First steps

My dreams were plagued by Callan and his midnight Black wolf, his dazzling black eyes staring at me intently as if they were looking directly into my soul.

I woke up but could not keep those intense black eyes with a hint of gold out of my head.

I felt an urgent need to empty my bladder after a few minutes of being awake but I was buried under a shit ton of muscles that belonged to none other than my dear mate.

"Callan get off" I mumbled softly trying to not scare him awake. I might not like him but I knew how terrible it is to wake up to someone screaming at the top of their lungs.

He groaned and instead of detaching himself from me, he held onto my waist tighter.

"Don't go" he said in a very low and husky voice. Fuck, men and their morning voices!

"I need to pee Callan" I told him while squirming around, trying to show him the urgency of this situation.

He reluctantly let me go with a grunt. As soon as I was free, I sprinted right into his bathroom and did my business. I washed my hands and noticed that my dress had been neatly folded by somebody and was placed on the counter space besides the water basin.

"Who did that?" I mumbled to myself...I left that in a puddle at the foot of the bed and Callan as much as I remember got into the bed right after me. So was someone in this room while we were asleep?

A creepy shiver went down my spine making goosebumps appear all over my arms and legs.

I exited the bathroom and marched towards the bed.

"Callan! Hey dickwad! Get up" I was getting antsy for some reason. I wanted to get some food in me and get out of here, I had this horrible feeling in the pit of my stomach...

"Not now Anaïs" Callan said while burying his face deeper into his pillow.

"Callan get up!" I said while walking over to his side and shaking him by his shoulders.

I was suddenly yanked forward and ended up wrapped around Callan, hanging onto his arm for dear life.

"Hey!" I smack his arm for scaring the bees out of me.

"Just keep still for a while princess, I want to get a little bit more sleep" he said but I wasn't having it. It felt weird in this house and I needed to get out.

"Callan I think there's someone downstairs and I'm scared" I whispered in his ears making him jolt up into a sitting position while he pushed me behind him, protecting me from the fake threat I just made up.

"Finally" I said as I moved his arm away and rolled off of the bed.

"Get up we're going out for breakfast" I said trying to get him to move his ass. Once my words dawned upon him, he just fell back down on the bed while tugging at his hair clearly feeling annoyed.

"Anaïs you're killing me" he said while turning his head towards me, his eyes carefully looking over my body as if capturing a picture of me in his head.

"Just get up please, we can grab breakfast at a cafe and talk about us and this whole mate thing" I said while motioning between the two of us.

I did want to talk to him about us being mates but I also chose to say that because I knew that he'd do anything to get me to accept the mate thing and if it meant getting up early and grabbing breakfast outside would get me to talk about this, he'd do it in a heartbeat.

As expected Callan quickly got out of bed and got ready within 15 minutes. I borrowed a t-shirt and some pajamas with string in em which Callan digged out from the depths of his closet and we headed out to a local cafe called Brianna's. It was in Forestoak, a town which was the closest to our territory, just a few miles away from our eastern territory line.

We drove to the preety little cafe and settled down on a table right besides the window.

Callan ordered a normal milk coffee and some eggs and bacon while I got myself a black coffee and some chocolate chip pancakes.

"Happy now princess?" Callan said as soon the waiter went away after jotting down our order.

"I'm sorry but I just had this uneasy feeling and wanted to get out of there" I told him while resting my elbows on the table. I massaged my neck a little, trying to get rid of the tension that had manifested itself there.

"What you don't like being with me that much?" He said while scoffing and glaring at my hands while I was trying to release the stress from my neck and shoulder.

"Are you an idiot? If it was you I wanted to get away from why would I bring you along with me?" I asked him with a 'how dumb can you be?' look on my face.

"Umm" Callan smiled sheepishly at his own stupidity and cleared his throat. "well then do you feel better now?" He asked while scratching the back of his head, still looking embarassed. Alphas and their stupid male brains..

"Yeaa" I replied and then continued "so umm I'm not gonna be a child like I was last night" I started, my words focusing Callan's attention on me.

"Listen you did some very horrible things to me and I certainly won't just start liking you within a few hours. It'll take time but I do know that you're not a bad person, you're a good leader, you love the pack members and as far as I know I'm the only person you say crap to" I said and held up my hand when I saw Callan open his trap to say something but I wasn't done.

"We're mates and that's a big deal and you're not a horrible enough person for me to not be able to give you a chance to change your behaviour towards me. You never hurt me physically and I know you helped me a lot with the female wolves in the pack who wanted to rip my head off for having your attention so you deserve a second chance and I'm not going to be immature about something that is very important to our species" I told him and looked at him expectantly, asking with my eyes whether he was with me or not. He simply gave me a nod and smiled.

"I won't fall for you in a day and neither are we going to be like other mated couples but I'm willing to try. I do have one condition though and that is that you cannot touch me without consent. I'm not talking about sex here, I'm talking about the kiss yesterday and the grabbing and the carrying me over your shoulder and the spanking" I said my eyes drawing together as the last word of my speech left my lips.

Callan didn't say anything for a minute, maybe he was trying to gather his thoughts. I knew my thoughts were a bundle of mess and since he was in the same situation as me, his might be too.

"I get it and I'm sorry for kissing you like that, it wasn't right. My wolf lost control when you ran from me but that's not an excuse and I promise I'll try my best to not let that happen again and thanks for being understanding about our bond. I expected you to still be angry and I'll give you as much time as you need to come around and accept me" he said while maintaining that charming smile.

I took in a huge breath and let it out along with all the mate crap from my head. It felt good to actually sort this out instead of fighting with him like last night.

"If only we were this sensible last night" I mumbled quietly.

"You were the one who ran" he said while shrugging his shoulder. I scoffed and kicked his leg under the table.

"And you were the one who carried me on your shoulder in front of the entire pack while you were naked!" I said while smirking. I could see a tiny hint of red on his cheeks but he tried to hide it by narrowing his eyes and glaring playfully at me.

"I wouldn't have done that if someone didn't run from me" he said while cocking his head to the side and smirking.

"I wouldn't have ran if someone hadn't been a complete arrogent, self centred jerk" I retorted back but regretted it as soon as the words left my mouth.

Callan's face fell, his eyes no longer glaring at me but looking sorry. I didn't like hurting him. he knows what he did, I don't have to bring it up again and again...

"Well whatever happened yesterday already happened and we can't change it. Let's focus on what we're supposed to do from now on" I said trying to get past that awkward moment.

Our food soon arrived and we both dug in. Callan told me that now that he has found his mate, his father would hold his Alpha ceremony a week after today and my Luna ceremony would be held 3 days after his Alpha ceremony.

My breath hitched at the mention of my Luna ceremony and I almost choked on my pancakes. I didn't really realise untill now that I would be the Luna of our pack....

Seeing me panick, Callan filled a glass with water and handed it to me which I accepted gratefully.

I gulped it all down in one go and slammed the glass on the table. Me....a luna?

"Hey, it's okay princess. I'll be there with you through everything, you not gonna deal with it alone" he said while reaching over and taking my hand in his. He started tracing circles on the back of my hand with his thumb.

Surprisingly his words and actions did calm me down. I guess the touch of a mate worked both ways and not just while calming down an angry caveman Alpha.

"But I- I haven't even graduated yet Callan and then there's college! How would we manage that?" I asked him.

"College?" Callan asked to which I nodded my head.

"You want to go to college? But why?" He asked as if I've said something stupid.

"What do you mean why?!" I asked annoyed. Do not tell me this asshat thinks that girls don't need to go to college cause I would cut his dick off if--

"Well you're going to be the Luna, so it's not like you'll need higher studies since you would already have a job as the leader of our pack, just like me" he said as a matter of fact.

Ohhhhhh

"But I've always wanted to go to college..even if I won't be getting a job now, still I've always wanted to study psychology further" I said getting a little upset over the fact that things have changed so drastically in just one day!

My shoulder slouched with sadness and my pancakes lay forgotten on the table.

"I'm sorry Anaïs, I know it must be a lot to take in. I have always known that I was going to be the Alpha but you planned your life differently and now things changed so much.... I'm sorry princess" he said while squeezing my hand which he was still holding firmly.

"Don't apologise, it's not like you chose for this to happen...is there really no way around this?" I asked him, my eyes pleading with him to tell me there was some other way. I shook my leg nervously waiting for his response.

"I guess we can talk to my dad...I mean he didn't take over until he was 23 which is when he met mom, so maybe we could delay it. But let's not get out hopes up princess, it's been this way for as long as we can remember. An alpha took over as soon as they found their mate.." he said to me while giving me a tight smile.

I nodded my head and smiled at him, happy that atleast he was willing to talk to his father, to try and bend the rules a little just for me.

"See our mate is nice to us" Isis snapped at me. I guess she was still angry at me for running away..

"You know how sorry I am Isis but try and understand me, he made me feel awful for years and I was taken aback by everything... it's not like I don't want a mate and I don't want you to live without one either. I was caught off guard..." I genuinely apologized to her. I knew she must've been in pain when I ran away from Callan and I was truly sorry that I did that to her.

"I can't really stay mad when you give such a good ass apology, now can I bitch?" She snickered, annoyed that instead of fighting with her, I apologised.

Callan suddenly stood up from his seat, the chair made a scraping noise against the floor and it fell back because he stood up with such force.

"What happened?!" I asked him worried as too why he was being frantic like this.

"We need to go, our home is on fire!" He said as he quickly pulled out some money from his pocket and dropped the bills on the table.

He grabbed my wrist tightly and pulled me towards his car. My heart was beating so fast in my chest, a loud ringing noise was all I could hear and my breath was caught in my throat.

All I could think about was if I hadn't been a bitch and dragged Callan out of the house then we....