Chapter 122
epting My Twin Mates Chapter 122
Bonus Chapter 4 – A Worthy Challenge?
Catalina
I could have made ament as Astennu slowly closed the door in my face, but I chose to hold my
tongue. I had had my fun bothering the twins, especially Badru, and now I had fun waiting for me
elsewhere.
‘Quiet fun because you stuck us in this tin tube,’ my wolf, Ch, grumbled, despite her tail agitating in
flirtation. ‘At least you cleared the living room so we can get a better look at all those tattoos.’
‘Roll that tongue back in until those shes of his have healed a little,’ a frown dipped my lips, the
memory of Diego’s flesh torn apart and his blood flung airborne was all too fresh in my mind. I thought I
had lost him before I could have him.
Speaking of his s***h marks and blood, they needed tending to. His injuries had pulled and had stained
the gauze that had been hastily taped to his chest. I stopped by the cockpit to grab the better first aid
kit that had items required for sutures and obtained a rough estimate of the flight duration from the pilot.
Eleven hours was all I had to discover everyst detail of my mate and have him begging for us tond.
‘Please. We could break him in eleven minutes,’ Ch puffed out her chest, confident in our mission.
I had most men eating out of my hand within the first few seconds of speaking, but my mate was far
more of an enigma. He was rugged and rough, taunting and confrontational, and nothing like any of the
wolf males I had met.
‘I wouldn’t be so cocky, Ch. I think we finally have a worthy challenge.’
Diego sat propped up where I had left him, his head lolled back against the headrest and his entire
tattooed bare-chested body stretched out for me to drink from. The notes of his scents, a heady mix of
ochre and incense, wrapped and weaved around me to pull me forward, increasing in intensity the
closer I came.
His eyes remained closed and his broad rough-hewn chest, studded with a perfect amount of hair
across his pecs, rose and fell in small breaths. I left for two minutes and he’d fallen asleep. He needed
the rest, but he needed his stitches attending to more. The silver injuries would mark him for a lifetime
even with stitches, but without them, they would form thick and uneven scars.
The first signs of the healing process would be kicking in a few hours, the edges of the wound knitting
together slowly over the weeks toe; far slower than the few hours a werewolf injury would normally
take to vanish entirely.
I crept forward towards him, wanting to take these few moments to ogle all of him before he needed to
be woken. Few wolves wore jewellery as permanent features as it remained when we shifted and could
cause hindrance, especially items such as rings, bracelets and nes. The only time we wore such
was at social events and parties. Yet, his were there intact, exactly as they had been when I saw his
wolf break free.
An industrial piercing perforated the top of his left ear, a ck bar with two studs on either end, and a
small yet thick ck loop below it depicting tiny wolves running.
I reached out to curl a finger around his ear and slid down to his jaw, but his hand flew up and snatched
my wrist, a superior smirk slowly unfolding. His heartbeat and breathing never once flinched or faltered,
remaining in a steady rhythm. A startled gasp hitched my throat, almost choking me.
“Mi vida, you think you can sneak on me?” A mischievous deep brown eye cracked open. “I have the
reflexes of a cat.”
I grabbed a scatter cushion next to him while he was still on his lordly high of thinking he had won and
socked him in the side of the head with it.
“Reflexes of a pudgy house cat, maybe,” I chuckled.
Faster than I could register, my hips were in his hands and I was yanked forward to straddle his waist.
His fingertips dug into the fleshy rounds of my ass, squeezing firmly and releasing.
‘If he wants to get hot and heavy, I won’t say no. I don’t care if anyone hears,’ Ch was enthralled, on
her belly for her mate.
“First you shamelessly ogle me and then you call me pudgy? Mi vida, I’m wounded.”
My hands found his wide shoulders, bracing myself at the impact of his pat to my rear, not because it
was forceful but because I didn’t trust my body to not melt over him. And the thick and rigid bulge
poking me from beneath did nothing to calm me either, one he was slowly grinding on me through the
thin fabric of our clothes.
“Not that I mind you checking me out, but why are you sneaking?” He gently stroked the base of my
spine.
“Uh… your stitches… you pulled a few,” I finally found my voice, feeling a heat creep into my neck that,
thankfully, didn’t invade my cheeks.
I fumbled next to me for the first aid kit, unable to tear my eyes from Diego’s or the crooked smirk that
lifted one corner of his lips. This was new, falling over myself for a man. Usually, it was the other way
around.
Sliding off hisp and trying to ignore the protruding erection of his c**k, free from the confines of any
underwear, I opened the kit. Next, I peeled back the gauze on his chest, revealing the four shes
across his torso, starting at the left of his waist and crossing up to his right pec. The stitches had been
done by a skilled hand, but they hadn’t weathered the fight without strain. My eye caught ten that had
tugged through the skin once securing them, causing the fresh blood to flow.
“In the pit… when I fell, did you really yell ‘pendejo’ at me?” He asked as I unzipped the small pouch
from the first aid kit and poked the suture thread through the eye of the needle.
“You let yourself be thrown on your ass, so yeah. I thought you heard because you looked up at me.”
“My ears were still ringing. I didn’t miss your voice,” he paused my hands by gliding his thumb over my
bottom lip. “I just wanted to make sure I remembered that fiery mouth right.”
I circled the tip of my tongue around the edge of his thumb, peering up into his eyes and smiling to
myself how an inky ck chased his chocte irises studded with gold flecks. He wasn’t the only one
who could tease and taunt.
“This might sting a little,” I snapped on a pair of nitrile gloves and wiped over his wounds to cleanse
them with an antiseptic wipe. As wolves, we were resistant to sepsis, not immune.
The thread followed the needle with little resistance, Diego’s muscles flexing as my holder forceps
tugged and the needle irritated his already sore skin. As I stitched, knotting the sutures with trained
ease, my gaze drifted along his cut lines to his inked skin.
I had seen the one on his back, a ck-shaded skull and red rose petals drifting in the etched wind.
Here and there, the odd old scar muddled the artwork of his tattoos and body. Across his left pec and
shoulder was a wolf with yellow eyes, emerging through tears in his skin. The rest of his arm was a
collection that blended to form one mural; a tree in blossom winding around his arm with wolves,
snakes, eagles and borate moths that strayed onto his hand. His right pec and shoulder were its
head, its spines poking up onto his neck, and its body wrapped around his arm, all in ck. The only
colour came from gold skulls in its ws and the soft pastel colours of the magnolia blooms. The head
of a snake came up over his left hip and stomach, now decapitated because of his s***h injury. The rest
of its body disappeared beyond the waistband of his ck pants.
My wolf was eager to follow that particr tattoo, pawing at the walls of my inner mind. ‘Do you think it
leads to his other snake?’
‘We’ll follow it after we’vended.’
“How do you know how to do sutures?” He asked when I was just about finished.
“I thought about bing a nurse. Started the training course and everything in our pack’s hospital,” I
tied the final knot and fished for the scissors. “I could handle things like this, but what I couldn’t was all
the bodily things.”
I sliced the tread and wiped up the residue of blood, cleaning the area to be taped with gauze. With the
fresh cover to guard the stitches, I taped them into ce over his clean skin.
“If you can’t handle piss, s**t and vomit, nursing isn’t the best career choice, so it didn’t work out. I train
Omegas now, especially women. I never want them to feel as though they’re weak. I know what it’s like
to be underestimated.”
“It would have to be a very brave individual to underestimate you,” his voice dropped, charging the
space around him with a palpable electricity.
“Or handle me,” I arched a brow in challenge, sparking my Alpha aura, reiterating I was no shy type.
He slowly leant in, his defiant smirk twitching away. The air between us was thick, charged in an
unseeable force; he was flexing his Gamma aura.
“I think I can handle you just fine,” Diego pulled back abruptly, spreading his arms out on the back of
the sofa and daring me toe closer to y his game.
‘He wants to y, fine,’ my wolf snuffed, equal parts irritated and turned on. ‘We can y right back.’
And I knew just how…
I pushed away from the couch, going against where he expected his enticement would lead to, and
strode over to my duffle bag containing thest of my clothes.
“Are you ok in what you have on? I can disturb one of the guys if you’re not.”
“Oh, I’m fine as I am,” he stretched out fully as well as his legs, highlighting his package.
His arms flexed, showing each rugged and rough cut muscle, the tattoos dancing with each of his
movements. His eyelidsy heavy, adding to the sultry set of his face. I turned back to my bag and
stripped fully, every item of clothing I wore dropped into a pile and switched to a fresh set of high-
waisted knitted leggings and a short sweater. I had given my best set of clothing to Evie, along with the
last of my underwear; a treat that I was sure those mates of hers would appreciate.
My brows scrunched when I heard no growl of approval or desire, no quick movement to im what
had been shed to him. I swivelled my head over my shoulder to see if he had a will of iron or if he
had short-circuited.
Thetter was closer.
His eyelids hadn’t been heavy, they had been drooping. Diego’s head had fallen back like the rest of
his body, ck and slouched against his seat, and his mouth hung open with soft snores mumbling
from his lips. If he was y-acting this time, he had gone all out.
‘Did he have the nerve to fall asleep on us?’ Ch tilted her head, blinking in her dismay.
Even when I gently sat next to him, nothing in him stirred or roused. Had he been any other man, I
would have knocked him upside the head for falling asleep during a strip tease. But he had a valid
excuse, so I settled for nuzzling into his side and took pleasure in the tingling heat of his skin and his
heady scent that warmed me from the inside.
I grabbed up my phone to text my brother we were on our way and give a rough estimate of when we’d
bending. As I was in the middle of an exchange with him, cing bets on how long it would take
Diego to send my father’s temple convulsing – my bet was within the first sentence, Thiago gave him
more credit,ing in at three minutes – my mate groaned and looked around as though there was
something missing in front of him.
“Did I miss the show?” He stifled a yawn into the back of his hand, slipping his arm around my waist to
move me closer.
My phone and my brother vanished from memory. “You missed it an hour ago and, sadly for you, there
isn’t a second showing.”
‘There’ll be a second showing, all right,’ he whispered into my mind. ‘Just not from you.’
My heart suddenly hammered, fluttering like I was some virginal teen swooning at her childhood crush.
I braced my palm against his chest, pulling back instantly that I may have hurt his injuries.
“I didn’t peg you for a blusher, mi vida.”
Content bel0ngs to N?vel(D)r/a/ma.Org.
“I’m not blushing!” I lied defensively, knowing full well my face was crimson.
What I needed was a change of topic.
“The opponent that you fought, you checked for his pulse to make sure he was alive… why?”
Diego stroked my cheek, chuckling to himself and seeing straight through my distraction. Nevertheless,
he answered and indulged me.
“He may have been my opponent, but I didn’t want to see him hurt. The man has pups to provide for
and fighting is the only way he can earn money to feed them. Not exactly much upstanding work for us
rogues. He isn’t kept like I was, he just fights and receives a small percentage of the takes. We like to
give each other our best, but we try not to severely maim.”
I raised a brow, my eyes making an obvious line to his chest that had practically been slit open.
“That was my fault, not his,” he smiled, his eyes stillnguid from sleep. “You see, this angel appeared,”
he tugged his arm and pulled me effortlessly to hisp, his hand smoothing up my thigh. “And her
beauty enchanted me so much I didn’t duck in time. Then she called me a pendejo for getting injured
and I knew I was in love.”
He was dropping the L-bomb? So soon, at that. He could hardly miss my eyes doubling in size.
Forget him short-circuiting, I had short-circuited, along with Ch, who had vanished the moment Diego
had woken to link with his counterpart wolf.
“I… I don’t even know your wolf’s name yet,” was the bestposition of words my brain could
formte.
“Dario,” his hand squeezed my upper thigh. “You don’t need to say it back. To find you, my fated mate,
this is why I left my pack, so I’m a little excited is all.”
I pulled back in confusion, my head tilting and mirroring my wolf’s.
“My father arranged a mate for me just before I turned 19, about a week before my birthday,” Diego
exhaled a shaky breath, a taut agitation cutting his bravado down a slice. “He said I was to take her or
leave, thinking I’d be a well-behaved pup.”
A bitter and mirthlessugh shook him, but I could see the pain wrench in his eyes. “You can probably
guess what I told him.”
“Thank you, but no?”
“It wasn’t even that many words… he didn’t even try to stop me, neither did my mother.”
I stroked back his hair, pushing a wavy lock that hung low out of his eyes. He groaned in a quiet bliss
as my fingers moved downward to lightly scratch the roughness of his beard.
“I didn’t want to be the pack’s Gamma, either. I think that’s why I was forced into a chosen mate. My
father hoped she’d keep me in line. If you haven’t guessed, I’m a little unruly,” he winked.
“What about your siblings? Couldn’t one of them have taken the position for you?”
“Only child. So it was me or my family losing its station. And my father couldn’t have that scandal,” he
rolled his eyes. “So I went rogue, bringing shame to the family and a lifetime of scandal, so I like to
think I won in the end. What about you?”
“I have an older brother who’s next in line as the eldest, Thiago.”
“Your brother is Thiago and I’m Diego?” He chuckled. “Fate didn’t n that one out very well.”
That was going to get confusing, but as long as it didn’t get awkward, I was fine with it.
“And I have an older sister, Elisabeth, or Beth we call her,” a pang of deep absence iced my chest. We
were always inseparable, she and I, and suddenly, we weren’t. “She’s five months pregnant, I think?
She would die if she knew what I had been up to… maybe don’t tell her exactly how we met just yet.”
“You want me to hide the fact I’m a dirty bad boy rogue?”
“Oh, she won’t care about that bit,” I booped his nose. “It’s the bit where I flew off to a foreign country to
infiltrate a secret underground fighting ring and helped take down some mafia wolf where I could have
died. That’s the bit where she’d probably have a heart attack… she’s been through too much thesest
few years to have any stress with her first-ever pup. She can find out what I did and kill me once the
little bundle is out.”
The two years she had been forced to be separate from her mate had taken a bigger toll on her, more
than anyone knew, anyone but me. She had thought of running off with him more than once, to go
rogue and never look back. But he had obligations in his pack, a family he could never leave. He was a
nice and decent wolf, albeit a little vani for my tastes, but perfect for her. I wasn’t about to ce strain
on her newfound peace or endanger her pup.
“Ok,” he chuckled sleepily, snuggling into my side and settling me against the thick curve of his neck.
“I’ll be some dirty bad boy rogue you found while you were slumming it in a bar instead.”
“That was myst Saturday night.”
My provocation finally got me the reaction I was after; a deep basal growl that lifted the hairs on the
back of my neck and a vice grip about my waist.
‘That’s a dangerous thing to say to a mate that hasn’t smelt a woman in four years,’ his nose nudged at
my marking sight, teasing it with the point of his canine.
‘I think younded our ass in trouble when we’re back on the ground,’ Ch shivered, rubbing her body
along her mental constraints as if it were her mate’s fur. ‘I can hardly wait for our worthy challenge.’