping.

I packed my bag and stepped out into the cool dark of the quad. The campus at this hour was silent, with long shadows stretching between buildings. Only the smell of cut grass and potential rain hung in the air. I pulled my sweater tight and started for the southern gates, my thoughts still tangled somewhere between amortization schedules and the countdown I couldn't forget.

I saw Marcus when I reached the gates, leaning against the stone pillar with his arms crossed over his chest. His storm-grey eyes found mine before I'd even cleared the last row of hedges. He always found me; watched me anytime I was near; tracking my location without thought. He was six and a half feet of muscle wrapped in a plain black jacket, raven hair a little wind-tossed, with that steady, unshakable calm that settled over me every time I got close. 

"Long night?" he asked, pushing off the pillar to meet me halfway.

"Long week." I let my bag slide off my shoulder into his waiting hand. He always did that, quiet and automatic, like carrying my weight was simply part of his life. "I think I've read the same paragraph about debt covenants six times and none of it stuck."

"You'll ace it," he said, falling into step beside me. "You always do."

"You have a lot of faith in me for someone who's never taken a finance class in his life."

"I have a lot of faith in you, period." He said simply. It was just a fact to him, the same way the sky was dark and the grass was cold under our feet. I felt my chest go warm. Everything about him made me swoon, no matter how many months we had been together.

We walked the long way toward his apartment, past the dim windows of the engineering building and the empty basketball courts, our conversation drifting between us, easy and unhurried. He asked about my exams. I asked about the patrol schedule he'd been running with Jeremy along the northern perimeter. He told me more than he probably should have since we weren't mated yet. He always told me everything when it was just the two of us. We had no secrets, even pack business. 

"Fourteen days," I said eventually, because the number was still sitting on my mind. "You're not sick of hearing me say it yet?"

"Never." He glanced down at me, and something in his expression shifted, softened. "I've been waiting a lot longer than fourteen days, Andy. I can survive fourteen more."

"What if it doesn't feel the way you think it will?" The words slipped out before I could stop them, the old anxious knot in my stomach pulling tight. "What if the bond wakes up and it's not what either of us expects?"

Marcus stopped walking. He turned to face me fully, and the streetlight above caught the hard line of his jaw. "Then we figure it out together. But it will feel right, because you're mine. You've been mine since before either of us knew." He reached out and tucked a strand of hair behind my ear, his fingers lingering against my cheek. "Nobody is going to take that from us. Not fate, not fourteen days, not anything."

I believed him. I always believed him. Even when the small, scared part of me that had grown up in a house full of cruelty whispered that good things didn't last, that someone would find a way to snatch this from me too. But Marcus had a way of quieting that voice just by being present. 

His apartment was warm when we got inside. It always felt like home. He locked the door behind us and set my bag down by the couch. For a while we didn't say anything, just existed in the same space, his arm on my shoulder, my head resting on his chest. Eventually he led me back toward the bedroom, and the quiet between us changed. The intensity had been building for weeks with every glance and every touch.

He kissed me slowly, like he had all the time in the world, one hand cradling the back of my head, the other pressed flat against my lower back. "Once the bond locks," he murmured against my mouth, "nobody will ever make you feel small again. I swear it on everything I am."

I believed that too, with his heartbeat thudding steadily under my palm and his mouth soft against mine. We fell into each other slow and unhurried, the kind of closeness that asked nothing and gave everything. For a little while the countdown in my head went quiet. There was only him, the warmth of his skin and the low sound of his voice in my ear. A quiet I'd only felt with him. A safety, I'd convinced myself I didn't deserve. 

Afterward, tangled together under the sheets, his arm heavy across my waist, his breathing steady against my neck. I drifted into sleep, deep and dreamless, the kind I rarely managed without him near. 

Something woke me, a dark feeling in my chest, sharp and wrong. Then the phone on the nightstand started screaming. Marcus jumped up and reached for his cell before the second ring finished, his body rigid in a way I'd only seen during training drills. I sat up, heart hammering, the sheet clutched against my chest. I felt that lurch again, low and sick in my stomach, everything inside me stilling with dread.

"Say that again," Marcus said into the phone, his voice flat and hard in a way that made my skin prickle. A pause. His jaw worked. "Where?"

I couldn't hear the voice on the other end, only the tone, clipped and urgent. I watched Marcus's face shift from expectant to something carved from stone. Intensity and wariness poured off him. He was already pulling on his jeans with the phone wedged against his shoulder, movements sharp and economical, none of the easy warmth from an hour before visible. 

"Marcus." My voice came out thin. "What happened?"

He lowered the phone for just a moment, his grey eyes finding mine across the dim room. For the first time since I'd known him, I saw real fear in him. "My parents were attacked on the northern boundary, near the tree line." His voice was steady, but his hands fumbled the buttons of his shirt. "They're taking them to the pack hospital now."

The room tilted. Alpha Mark and Luna Sera had folded me into their home when my own turned cruel and dangerous. For them to be attacked on pack land, which was supposed to be the safest ground in the territory. My stomach dropped through the floor.

"I'm coming with you," I said, already reaching for my clothes.

"No." The word came out sharper than I'd ever heard from him. I flinched, and he seemed to catch himself, crossing the room in two strides to grip my shoulders gently. "Andy, I need you safe. I don't know what this is yet, and until I do, I need to know exactly where you are." He pressed his forehead to mine, breathing hard. "Austin's on his way. He'll stay with you until I know more."

"Marcus—"

"Please." His thumb brushed my jaw, quick and desperate. "Fourteen days. I need those fourteen days to happen. Stay here. Stay safe."

I nodded because there was nothing else I could do in that moment. He kissed me hard before he left, the apartment door slamming behind him, footsteps pounding down the stairs outside. I sat on the edge of the bed in the sudden silence, my whole body shaking, that lurch in my chest throbbing like a bruise. 

Something had awakened inside me tonight. I could feel it, faint and half-formed, curled somewhere inside my heart. It wasn't supposed to stir yet. Not for fourteen more days. But it felt the wrongness in the air before the phone even rang, and now it sat inside me, alert and afraid, refusing to go back to sleep.

Austin arrived within twenty minutes, his sandy hair mussed from sleep, his usual easy smile nowhere in sight. "Andy." He looked me over once, quick and assessing, the way enforcers did. "You okay?"

"I don't know," I admitted. "Something's wrong. I felt it before the phone rang."

He didn't dismiss it. That was the thing about Austin; he never dismissed anything that might matter. "The Alpha and Luna were walking the northern perimeter when they were hit. That patrol route is triple-warded. Nobody breaches that close to the packhouse without help from inside." His jaw tightened. "This wasn't rogues wandering in by accident."

I wrapped my arms around myself, the chill of his words settling deep. Outside the apartment window, the sky was dark. Even through the glass, I could feel it, a cold that was not seasonal, pressing in from the north like the forest itself was waiting to see what was coming.

"Marcus told me to stay here," I said quietly.

"Then that's what we're doing." Austin moved to the window, scanning the dark tree line beyond the parking lot, his whole body still and watchful. "Whatever's happening out there, you're not walking into it tonight."

I sat back down on the edge of the bed, my hands pressed flat against my knees to keep them from shaking, and stared at the door Marcus had left through. Fourteen days had felt like a countdown to something wonderful only hours ago. Now it felt like something else, a storm nobody expected forming on the horizon. Deep inside me, the wolf, awake early, paced restlessly, already certain the threat wasn't finished.