The Fake Mate

it’s been a long time since I’ve shifted, and the fresh snow against my paws is a welcome sensation as I run through it, following Mackenzie’s trail. I had only caught a glimpse of her before she bounded off into the tree line after shedding her clothes, just a flash of sand-colored fur before she’d disappeared into the woods. It’s clear that with her impending heat she is more in tune with her instincts than I am, especially given how long it’s been since I’ve used them.

The suppressants really do stave off the urge to shift, just like I’d told Mackenzie weeks ago, but running like this makes me wonder why I hadn’t chosen to do so sooner, anyway. Like this, the worries of work and my personal life seem further away, leaving only the scent of Mackenzie in the air and the strong desire to get closer to her.

I catch sight of her in a clearing, the sun filtering through the trees and casting a spray of sunlight against her fur, and I notice she’s just standing there on all fours, waiting for me. She’s smaller than me, but no less strong, I think. Her amber eyes are sharp, and her ears are turned up attentively as she watches me approach—her head low to the ground as if she is ready to flee at any given moment. What is she doing?

I yip at her, wondering if there is a chance she doesn’t recognize me in her primal state, and she snorts against the snow, snapping her jaws in answer. She turns in place to kick up a bit of a flurry as she watches me near, and just as I move to spring myself closer, she bounds off again as fast as her paws will carry her through the trees, leaving me puzzled. She gets another thirty yards away, only to stop and turn back and look at me again, giving that same guarded pose that is starting to feel somewhat like a challenge.

She’s toying with me.

Even in this form I can almost see her teasing grin, can almost hear her sweet voice calling out some taunt solely to try and get under my skin so that she can laugh at my reaction. My fur bristles with the anticipation of her game, kicking up a bit of snow and throwing back my head to make a warning sound, letting her know I’m up to play. Her answering huff of air and the toss of her head seem unfazed, and I paw at the snow, lowering my head while I ready to pounce.

It feels like a different time; what we’re doing seems reminiscent of an age where our kind lived in woods like these, where we hunted our food and claimed our mates in a similar dance to this one. And with my hindbrain running the show right now, that thought is a satisfying one.

I don’t move until she takes off again, giving her a moment’s head start before I fully put my paws to the ground and chase after her. I run until my muscles burn, the slight sting oddly enjoyable. I watch her lithe body wind between the trees as if she were born in these woods, making sure that catching her is no easy feat. It doesn’t deter me in the slightest; in fact, the difficulty of it all only makes me want to catch her more. Only makes this game we’re playing more pleasurable.

I let my human thoughts slip away to give way to the more basic part of me, letting my alpha move my body as if I am hunting Mackenzie. As if she is prey that I want to taste—and in a sense, I suppose she is. Because even shifted I can scent how every moment pushes her deeper into her heat, and out here among the snow she smells positively ripe for the taking. I know when I get her back to the lodge she will be warm and wet and wanting, and just thinking about the way she will feel on my knot makes me actually howl with anticipation.

The sound makes Mackenzie pause further up, and I skid in the snow only a dozen or so paces from her as I catch my breath. I can see in her eyes a glimpse of that need they held earlier, see a spark of the human part of her practically begging me to come take her. I hear a rustling behind us that makes me turn with a growl, tearing my eyes from Mackenzie to warn whatever intruder might be stalking us, only to find a bird taking flight up into the trees. I snort in irritation as I turn back, noticing Mackenzie is nowhere to be found as a flicker of panic pulses inside me.

My alpha has me pacing as I turn this way and that trying to catch sight of her, feeling a growing dread at having lost her, even though logically I know she must be somewhere close. I turn in place and yip worriedly, still able to scent her but unable to see her.

Where the fuck did she go?

It might be because I am so panicked that I don’t hear her approach; maybe it’s the blood rushing in my ears that hides her steps as she nears from behind, meaning that I don’t know she’s on me until she’s actually on me. Her body collides with mine as we roll, the force of it so much so that it knocks us both back into human form, leaving our naked bodies tangled in the snow.

Her skin is flushed pink, no doubt still too warm from being in her other form, and her soft blond hair is wild around her face, just as wild as the look in her eyes as she gazes down at me. Her thighs straddle my waist to keep me pinned to the ground, and I can immediately tell that I was right, that she’s dripping wet for me, if the slick against my navel is any indication.

“Got you,” she practically purrs, her breasts heaving in the chilled air.

I run my hands over her thighs, watching her shiver with my touch. She’s burning up now, no longer close but surely fully in heat, but I know the air will still make her sick if left unchecked. “You’ll get cold like this.”

“Mm.” She leans, her nipples brushing my chest as my breath catches, her lips hovering against mine as they curve with a smile. “Then you should probably keep me warm.”

I’m half-ready to take her right here in the snow, but given that she flings herself from me only to shift again—I don’t get the chance. I follow suit moments later, and I notice now that when she runs, she is running the way we came, back toward the lodge. She pauses only for a moment at the top of the hill, tossing her head the way we came in a silent invitation, as if challenging me to come get her.

And that’s exactly what I intend to do.

in all of my adult life, I have never felt desperation like this.

Even when I have her safely tucked away in the bedroom we’ve chosen, I feel urges to tie her down so that she can’t escape. Every cell in my body begs for her, dizzied by her scent and drunk on her taste as my tongue tangles with hers. Her body is hot against me, my hips rutting unconsciously against her as the head of my cock slides across her stomach to leave a sticky trail. Strangely, I have a distant desire to mark all of her like this, so that no one else would ever dare touch her.

She moves backward until her legs hit the bed, and it’s so easy to lift her small frame, to throw her up to the middle of the mattress so that I can crawl over her. My mouth never leaves her body, not for a second, my tongue and teeth tasting every inch of her I can reach as she squirms beneath me.

“Burns,” she hisses as my tongue laves at the swell of her breast. “Hurts, Noah.”

“Shh,” I soothe, swirling my tongue around her nipple as my fingers brush a line down her stomach. “I’m going to make it better.”

It’s a mess between her legs, her slick streaming from her to coat her thighs and the blankets and my hand as I tease my fingers through the wet crease of her. She groans when I push two inside, and they slip in easily, making a lewd sound that rings in my ears with every slow in and out.

She rolls her hips against my hand as her fingers tangle in my hair, and I moan against her nipple when she tugs, her nails scratching my scalp in a silent urging that I hurry. If I felt unlike myself in the times that I’ve touched her before this—right now I feel like another person altogether. Gone is my rationality and my worries about what might come after this, and in their place there is just the raw need for her, to give her everything she’s asking me for.

I wrap my hands around her waist, flipping her to her stomach without warning, and she makes some surprised sound when she goes, wriggling in my grip.

“Noah, what are you—”

“Lift your hips,” I urge, tugging at her waist. “I want to see you.”

Her legs are trembling, so much so that I have to help her lift her ass in the air to bare the hottest part of her, my blood thrumming at the sight of her slick trickling down her thighs as if taunting me to lap it up.

I think it catches her by surprise when I do just that, pressing my tongue to the back of her thigh and cleaning the thin, clear line of her slick with my tongue until I can nuzzle between her legs. She makes some garbled sound against the mattress as I lick through her folds, dipping my tongue inside her only to draw it out and pat at the swollen bundle of her clit, which is practically throbbing now.

I can taste it on her, her heat; like honey and liquid sex and all of it enough to ensure that I am out of my mind for her. I eat at her hungrily, my lips and tongue working through the soft flesh of her as my hand curls under her belly to find her clit and roll it under my fingertips. She pushes back against my face in surprise when I begin to tease her clit, and I hold her there, lapping at her like a starving animal as I work her sensitive bud with my fingers.

“N-Noah,” she gasps, her lower half shaking. “Noah, I—ah. I—”

“Alpha,” I practically growl against her, applying more pressure against her clit with my fingers. “I want you to call me Alpha.”

I don’t sound like me, I don’t feel like me—but the normally calm, composed Noah seems to have taken a back seat, unable to even fight the raw instincts that are driving me now. That Noah stands no chance against the warm, pliant omega who’s begging for his touch.

I let my tongue slip inside her again, enjoying the sharp cry it draws from her.

“Alpha.”

The word makes my blood sing, makes parts of me I never knew about twist and howl with delight. I can feel her trembling all over now, hear her toes popping and her breath catching, and I know she’s close. I can smell it on her. Can feel it on my tongue. I close my eyes as I slide my tongue through this part of her, never relenting, unable to do so until I can feel her coming apart against my mouth.

And when she does, there is no relief for me, as I thought there might be. When she dissolves into a shaking mess that is mewling my name as her slick gushes against my mouth—that howling inside only worsens, only cries out for more.

I’m not gentle, not like I’d prefer to be, when I push up to my knees. My hands at her hips are too rough as I pull her back against me, my palm too heavy as I hold her ass in place just so I can rub the heated length of my cock against the slick center of her. She doesn’t give me any indication that she minds, seeming to welcome it instead—but there is a flash of clarity in the cloud of her heat then, one that has me going very still even though I’m only seconds from burying myself inside her.

“I need you to be sure,” I grind out, my alpha growling in protest at having stopped. “I need you to be sure you want me to do this. If I knot you now . . .” I suck in a ragged breath. “I don’t know if I’ll be able to stop.”

I feel Mackenzie’s slim fingers reaching to touch my knuckles, rubbing a soothing circle as her face turns against the mattress to look back at me. “Please, Alpha,” she whispers hoarsely. “Please give me your knot.”

I hiss a curse when she pushes against my cock, waving her hips tantalizingly to accentuate her point. I smooth my hand over her lower back as I dip my hips to notch at her entrance, holding my breath as I watch the swollen head slip inside to disappear inch by inch. It’s mesmerizing, watching her stretch around me—her body tight and warm and wet and taking me inside like she was made for me. I make a choked sound when the only slightly swollen base of my knot disappears to leave me rooted fully inside, knowing that soon it will swell, that she’ll take everything I can give her and more.

And it’s that thought that forces me to move.

I can see everything like this—unable to tear my eyes away from the sight of her body opening up for me again and again, and I can hear words that I’ve never spoken fall from my mouth, like they were waiting for her.

“Look at you,” I rumble. “Look at how good you take my cock.”

“Yes,” she whines. “Just like that.”

I slap my hips against her, slamming inside a little more roughly. “Is this what you need? Did you need your alpha’s knot?”

Not her alpha, some small voice whispers from far away. Not hers.

I completely ignore the voice.

“Say it,” I growl. “Say you need your alpha’s knot.”

“I—fuck.” Her face buries in the blankets as she makes an unintelligible sound. “I need—please—I need your knot, Alpha.”

“Good girl,” I hum, smoothing a hand down her spine.

Her hair looks darker dripping with sweat, clinging to her skin at her temples and shoulders. Her mouth is parted and swollen and red when she turns her face to press her cheek to the mattress, and when her eyes flutter open, when they find mine—the amber irises almost seem to glow with how bright they look.

“I’m going to make it feel better,” I grit out, the slap of my skin against hers ringing in the air. “I’m going to knot this pretty little body until you can’t take it anymore.”

“Mm. Yes,” she pants, her fingers curling into the blankets to fist the material. “What I want.”

“So fucking beautiful,” I manage through clenched teeth. My lashes flutter as the pressure in my cock swells to unbearable levels. I can feel my knot already beginning to thicken, making it more and more difficult to push inside her with every thrust. “You’re perfect, Mackenzie. You know that? So goddamn perfect.”

“Noah, I—”

She cries out when I hit deep, the head of my cock sliding against the most sensitive place inside of her as she trembles around me. I can feel how close she is in the ragged pants of her breath and the shaking quality of her limbs, and I can just wind my arm around her middle, my fingers slipping between her legs to tease the still-sensitive bundle of nerves there.

“Fuck,” she hisses.

I roll quick circles against her clit, feeling her clench around me with every swipe of my fingers as her voice comes out in a garbled mess of my name and Alpha and please and all sorts of filthy utterings. There is so much of her slick between us that the sound of my skin colliding with hers is wet and sloppy, and I can feel my stomach clenching as the pressure in my cock reaches the tipping point, barely able to hold on as I wait to feel her let go.

I barely make it, letting go only seconds after I feel her coming apart around me, practically roaring with relief as I push as deep inside her as I can and curl my body around hers as the sweet pleasure of release washes over me. The sensation of her body accepting my knot is indescribable, like every good thing I’ve ever felt all rolled into one as I lock inside her, ensuring that she can’t be anywhere but right here with me.

Even after, when the howling of my hindbrain calms ever so slightly, when it gives way to some semblance of rationality—I still can’t find it in me to feel worried about this. With all my talk of consequences and being careful . . . Right now I can only focus on how good she feels. How right. She snuggles against me afterward like she was made to, her body fitting with mine as if by design. I wrap my arms around her tightly as I nuzzle her hair, my chest rising and falling heavily against her back.

When I hear her breathing even out, telling me that she’s slipped into a peaceful sleep—I press a kiss to her hair, pulling her impossibly closer, like I’m afraid that she might not be there when I wake up if I don’t. I close my eyes and try to will myself to rest, too, knowing that this is only the beginning and that there will be more of this frenzy to come—but in my head there is a buzzing of something that wants to make itself known, something that I’ve been doing my best to ignore, I think.

Because with Mackenzie in my arms like this . . . I’m realizing that I don’t want to let her go.