A knock roused Mack from sleep. He groaned and stretched, then wrapped his arms around the sweet female snuggled close against his side. He wondered if he’d imagined the knock, but then it sounded again, more insistently this time.
“Miracle? Are you dead? You missed breakfast,” a female called loudly through the door.
“Would you quiet down? It’s freaking eight a.m.,” another female said.
“It’s only early if you’re hungover, which I’m not,” the first female replied.
“Oh gosh, are they fighting outside my room?” Miracle asked, punctuating her question with a yawn. She blinked beautiful eyes at him, one amber and one green. He hadn’t noticed her eye color the night before, but then again he’d been consumed with seeing how many times he could make her scream his name.
“I think so. Friends of yours?”
“We met at the airport. They’re sweet, but their timing is terrible.” She slid from the bed, stretched with a squeak and walked to the bathroom to grab a robe from a hook behind the door. She slid it on and winked. “Cover up your bits. I don’t want them to get a glimpse of your goodies.”
He chuckled and tugged up the sheet to cover himself. She opened the door, but positioned herself so that the females outside couldn’t come in or see into the room.
“Sorry, I was sleeping in,” she said. “You guys look like you had fun.”
There was a pause, and then one of the females said, “You’ve got a bite on your neck. Did you meet someone?”
A third female voice said, “You can’t let guys go around biting you. They’ll think you’re their property and I’m pretty sure you said you don’t want to go through that again.”
“I promise that I knew what he was doing when he bit me. We’re mates. We met last night.”
“Not that creeptastic wolf guy you were dancing with?” the first female said.
The third female said, “What if it was him? You just called him creeptastic.”
Mack decided it was time for him to make an appearance, so he wrapped a blanket around his waist and joined Miracle at the door.
Miracle said, “Guys, this is Mack. Mack, these are my friends – Jesmin, Leah, and Aria.
Mack smiled. “Miracle and I met last night, and we’re mates. I’m definitely not creeptastic.”
All three females stared at him in surprise. They said nothing for a long moment, their mouths open and their eyes wide, and then Jesmin said, “That’s fucking awesome! Congratulations!!”
She hugged Miracle, and that spurred Leah and Aria to hug her too.
“It means there’s hope for us! Maybe some more males will show up and we’ll find our mates, too. Happy dance!” Leah said, and proceeded to do a jig in the hallway.
“You should tell the director about your mating. There was a meeting before breakfast and she said that if any of us find our mate, there are some cool activities they have planned. Plus I think you get a nicer room too.” Aria said.
“Thanks, we’ll talk to her later,” Miracle said, waving at her friends and shutting the door.
“They seem nice,” Mack said.
“We’re all kind of in the same boat. It’s hard to start over. I’m pushing forty. My whole adult life I’ve been told I wasn’t good enough to be a mate in the first place, so coming somewhere like this, so far out of my comfort zone I should need a passport, was nerve-wracking.”
“Who said you weren’t good enough?” His hackles rose, and his wolf wanted him to vow to hunt down whoever the asshole was.
“Let’s get breakfast and then we can talk. We kind of skipped over all the talking.”
“I had good intentions,” he said.
“Me too. But I think our actions spoke a lot louder than our words could have. It felt very right to be with you. I haven’t ever felt so comfortable with someone before. You feel like home.”
“You do to me, too,” he said.
Their stomachs growled at the same time, and they both laughed. Instead of leaving the room to scout food, they opened the welcome basket and found a sleeve of crackers, two oranges, a wax-covered wheel of cheese, and a summer sausage. He brewed two cups of coffee and fixed them with creamer and sugar, while she cut up the cheese and sausage. They sat on the couch, him still wrapped in the blanket and her in the robe, and began to share their lives.
“I’ve been a widower for over twenty years. I was mated for two years when Elise was killed during a full moon hunt by a hunter’s stray bullet. I was drowning in grief and unable to even really function as alpha because of it. We had a lot of plans for our future, and then suddenly she was gone and I was alone. I felt like a shell of myself, like the pack would be better off without me in charge.