The One 50
Chapter 50: Reasons
Hunter
I trust Kayce not to do anything rash. He, like me, has always wanted to find his mate. If we had
been at Allison’s birthday party, he would have handled it like Calvin did with Amelia, giving her as
much time to get to know him as possible. So, I’m not worried about what he will do over dinner or
even at the after party. However, I do wonder how he will handle it if she doesn’t want to sleep with
him tonight or if he refuses to im her privately.
I guide Sophie into the room I had set up for us to have dinner, mind linking the kitchen staff to let
them know we need dinner for seven, not four.
Luna already let us know, Alpha,’ the kitchen omegas reply.
Of course she did. I smile down at my mate. I can feel her nervousness at having Kayce and Robin
around these she- wolves, but she once again made me feel like a fucking king when she looked to
me for my opinion. The trust that she has in me, after only such a short amount of time, is incredible
and I only want it to grow. A mate bond, created the way it was meant to be created, between two
people.
When we get to the room, Sophie watches to see how the women will sit. Kayce pulls a chair out for
Allison, and she sits, blushing shyly while he sits beside her. Nikki sits on her other side, as if she’s
ready to pull Allison away from Kayce if he does anything wrong. Robin, sits directly across from
Nikki, wiggling
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his eyebrows at her. That means either can’t sit beside Sophie or Letti will have to sit beside either
Kayce or Robin. Not surprisingly, Letti leaves an empty seat between her and Robin, sitting across
from Kayce.
I look at Sophie. Part of why I wanted the two of them here is so they can see the difference in my
mate bondpared to everyone else’s.
‘How would you feel about sitting in myp?’ I ask her in the mind link.
She looks at me, then at the table.
‘Okay,’ she says, but I can tell she’s notfortable with the idea.
‘Do you trust me?’ I ask her.
‘Absolutely,’ she says with no hesitation.
I smile, sitting at the head of the table in between Letti and
Kayce. I scoot the chair back and tapping myp. My mate not only sits in myp, but she wraps
her arms around my neck, kissing my cheek.
As expected, both Kayce and Robin frown at the interaction.
“Forgive me, I didn’t want to be seated away from my mate,” I say. “I think it’s important for both of
you to see the difference between what I have with Sophie versus every other mate bond you’ve
ever seen with a mated ranked couple.”
“You could bemanding her to do this,” Kayce says. I notice that his hand is twitching to touch
Allison. She looks almost as
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desperate for his touch.
I look at Sophie. “Am Imanding you? Be honest.” I say, putting the full force of mymand
behind it. I see Letti’s chin go up in submission, Allison’s as well, making Kayce growl.
“No,” Sophie says, and I release my aura.
I look at Kayce, waiting for him to acknowledge my mate’s response.
“Okay, fine. I want to ask Sophie some questions,” he says.
“As do I,” Robin says, leaning onto the table, with his hands sped together.
“Go ahead,” she says.
“Why did you run? Two years ago, why did you run?” Kayce asks her.
“You were there that night, at my sister’s party,” she says and Kayce nods. “I’m sure you knew what
was going to happen, just as Hunter did, but I didn’t. I was sent to my room, but I didn’t. stay there. I
came back out and saw what happened. The warrior who took me to my room that night told me
what was going to happen and that was why I had to go to my room. I didn’t believe her. You see,
we, as females, aren’t told what was going to happen to us, until our 18th birthday, which has
apparently changed since I left.
She takes a deep breath. “I was horrified,” she says, and I can feel her emotions flgoding into her,
overwhelming her.
“Shhh. You’re safe,” I say quietly, wrapping my arms around her.
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She snuggles into me, epting thefort I’m offering.
“I watched my sister beg Alpha Calvin not to do it, but he did and all those men, they cheered as my
sister wept. I refused to allow that to happen to me. So, while everyone was busy watching the big
event, I wrote a note to my family, packed a small bag and I ran.” Her eyes are lost in the memory,
and I can feel her sadness, sharp as if it’s happening again. I lean in, kissing the side of her head.
“You’re safe,” I say again, just for her to hear.
She nods, taking another deep breath.
“How did Hunter get you to agree to let him mark you?” Alpha Robin asks her.-
She smiles and looks at me out of the corner of her eye. “Can I tell them the whole story.”
I shrug. “That’s why they’re here.”
She smiles, snuggling into me some more and putting her hands over mine as if she’s afraid her
words will make me
angry.
“I didn’t ept him at first. I rejected him, sort of, then I ran.”
“What do you mean, sort of,” Kayce asks her.
“He didn’t know who I was at first. He just knew I was his mate. I was afraid that if I rejected him
properly, using my full name, he would chase me down because I am an Alpha female.”
“Did it hurt?” Robin asks me.
“It hurt my pride,” I say, nuzzling Sophie’s hair.
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She smiles and continues. “I ran and was almost caught by Alpha Owen. I thought I was doomed.
He shifted when he
couldn’tmand me to do so, then his wolf had Hedda pinned to the ground.”
She begins breathing heavily, her heart rate increasing. I look and see the other girls in the room
sping their hands tightly in theirps, looking down so we can’t see the emotions on their faces.
I’m sure Sophie is telling their worst nightmare.
“Luckily the rejection didn’t work, and I heard Owen’s howl of the hunt,” I continue while my mate
collects herself. “Since Sophie is my mate, there was no way I was letting anyone, least of all him,
have her. I got there in time and ripped him off of her.”
She turns and looks at me. “Then Hunter found me. I was….”
“Stressed,” I finish for her.
Sheughs humorlessly. “That’s one word for it.” She smiles again.
“It was Shaw who won me over, actually,” she says, and my wolf begins purring at her, making her
smile even brighter.
“I was in ake, scrubbing off the feeling of Alpha Owen on my body, and I was freezing. Shaw
offered to warm me and did the same purring sound he is now until I settled and fell asleep. When I
woke, rather than Shaw, I had a naked Hunter wrapped around me.”
“I can’t imagine that went over well,” Kayce says.
She shrugs. “He could have marked me at any point while I was asleep, but he didn’t. He just asked
me to give him time to talk,
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to get to know him, and to belleve him that he had no intention of iming me publicly. So I did.”
“And you believed him?” Robin asks.
“We had a lot of time alone and the mate bond if hard to resist,” she says, looking at Kayce andContent from N?velDr(a)ma.Org.
Allison.
Allison blushes and looks down, but Kayce scrubs his face with his hands. “Yeah, it really is.”
“How did you do it? How did you hold off for so long in marking her. Rodion is making my head hurt
he’s being so loud,” Kayce says, looking at me.
“I had a vested interest in making sure Sophie believed me and trusted me. I knew she was mine
and I’d never let anyone else have her, but I needed her to agree to be mine. She did,” I say, smiling
at my mate.
My mate, who may never stop surprising me, leans in and kisses me gently, putting her hand
against my cheek. She doesn’t deepen the kiss, so I don’t either, knowing she’s already a bit
ufortable.
When she pulls back, her eyes stay on mine. “It was the best night of my life.”
“Mine too,” I tell her.
I hear a chair scraping and look to see that Robin is standing and is now pacing.
“You’re telling me that this,” he says, waving his hand at me and Sophie, “is for real?”
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“It is for real,” Allison says. “We’ve been watching them for a couple of days. What you’re seeing
now is mild.”
“I agree. Allison and I have witnessed the love and trust between Alpha Hunter and Luna Sophie,
multiple times,” Letti adds, looking from Allison to us to the two Alphas.
“You saw it earlier, Alpha Robin. You saw how Luna Sophie asked her mate if she could trust the
two of you. Have you ever seen a Luna who has that much trust and faith in their mate. A Luna who
has been mated less than a week from what I understand,” Nikki says, watching Robin closely.
He stops and looks at her.
“Have you? Because I know I haven’t,” she asks him again.
“No, I haven’t,” he concedes.
“So, you’re saying that all this trust, all this love, is simply because Hunter didn’t im you publicly?”
Kayce asks Sophie.
It’s Nikki who responds. “Let me ask you something, Alpha Kayce. As an Alpha, I feel a deep desire
to protect those around me, my pack, my friends, and maybe, someday, my mate. What part of
taking your crying mate, who is begging you not to im her publicly, would be considered
protecting her? How can she ever trust that you would protect her after that? How could she believe
that you truly love her after you mistreated her that way?”
He looks at Nikki a moment, then at Allison. “Is the idea of being imed publicly really that horrible
to you? That you would never trust me or believe that I loved you again?”
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“Yes, Allison whispers.
Why
It’s not the same for us as it is for you. Alpha. We are raised differently, women and men in packs,
particrly ranked she wolves. We’re given the lies of what a beautiful rtionship we’ll have with
our mates, how loving and caring they will be, and all the while, we are told to keep ourselves pure,
not to let other men see what we are to give to you on our iming night. Even in the packs, even
as an Alpha, I was rarely allowed to be naked in front of the pack members. I would never, ever
have wanted my first time to be in front of a room full of men whistling and howling I can’t even
imagine the embarrassment that I would have felt, the horror I know that sometimes that gap can be
ovee, as with my sister and Alpha Calvin, but not always. We only need to remember Alpha
Ezra and Hunter’s sister to know that,” Sophie says.
“That is why we’ve run. That is why we choose a life alone rather than risk being imed,” Allison
says to him,
“So, it’s about being mated in public, not being marked in public?” Kayce rifies. I look at Sophie,
wondering if it’s both or just the mating.
She turns and looks at me. “Well,) mean, it would be
ufortable to be marked in public because, well, there are a lot of strong emotions thate
when you’re marked, but… guess for me, it was about the mating, although the two generally
happen together, because of those strong emotions,” she says, and now she’s blushing
“But thew isn’t about the marking, is it?” Nikki says again and we all focus on her. “The she wolf
rarely marks her mate during
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the public iming, does she?”
I look at Kayce and then at Robin, both have the same confused looks on their faces. “Honestly, I’ve
excused myself from them for so many years, I wouldn’t know,” I say.
“I have as well, but I don’t remember ever seeing the she-wolf mark her mate. You’re right, little
Alpha,” Robin says.
She gives him a look. “I’m not that little, you know.”
Rather than answering, he just smiles and winks at her, making her huff, but I can see her hide her
smile and based on Robin’s smile, he sees it too.
Instead, he turns to Letti. “How about you, little G**a. You’ve been very quiet during this
conversation which I feel isn’t your norm.”
“I’ve never seen a marking. All I know is what my mother told me,” she says.
“Which is?” Kayce asks.
“Which is that it’s terrible, painful, mortifying, and not worth finding your mate,” she says, watching
the two visiting Alphas carefully.
“My mother basically said the same,” Allison says, ncing at Kayce.
“So, I will ask you,” I say, as the foodes in. “Why are we mistreating our Lunas this way? What
is the purpose? What could it possible matter if their iming is public. Can both of you not smell
my scent on Sophie and her on me?” I ask, getting
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to the crux of the issue.
“We’re wolves, after all. What good are our advanced senses if we don’t use them. And what good
are we as Alphas if we don’t protect those we are sworn to protect, those who are most. precious to
us,” I say, leaning forward to nuzzle Sophie and smiling as she leans into my touch.
“What are we even doing if we aren’t first protecting our mates,” I say and see Kayce ncing at
Allison beside him, as Robin looks between Nikki and Letti.