Page 59 of Meeting Her Mate
I pressed her hand harder against my beating heart.
“I am sorry, Alexis. For rejecting you. For treating you in that uncouth manner. You are the most special person I have ever met. I regret that it took me this long to see that. You are winter fire, you are monsoon rain, and you are the sweet release of all the best emotions. None of the excuses that I made for rejecting you were legitimate. They were all folly. I was blinded. You helped me see. I was enraged. You soothed me. I was lost. You found me,” I said, drawing her closer to me.
“Will. I am so afraid,” Alexis whispered. “My emotional faculties are not equipped for more heartbreak. The pain would be too unbearable. Having lost people close to me before, I know what it feels like, and the thought that it could occur again terrifies me. But the thought of being mistreated terrifies me more, Will…” Her hand still rested on my chest. Her body, so close to mine, beckoned temptation, but I held back. There would be a time to give in to temptation. Right now, there was a need for something else. Reassure. Promise. Consolation.
“For as long as I am alive, and if you will have me, I will make you this promise right here. I will not break your heart again,” I said, wrapping my arms around hers. “Everything that you have done for me is so great a debt that I know I can never repay it. But I can try. Let me begin by apologizing for the way I have been.”
“It’s okay, Will,” Alexis said, her cheek brushing against mine, her hand still on my chest, undoubtedly picking up my elevated heart rate. “I forgave you then. It’s forgotten now.”
“Then let me be your mate,” I said, holding her by her shoulders, our faces just an inch apart. “Would you be my mate?”
“Will…” Alexis whispered, then kissed me on my lips. I embraced her fiercely, lifting her in my arms, and kissed her furiously back, our tongues clashing, our lips pressing, our mouths warm and wet with each other’s passion.
“Please be my mate again,” I said one last time before our kiss could turn into something more.
“Kintsugi,” Alexis whispered.
“Kintsugi?”
She placed her soft palm on my coarse cheeks and held my face in her gentle hands.
“I will be your mate, Will Grimm. Will you be mine?”
“Yes,” I spoke softly and kissed her again, this time letting the electricity of fate surge through my body.
Chapter 21: Alexis
Blair was like an obstinate blot on the otherwise squeaky-clean windscreen of my life. The more I tried to scrape him off my mind, the more messily he stuck there. I was not one to stay rattled after a confrontation. I was someone who devised an action plan and acted upon it.
My life was finally at a place where all the calamity and negativity had broken even, and now, I was starting to get some profitable returns in the form of emotional stability, peace, and love. Most of it was thanks to Will, who had just a few days ago professed his love for me and asked me to be his mate.
But Blair stuck around like some stubborn overhead cost that refused to go away.
Ever since he had come across me that day, I could not get the thought of him harming Will out of my mind. Men like Blair operated on a sociopathic level, a level where the law did not exist, and everything was theirs to do as they wished. To them, people were like playthings.
However, what Blair did not know was that two could play this game of shadows. He had underestimated me twice now. Once when he so brazenly kidnapped me in the middle of the day and once when he decided to taunt me in that crowded Starbucks.
One of the perks of picking my own hours at my new job was that I could allot myself a twelve-hour shift on Mondays and Tuesdays and get the entire day of Wednesday off. The minimum hours per week requirement for the job was forty. The way I saw it, I was putting in twelve hours on Mondays and Tuesdays, no hours on Wednesdays, and then eight hours each on Thursday and Friday, amounting to a total of forty. I had even made up my mind to put in some overtime over the weekends. It was like my dad used to say whenever we drove by the beach. “The ocean doesn’t take a day off.”
This was my first Wednesday off, and I was having a great time walking around the commune while most everyone was at work. The kids were at school, and the soccer moms with their minivans and PTA meet-and-greets were busy planning something down at the school. The men were at the docks, in the city, and wherever it was that they worked. I was surprised to recently learn that some of the men had restarted the lumber trade ever since the forest had become safer now that there weren’t as many vampires roaming about.
I roamed about the Grimm Abode, a cup of coffee in hand, worries on my mind, and a nervous spring in my step as a result of both. Will was nowhere to be found. This was good news. When Will was not around the commune, he was down at the docks, surrounded by members of his pack who could keep an eye on him as he worked on the Grimm Reaper. No one would be foolish enough to come near him while he was working in the daylight with his pack members close by. Not even Blair.
I took my nearly-finished cup of coffee and headed over to my truck. After a while, the aloofness of the empty commune became monotonous. There was a reason I chose this Wednesday as my off day. I put the cup on my truck’s roof and fished my phone out of my jacket. I dialed Maliha’s number.
“Is it done?” I asked.
“It’s done. I’ve set up a remote access point. Since it’s more than just a phone or a laptop that you’re surveilling, the remote access point is relatively bigger. You’re gonna wanna come by the apartment,” Maliha said.
“It’s not something remote? Like what we did with Maurice?” I asked. This was troubling. As of yet, I didn’t know the extent of Maliha’s hack. How deep had she penetrated Blair’s network?
“It’s not remotely anywhere near as remote as what we did with Maurice, girl,” Maliha said. Her voice gave away no expression. Usually, whenever she was this stoic, it meant only one thing: She had done something serious and was possibly scared. And when she was scared, God help the rest of us.
“What are you not telling me?” I asked, making no attempt to hide the fear in my tone.
“I think it’s best if you just come here. I can’t say anything more over the phone,” Maliha said, then abruptly cut the call.
This was not a good sign. All of a sudden, the solitude of the commune shifted from being comely to downright haunting. The sun seemed to glare at me mockingly from its perch in the sky.