8. I Hate Loosing Control

**Xander**

If I would live for another hundred years, I could bet my ass and register that this would be counted as the most pathetic day of my life. Not only had the eccentric woman I was pining for refused to have anything to do with me, but she also did it right after I kissed her. Mouth to mouth, until we tasted nothing but each other.
Bite her, mark her. That was all my wolf insisted, and against my better judgments, I let go of her. So, yes, everything was pathetic except for the kiss. It was just perfect.
“Anything vodka,” I said, slapping the top of the bar to snatch my new bartender’s attention that Blaize has hired. Since there were still a couple of hours to go for the club to open, I decided to bask in the silence and alcohol for some time.
“Sure, boss.”
For the first time, it felt right to be the owner of ‘Club Fever’. Blaize and I always wanted to be one, and when we moved to Prescott, we thought we could try out something other than real estate for once.
“Here you go,” he placed the drink before me, all fancied up with sliced lemon and quirky straw.
“Thanks.” I grabbed the glass and almost chugged the whole drink down my throat. Who cared if the burning elixir for sorrow came decorated or not?
“Is this the new normal for you now?”
I turned around to look at Blaize, dressed in his usual white shirt and blue jeans, attire he could never get rid of. His obsession for various shades of white shirts was borderline stupid for shifters like us who ha no qualms about being naked.
Moving closer, he clapped a hand on my back before dragging a seat beside mine. The silver on his shone, twinkling with knowledge as he wagged his brows. “You are having human sickness now,’ he whispered, only for my ears and winked.
“Fuck off,” I muttered, drowning the rest of the drink. The last thing I wanted was a company of a wolf who could read my mind far better than anyone else in the room.
“What do you want, Blaize?” I asked, gesturing at the empty glass for the bartender to fill. The new kid was smart enough to refill in silence even though he exchanged a worried look with Blaize, who simply demanded the bottle and sent him elsewhere.
“Now, I might have been a little zoned out, but I did hear words like kiss, dates, and relationship in the morning,” he fished for information. “Care to explain?”
Poking around the raw wound wasn’t exactly my idea when I came here, but the only way I would get rid of him was by a meagre explanation. And that’s what I did. “It was probably for the best. She’s human and...”
“Are you sure about it?” he asked, cutting into my words.
Like on autopilot, my head snapped around. “What do you mean?”
Blaize looked around the place, drumming his fingers on the bar. “I don’t know. I mean, my base instincts could be wrong, but she doesn’t give vibes very humanly.” I didn’t like the way he sounded, especially with the accuracy he described. “Every time I have seen her, she is restless and paranoid. Her senses are sometimes too strong or too weak. And...”
“Were you following her?” I almost growled. An ugly twig of jealousy branched out before I could snap it. And despite the thinly crowded staff, everyone’s attention was now on us. Just great.
Blaize shot me an irritated look and hushed his voice to avoid any further interest. “Fates! No.” He shook his head and tsked. “I just came across her a couple of times in the apartment building. Her heartbeats were so loud I could actually hear them across the distance.”
At the mention of her heartbeat, my own almost stopped beating. Maeve has been extraordinarily alluring, with those pretty green eyes gaping big. I quickly shoved those thoughts back into the recess of my mind. “It doesn’t matter anyway. She wants nothing to do with me.”
Masked the grim with a frown, I reached for the bottle and drank straight from it. Yes, this was exactly one of those days when I would want straight from the bottle.
“And you are just going to sulk?”
Why the fuck can’t Blaize leave me alone? “A human mate can be complicated,” I grumbled lowly. “I am not talking about myself, but for the pack.”
Yeah, this excuse sounded good in theory, for the pack.
“You are afraid that it would not go down well with father or the Council?” he asserted thoughtfully.
A human getting involved with werewolves has never gone down well for any of the wolves, alphas, or not. It led to messy situations and vulnerable chances that no pack ever wanted for them. But rationality has very little space in our animal instincts.
“I am a born-alpha, and I don’t need to concern myself about the opinions of others when it comes to my mate,” I clarified. “But I am worried about what will happen when I have to mark her. The venom of my teeth would be too strong for her human self. What if she can’t survive?”
The very chemicals flowing through our system gave us the rush and high of sexual exchanges during hunt and mating. But for humans, it could be too potent and lethal.
“The goddess won’t choose a weak mate for an alpha, you know how it works,” my brother, the beta of my pack, reminded. “Human or not, she would be a Luna to an alpha.”
“And what happens when she learns the truth and decides to run away?” I challenged. “I will have to force her will then.”
We were, at the end of the day, predators. We hunted because we needed to and partly because we loved the chase. The thrill of the prey’s pounding beats gave us a high, and we lived that moment to the fullest.
But when I would have to scour the land and chase her down, I would have to live with the fact that she was unwilling. There was no way she would agree to be mated with a supernatural being.
“My wolf will never let her go if I truly accept that she is my mate! There will be no way out for her,” I concluded, reminding myself all over again that what happened today happened for the greater good—the greater good of her humanness.
Blaize let out a dejected sigh and rubbed his scruffy jaw. “The question is, Xander: aren’t you too deep in this for her already? I am not asking this as your beta or a pack member; I am asking this as your brother. Women were never a temptation for you, and at some point, I was sure that instead of hunting a mate, you’d pick one politically suited for you as the future alpha of the ‘The Night Pride’. But when you are around her, you are different.”
I scoffed mildly, tracing the condensed Vodka bottle. “You have just seen me with her once or twice.”
“Once is enough for us, you know,” he said softly, and I quickly recognized the grieving tone is his voice.
Blaize had already found his mate when he was fourteen, and they would have mated too by sixteen had she survived. His wolf grieved for years after that, unable to control his shifting for the first few months after the loss. It took him another year to adjust until he finally managed to bring himself to heel. But the loss was still buried deep somewhere.
“What happens the first time?” I asked, my mind drifting somewhere far away. I have never been curious about it because I never needed to, but now, I desperately wanted to be acquainted with the nuances.
He scrubbed a hand over his face, smiling with the saddest of smiles I have seen. “I wish I could describe it, but there are not many words for that. And you know the worst part is?” I simply stared at him blankly. “No matter how long you live, how hard you try and forget, you just can’t. The human brain can be controlled, but my wolf never forgets.”
“I am sorry, man.” I squeezed his knee in consolation.
“So you see, if it happens, it happens. Nobody has any power over it.”
“I hate losing control.”
That’s what I was afraid of. I was powerless to the feelings, to my wolf-heart that begged to be mated, and the force between my legs throbbed with an animal need to claim her. I struggled to find words to name the feelings that coursed through me, but I had no words strong enough to hold them.
Blaize and I sat there until it was time to open the club, and slowly the crowd poured in. For a small town, Prescott was full of partiers, and they never let a good weekend go down the drain. Personally, I stayed away from blaring music and the maddening crowd, but today, I would just do that.