Her Brother, Her Mate

Mitch wasn’t touching her, besides for a few seconds he was running his hands down her back to support her, and he wasn’t using his usual moves he uses to pick up random chicks. I can tell by his body language that he really likes her. He’s showing her respect he’s never shown any woman, even Carli.

For some reason, that just pisses me off more.

“Don’t you f*****g do anything until I get there, Mark. You can’t cause a scene in front of humans and you will just end up scaring her off. Where are you at? The usual place?”

I forgot I was still on the phone.

“Yeah,” I mutter.

“Just hold tight. I’m speeding.” I can tell by the echo that he has me on his car speaker.

If he came all the way from the pack house, it could take him forever to get here. I can’t wait 20 minutes. I need to fix this now.

But how? Hadley keeps looking up at Mitch, sending him little smiles and laughing at whatever he is saying. There is adoration in her eyes when she looks at him, and it feels like a knife is being plunged into my f*****g chest watching them.Property © of NôvelDrama.Org.

Without realizing it, I start walking towards them, the mate bond pulling me to her like gravity.

My heart hurts watching her so comfortable with my brother when she won’t even talk to me, but the bond doesn’t hurt or feel any sort of discomfort. It’s weird. I thought the bond was supposed to cause me pain in times like these. The bond seems stronger than ever.

“Mark?” Trevor saw me when I was about 10 yards away. “Hey! What are you doing here? Come join us!”

Everyone turned to stare at me. Everyone has welcoming smiles on their faces, except Hadley. She looks me up and down with indifference, then turns her face away towards Mitch. Mitch is beaming when he sees me, and then as he takes in my expression and my mood, his smile starts to drop.

“You okay there, bro?”

No, I’m not f*****g okay. Not at all. Hadley looks back at me, and as she starts studying my face and demeanor, her eyes seem to soften, though she still seems apprehensive of me.

“Mark, what’s wrong?” Simone waves me over to her, and after a few seconds of hesitation, I force my feet to carry me the rest of the way to the table.

My phone dropped to my side, and I could hear Matt yelling at me at the other end. Vincent, with his freaky f*****g hearing, can probably make out what’s being said as he stares down at it, then looks up to me in surprise. He leans in and whispers something in his mate’s ear that makes her gasp, then turns back to me with her jaw dropped.

“Don’t tell me….Mark, is she?” her voice flints through my head through the mind link.

I nod, not taking my eyes off Hadley and Mitch, who are both looking at me in confusion, Hadley leaning slightly into him like my presence is making her uncomfortable. It tears me up seeing her trust him when she doesn’t trust me.

Simone grips my hand, and I can finally, through much effort, drag my eyes down to hers and away from my mate’s.

“She’s your mate?” Simone asks.

“Yeah,” I managed to respond.

“Oh, honey. Don’t do anything rash. Mitch is her mate too.”

My eyes widened in surprise, then snapped back up to Mitch. He is scrutinizing my demeanor, and places his arm around the back of Hadley’s chair, almost possessively, and the look in his eyes is almost telling me to back off. When his bare arm brushes against her shoulder, instead of flinching away and avoiding his touch like she did to me, she leans into it, looking back at him with concern before turning her eyes to me with apprehension once again.

“Mark, I don’t know what’s wrong, but you should sit down. You look like you’re about to faint, you’re so pale,”Trevor tells me, getting up and pulling out an empty chair beside him for me between him and Vincent.

I eyed the chair, then looked back at my brother, “Mitch, we need to talk.”

Hadley POV

I love Simone. She is so easy to love and Ralph was right. Vincent adores her. It’s been fun watching them all evening. . They are like a single unit the way they work and move together. Vincent fawned over her like she was the most precious gift in the world and Simone looked at Vincent like he was her entire world.

We came here after a tasting at Vincent’s new restaurant to have a few drinks at the bar, but it was unbelievably packed, so Vincent had a table arranged for us on the restaurant’s patio instead.

We were laughing and joking with one another, each of them sharing stories from growing up here. Mostly at Mitchel’s expense. Simone was currently telling me a long story about how Mitchel kept being inappropriate to girls at school when they wore skirts, so their friend Carli forced him to wear dresses to school the entire week.

She even had pictures still on her phone to show me. He didn’t even look upset in the pictures. He was cheesing with that adorable boyish smile, posing for the camera in feminine ways.

“It wasn’t that bad. I free balled it the entire week. The breeze was nice,” he smirked.

“You were the hot commodity that week, for sure,” Trevor laughed, “Coach Brock made you keep the dresses on during P.E. too.”

“You wore them to gym class?” I whispered in disbelief, giggling uncontrollably, “Did you still participate?”

“Oh yeah. Stretching was the best. I wore a micro dress on the last day, Carli saying some s**t about me not treating it like a punishment enough. Coach Brock about had a heart attack when I bent over to stretch and my entire package popped out.”

I couldn’t control how badly I was laughing at that point. My head was resting on Mitchel’s shoulder while I tried to get the fit to stop.

“You two are so cute together,” Simone says, making me blush.

I like Mitchel. I shouldn’t. I know I shouldn’t, but there’s something about him that just calls to something inside me. The more time I spent with him today, the stronger this feeling became.

We start giggling about getting him in a dress now. He’s totally fine with it, even offering to switch outfits with Simone, who is wearing a very elegant pink shift dress. With his bulky muscles and her slender frame, I doubt he could get his thigh in it, let alone wear it.

“Quit trying to get in my wife’s clothes, Mitch,” Vincent half-heartedly scolded him, making us all laugh.

“Mark?” Trevor called out, drawing our attention to the busy sidewalk. “Hey! What are you doing here? Come join us!”

This is the first time I’ve seen him since that time in the lobby when he tried to come onto me after hitting on Jenny. I try to ignore his presence, but there is something about the way he is looking at me that makes me feel unsettled. It’s like he’s in pain, and I’m the one who caused it. I try to keep my focus away from him, but my eyes keep getting drawn back to the turmoil on his face.

Pain started beating in my chest, observing the pain in his eyes. Why is he looking at me like I just broke his heart? Is it because of the flowers?

The others are talking to him, but their words are drowned out by the drumming in my own ears. I have to fight the urge to get up and go to him, comforting him and chasing away whatever is causing his sorrow.

What the hell is wrong with me?

I wanted nothing to do with this man. I have his note in my purse still, ready to show his mom to get her to keep him away from me. Why does that sound almost painful now? I don’t even know him. Just the bad stuff I’ve been hearing from everyone since I first saw him.

But I also heard a lot of bad things about Mitchel. Mitchel even told me bad things about himself and I’ve just grown to like him more and more throughout the day. Maybe I just need to get to know Mark too? Why does that thought make my heart skip a beat?

“Mitch, we need to talk,” he says, staring at his brother.

The pain in his face turned to rage when he looked at his brother.

Why do I feel this deep-rooted need to stop them from talking and comfort both of them at the same time? This is so confusing. What should I do?