42 Old

Jack

I swear my eyes practically bulged out of my head when I met my mate back at the pool. Her swimsuit was fairly modest, but it clung to her body exactly the way my hands itched to. I tried thinking of the most unsexy things I could to reduce the problem I had barely gotten under control while I was changing.

It didn’t help when her eyes ran over me with obvious appreciation. She wasn’t the first female to openly admire my form, but she was the first that I wanted to grab and immediately drag off to my bedroom. My wolf was fully on board with that stray thought, although his interest was mostly on finally marking her. He obviously wasn’t opposed to the mating aspect either. He wanted pups, or tiny fae, or whatever our hybrid offspring might turn out to be.

I really wanted to, but she had to agree first. And then I could have her, my beautiful mate. Maybe I should have taken her and showed her my surprise for her first...

But we were already here now. “Ready to swim?” I asked her, my eyes trying their hardest to wander from her face to look at the rest of her. I reminded myself that there were children present. How I could forget when their boisterous hollering kept piercing my ears, I didn’t know, but...

“Isn’t that what we were planning?”

It was, at least stage one. Although I had hoped to have her alone, not dodge ten-year-old pack monsters. Well, I’d have to adapt the plan, I was good at that. With a running start, I jumped into the water and splashed the little terrors.

She laughed from the edge, before wading in through the shallow incline at the other end. The pool was far from Olympic sized, but it was large enough to do decent laps. She immersed herself in the water, and then began swimming over to me, gliding through the water like a nymph. I was transfixed by the way her body slipped through the water.

One of the little monsters, Liam, jumped on my back with a shriek and tried to knock me over. I tossed him off of me, in the opposite direction of my mate because I wasn’t going to risk hitting her with a child projectile.

The other two, Kevin and Wesley, came at me next and I threw them too, which was probably only rewarding them for their behaviour if their delighted shrieks were anything to go by. I glanced over at her to witness her regret at her decision to allow the little savages to stay, but she only looked amused that I was being overrun.

Liam climbed up on the side of the pool and started pulling down his swim trunks. He was probably planning to shift and pounce on me. Little brat.

“No wolves in the pool, Liam, fur clogs the drains.”

This might not be going as planned, but at least Aura seemed happy. I started to make my way towards her, when I got slammed by Kevin again. I dunked him under the water and warned them, “I’m going to kick you three out of here if you don’t behave.”

“Jack,” he whined.

“Aw, but Jack...” Wesley moaned.

“She thinks it’s funny. Look. She’s laughing.” Liam added. “She gets to see how good you are with kids. Chicks dig that.”

“And how do you know what chicks dig? You’re ten,” I pointed out as I threw him off into the water again.

He shrieked with more laughter. “I’m eleven and a half. My brothers’re fifteen and seventeen and have been working on their game so I know all the tricks.”

“They’re idiots and basically kids themselves.” It had been frustrating watching as sixteen-year-olds found their mates before I had found Aura. If I’d known where she was, I would have went and visited the fae enclave as soon as I was old enough to sense her. If only.

“You just think that ’cause you’re old,” Kevin said.

“All right, that’s enough, or I’m linking your mothers to come collect you.”

The three groaned, but they stopped attacking me.

“Aw, the game’s over already?” she asked as I swam over to her.

“Told you she liked it.” Liam seemed to be asking for a dunking.

In addition to it being over, I also wished the monsters were gone, or at least that I could mind link her without curious small ears picking up every word. She was far too nice for my own good. “Yes, it is.”

“What did you say to stop them?” she asked. Clearly my mind linking hadn’t been that subtle.

“Just threatened them with their mothers.”

“Are werewolf mothers that scary?”

“Sometimes. Mine is.”

“She can’t be that bad,” she said, swimming around me lazily. She was a very good swimmer.

“She’s deadly. She’ll smother you with enthusiasm. That’s why I don’t want you to have to meet her right away.”

“Don’t listen to him. She’s great. Grandma Kirsten makes the best cookies in the pack,” Wesley said, breaking into our conversation and making my wolf want to grab him by the scruff of the neck and carry him back to his parents.

“Yes, because you’re not mated to one of her children.” I looked at Aura. “You should have seen what she did to Vander.”

“What did she do?” she asked, apparently curious and not sufficiently wary.

“He got the royal treatment. She stuffed his face with food, she waited on him hand and foot, and while she did that she interrogated him mercilessly with countless questions—even though we’d already been friends for a couple of years and I’d already told her about him.”

She floated on her back past me, which meant her breasts crested the water and distracted me from whatever unimportant thing I had been saying. “That doesn’t sound that bad,” she said, her eyes meeting mine.

“You say that now. She kills with kindness.”

“If that’s my fate, it doesn’t seem a bad way to go.”

I stood up at sound of the opening door, and with satisfaction I noticed the way Aura’s eyes ran over my torso as I turned towards the sounds. It was Kevin’s mother, and she looked a bit guilty when she spotted us stuck with her boy and his friends.

“Sorry Jack, I didn’t know you were using the pool.”

“Don’t worry about it.”

“Yeah, Jack’s pretty mate let us stay,” Liam said.

Was he trying to rile my wolf up? The little punk was just lucky my wolf didn’t consider him a threat.

“All three of you, out of the pool.”

“Aw, Mom.”

“Out.”

The three boys climbed out, as slowly as possible. Wesley jumped back in one final time, risking his life—not from drowning, from being told off by Kevin’s mother—before he followed the other two.

“Have a good night,” she said, and she herded the boys out of there.

The pool was oddly quiet once the door shut, all the boisterous noise leaving only the sound of the lapping waves and our breathing. I mind linked Fred to tell everyone that the pool was now off limits. Aura had gotten her way, and now I would get mine.