Chapter Three

A couple of times a week, Emmett, Raj and Leo each led one of the sparring and self-defense classes that were held at the Blue Crescent pack gym. They'd been sort of conscripted into it when they were younger; overexcitable juvenile wolves who had been flagged for having an excess of fighting prowess and more energy than one could throw a stick at, which back then was often funneled into getting into fights. They'd each begun by assisting the wolves who actually ran the classes but, over the years, had graduated to teaching, themselves.

Not that Leo would necessarily need return to it now, having claimed the role of Alpha, but somehow Em predicted that his friend wouldn't give up the task even when he was snowed under with other work. The three of them had talked about it over the years, usually after a few bottles of cheap liquor when they were quite a bit younger, and it seemed that for all three of them, helping to run the classes as well as participating in more advanced sessions themselves had been an excellent way to siphon off some of the excess energy they'd had as juveniles, meaning the three of them as a group got into far less trouble. It was a good way to contribute to the pack, as well as keeping one's fighting instincts sharp, so Emmett didn't think he'd see Leo giving up his role as an instructor any time soon.

The old Alpha, James, had stopped coming to classes early in his term of leadership, and the three of them had thought it was blatantly foolish—it took him away from the people he was supposed to be leading. He'd isolated himself in his seat of power in the back room of a local restaurant, as well as removing the opportunity for himself to improve his fighting. No, Em didn't think Leo would make the same mistake. As soon as he could find it in himself to move more than about six inches away from Della, Emmett figured he'd come back to their usual routine. Now his mate was out of hospital, it seemed Leo was getting more comfortable having her out of his sight, at least for short periods.

He'll need to work on that, Emmett thought as he stepped between the pairs whose training he was overseeing, straightening someone's posture here, correcting the angle of a strike there. We can't have an Alpha who can't take his eyes off his girlfriend for more than five minutes at a time. Of course, traveling down that path just made him think of Petra, and whether he'd be happy to have her out of his reach more than briefly if she was his. He'd been practically climbing the walls to talk to her again, but she hadn't messaged him as she'd said she would, and he didn't want to hound her. Instead, he was driving himself insane wondering what else she was doing on all these nights that she was busy. Was she seeing other men? That question had sent him out running in the woods in his wolf form the last two nights. She had every right to be dating; just because he had announced that she was his mate, didn't mean he had an exclusive claim on her, in her eyes at least. Not so much in the eyes of his wolf, which had decided he wanted an exclusive claim on this beautiful female and would give pretty much anything to have her underneath him, wanting him as much as he wanted her.

He had to stop thinking about her while he was supposed to be teaching, because his workout shorts didn't exactly hide much, and anyway, he was supposed to be focusing on his sparring students.

He wandered between the pairs, correcting hand and foot placement and showing people how to use the shifting of their weight to their best advantage, until they got to the point toward the end of the class where he gathered his students back together again. At the end of this class each week, he picked one student—someone who had really shown their skills that day—and allowed them to attack him, with Emmett using only the moves they'd been working on to defend himself. Usually, the bouts were over pretty quickly, because Em was a fairly advanced fighter, but the students liked it, so he kept doing it.

This week, he picked Julia McInley, a woman at least two decades older than Emmett himself who had been progressing through the various self-defense classes with impressive dedication. He wasn't sure what had made her decide that she wanted to improve her fighting now, but she'd thrown her full effort into it, and it showed in how quickly she was learning. This wasn't the first time she'd been the one Emmett selected to try to attack him, so he gave her a grin as they settled into fighting stances across from each other and he nodded at her to begin. "When you're ready, Julia."

"Oh, I'm ready," she said with a grin of her own, then she attacked.

Julia wasn't just good at defense—she'd been picking up some good attacking moves too. She was fast, and good at hiding where she was going to strike next, which made her interesting to fight because he had to work to predict her moves. She wasn't exactly on his level—Emmett had been sparring with the highest-level fighters in the pack since he was in his teens—but she was good and a good example to the other students of how quickly one could improve if they practiced.

She tucked a stray hair back behind her ear and aimed a kick at his ankles, and Emmett shifted out of the way, trying not to think of how it looked when Petra tucked her hair back the same way. Julia came for him again, and he blocked her blows in the same way he'd demonstrated for the students earlier. He'd been doing this exact thing for so long, it was almost automatic, which would have been good except that it allowed his brain to wander elsewhere when it should have been focused on fighting, and the only place his brain was wandering recently was to Petra. It fed him the image of her walking away from him after they'd eaten lunch together at the sandwich shop, the curves of her body half-hidden in her business attire, her black skirt highlighting the lines where her hips became her legs. The way she'd looked at him when he'd had her pinned against the wall outside Della's hospital room, how she'd said she liked the improper way he spoke to her. Would she like it if he did it again? If he told her all the inappropriate thoughts that ran through his mind the moment he laid eyes on her, the moment her intoxicating scent filled his lungs and apparently completely switched off his brain?

One of Julia's blows hit the side of his chest, dragging him back to the present, to the fight that he was only paying half the attention that he should be. He wasn't asked to run these classes so he could go through the motions and think about his mate, he growled at himself. He focused on his opponent, shoving all thoughts of Petra out of his head. Julia shouldn't even have been able to touch him with the training that she'd received so far, and she was clearly thrilled that she'd managed to land a blow—not unreasonably, since most times his students didn't even come close. She was breathing hard, sweating with the effort of her attacks.

She was fully involved in her offense, swinging at him hard enough that the impact of the blows as he blocked them reverberated through him. Finally, he saw her shift her weight just enough that he could see she was about to kick, and he caught her ankle in the air and swung his own leg around to knock her foot out from underneath her. Julia was laughing as she hit the mat, and she punched him playfully in the shoulder as she rose to her feet to the applause of the students.

"I hit you!" she crowed. "I got one through, I hit you!"

"You sure did," Emmett said, deciding not to say anything about how distracted he had been. Let her have this excitement. It'll keep her motivated to keep attending classes, and maybe some of the other students too. "Well done, Julia. That's a great lesson—never be afraid to take advantage if you see someone getting distracted. Sometimes that's the thing that wins you the fight."

Julia glanced over one of her shoulders, then the other. "What was distracting you?"

Em shook his head and clapped her on the shoulder. "Nothing important." He turned back to the rest of the class. "I hope you're all planning on following Julia's example, guys. That was a great class, I'll see you next week."

He stayed behind to get the gym back in order, so he was returning mats to their correct places when Raj arrived. They often crossed over at the end of this class. Raj taught the one that started in another half hour, and they regularly used the time between to spar.

"Emmett," his friend called as he entered the gym. "How'd class go?"

"How're you doing?" Emmett asked, rising from the mat he was dragging back into alignment. "Class was good, but I got distracted during the demo at the end and my student actually managed to hit me. I've got to get this woman out of my head. Thinking about her is interfering with everything."

"This happens when you find your mate," Raj said, putting on his Librarian Voice the way he did when he was trying to demonstrate that he knew about something. "You saw what it was like with Leo, when Della arrived on the scene."

"Yeah, I haven't talked to him since yesterday morning," Emmett said. "You know they're out of the hospital, right? Della's on bed rest for another couple of days, though, and Leo's refusing to allow her out of his sight for more than about five minutes."

"I spoke to him today," Raj offered. "He wanted me to pass on his thanks for covering his ass while he's looking after her, though from what she was saying in the background, it didn't sound like she feels like she needs it."

Emmett laughed. "Yeah, Della doesn't seem like the kind of girl who'd be desperate to be waited on hand and foot. Sounds like Leo's more doing it to satisfy his wolf's need to care for her, you know?"

"I'm telling you, this is what being mated does to a male," Raj said.

"I saw Petra at the sandwich shop near my office a couple of days ago," Emmett said.

"Oh yeah? How'd it go?"

"Well, she doesn't believe in the whole mating thing," Emmett said with a wry grin.

"You told her you thought she was your mate in a sandwich shop?" Raj burst out laughing. "I thought you were supposed to be the one who was good with women."

"She didn't run away screaming or anything," Emmett protested. "We ate lunch together. We decided we're going to try to find a way to work this thing out. Fix it, I guess. I think she wants to break the bond."

"And you're secretly hoping that if she spends more time with you, she'll fall head over heels for you and you can claim her for real," Raj said with annoying accuracy.

Emmett ducked his head. "Look, I'm not doing anything she didn't suggest, all right? You don't understand what this is like, having a female you're drawn to like this. I can't get her out of my head. All it takes is half a suggestion and my brain is suddenly completely fixated on her. I started thinking about her in the middle of a fight. I'm going to hurt someone if I keep doing that."

"I can do some more digging for you," Raj suggested, "But so far, I haven't found anything that suggested there's a way to turn off a mating bond. There are people who ignore them, but a couple of them seem to have gone insane, so I wouldn't recommend it. Plus, it's pretty hard to maintain another relationship when your wolf is desperate to get a different female underneath you."

"It's not like it hasn't driven me halfway to crazy already," Emmett muttered, kicking one of the mats back into alignment. "I'm just waiting for her to call me. It's driving me nuts."

"Since when do you wait for a woman to call you?" Raj asked, helping shove another of the mats into place for his own class. "Do you not have her number or something?"

"No, I have it," Emmett said. "It just seemed more respectful to wait for her to take the first step, since she's the one hanging back on all this. If it was up to me, I'd have claimed her the first time I saw her. She's… she's gorgeous, Raj. She's smart and funny, and gods, the way she smells…"

"All right, all right, calm down." Raj laughed. "I know how you get when you're interested in someone."

"No, it's not like that at all," Emmett protested. "Look, I know I have a history of falling for people, all right, but this is different. This makes them look like schoolyard crushes. She could ask me to walk across broken glass in bare feet for her and I'd do it, Raj. The minute I caught her scent, it was like something that I didn't even realize I've been searching for, my entire life, clicked into place."

"And still you told me the mating thing was a myth." Raj chuckled. "Man, you are in trouble." He sobered slightly. "Have you read any of the books I gave you? Did they help?"

"I hadn't when I saw her," Emmett said, choosing not to explain that he'd run home and torn through two of the short romance novels Raj had left in his mailbox in the hopes that they'd shed some light on how to proceed with Petra. "I've gone through a couple now, though," he added. "Who writes these things?"

"I don't know, but they might be useful," Raj said. "Showing you what women want and all that. At least, I'm pretty sure they're mostly written by women."

Emmett shook his head. "Chicks, man. I'll never understand them, even if I read a hundred of those books."

The doors opened, and a couple of Raj's students came in, seemingly surprised to see Emmett still there. He checked the time and realized he was running late. "I gotta go, I'm going to be late for work. I'll see you Friday for the game?"

"Let's see if we can get Leo away from Della for long enough to watch it with us," Raj confirmed.

Emmett jogged to the showers and rinsed himself off, thinking through the books he'd read over the last few nights. Were they really a representation of what women wanted? Some of them seemed totally bizarre, like whisking her away on a private jet without even checking that she had the next few days free for a holiday? Bending her over and spanking her for talking back, when all she'd done was given a sharp, witty response to a man who was, in Em's opinion, completely overbearing? Yet for some reason, the woman always seemed to love it, usually ending up begging the man to take her and take her hard, no matter what he did. Maybe he'd been wrong in the way he'd been treating women all these years.

Maybe that was what Petra would like.

He thought of the book he'd seen her reading at the sandwich shop—some sci-fi novel. Maybe he just needed to work out which, if any, of these romance novels she enjoyed and base his interactions with her off those. Or was that a manipulative way of getting her to view him as a hero in her own story? And what if it involved behaving completely differently to the way he would normally, and she fell for the character he was playing?

He shoved the thought out of his brain and headed to work. If nothing else, these books were telling him he could only give Petra so much space before he had to chase her. Yes, he'd done the right thing allowing her some time, but he needed to reach out soon. So, he'd give her today, and then he was going to call her.

His wolf wanted to howl in satisfaction at the very idea. Honestly, it was a miracle he'd been able to stay away for this long.

* * *

Petra looked at Emmett's number one more time and forcibly stopped herself from pressing it. No. You are making a point here. To herself, as well as to him, she was trying to prove that she had the strength to stay away from the man her wolf was so desperate to spend time with, preferably behind a locked door and with minimal clothing. Hell, the woman in her wasn't exactly unhappy at the idea, either, to be completely honest. But she'd made herself a promise. She'd wait a few days before reaching out, just to make it clear to both of them that she wasn't edge-of-her-seat desperate for his attention. It wasn't like he didn't have her number, either, if he was so eager to spend time with her.

Honestly, she was a little surprised he hadn't reached out after she'd left it more than a full day after their meeting to call. When one day ticked over into two, and then three, the surprise started to turn into worry. Had Emmett, to whom women flocked like seagulls, decided that chasing a girl who made him wait days before communicating was too much work?

She wanted to think that would be a good thing, that it would be productive for him to start coming to terms with the fact that they weren't meant for each other the way his belief that they were mates had convinced him they were. But her wolf was horrified at the idea that she might have driven him away by her inaction, and she liked to think that it was the wolf that was putting these hot and heavy dreams starring him into her subconscious every night.

So, she had decided she'd reach out today. She was going to call him on her lunch break. And she was going to be calm and collected and suggest that they speak to his librarian friend about whether he had any texts that referenced the mate bond story. If they could do some research about it, maybe they'd find out if there was a reason why the universe had chosen the two of them to smell so good to each other. And if they could understand it, maybe they could find a way to undo it. Find a way to get this man out of her head so she could concentrate for more than a minute and a half without Emmett O'Neill invading her thoughts. She just wanted her brain back, free of this all-consuming attraction. Was that so much to ask?

The morning was busy, as they mostly were while she was covering Della's assignments as well as her own. Hopefully, according to the conversation they'd had the night before, her friend would be back at work soon, and Petra could hand back responsibility for the afterschool programs and the groups they were slowly gaining traction with. It wasn't that she wasn't good at managing people; it was just that there were a lot of different groups who were curious why Della, to whom they'd become accustomed, had suddenly disappeared, and Petra didn't think her friend would want her giving out the story of her near burnout to the entire community. So, she was looking forward to being able to stop saying, "Oh, she's just sick. She'll be back soon!" and the resulting requirement to win each group's approval all over again. The vampires in particular had been used to Della personally, and Petra was really looking forward to being able to transfer back responsibility for conversations with the thousand-year-old immortals who kept flashing their fangs at her.

She found an unclaimed bench in the park across from the Youth and Community building and watched the children on the climbing frame for a while before unwrapping her lunch, taking deep breaths. Her heart was pounding at the very thought of speaking to Emmett, even over the phone. The wolf in her was whimpering in excitement as she pulled up his number on her phone and pressed the call button.

He answered after barely two rings, sounding slightly breathless. "Petra?"

"Emmett," she said, completely forgetting the speech she'd planned out. "Hi."

"Hi," he replied. He sounded somewhere between worried and… excited? "How are you?"

"I'm good, thanks," she managed. "Busy. Work, you know. I'm covering most of Della's urgent stuff while she's off, as well as mine. She should be back soon, though, so I'll be able to go back to just my usual level of busy."

"Yeah, I spoke to Leo yesterday," Emmett said. "He's having a bit of trouble letting her out of his sight for more than five minutes at a time, so it'll be interesting to see how he deals with her going back to work."

"I know you males are protective." Petra giggled. "But he has to be reasonable. She's a witch, a really powerful one. If anyone can keep herself safe, it's Della Greenbranch."

"She almost burnt herself out for him," Emmett said, his voice unexpectedly soft. "Surely, you can understand why he'd want to repay that by keeping her safe and avoid the possibility that she'd ever take that kind of risk again."

Petra blinked at the playing children. She hadn't expected that response. "No, I do, of course."

"I know it sounds extreme from the outside," Emmett added. "But surely, if you had someone you felt the need to protect, your wolf would drive you to be around them all the time too, just to make sure there were no threats to their safety. That's all it is; his wolf is desperate to be there to protect the person he loves. It's not some misogynistic manpower thing. He just wants to be there in case there's any danger to his mate, and he's working through the drive to always be present to protect her. He'll manage it, don't worry. It's just taking a minute, now Della's out of the hospital, for him to get used to leaving her on her own without him to keep her safe."

Petra was silent for a moment, working through not only the reasonableness of his response, but the ease with which he dropped the word 'mate' into the conversation. "Okay, it makes more sense when you phrase it that way. I kind of feel like an ass now."

"I get what it looks like. I know werewolf males have a reputation for possessiveness. But Leo has total respect for Della and for how powerful she is. He's just trying to teach his wolf not to freak out whenever he can't personally keep her safe, and the lesson is taking a while to learn. Don't worry, she'll be back at work without Leo's interference soon. Though I'm not guaranteeing he's not going to be bringing her lunch and trying to sneak a quickie every other day." He laughed, and the sound was like molten silver running through Petra's veins.

"I get it," she managed. "My wolf is kind of a slow learner too. They run so much on instinct, it can be hard to make them actually learn."

"I know the feeling," Emmett said. "My wolf had to get stung by bees about half a dozen times before I stopped trying to raid beehives in that form. They're not fast-learning creatures."

"Beehives? Really?" Petra asked.

"Oh yeah." Emmett laughed. "The worst part was when I shifted back, my whole face would be swollen from beestings."

Petra tried to smother her own laughter, but it broke through. "I'm sorry," she said once she could speak, "I shouldn't laugh. I'm just trying to imagine it."

"It's pretty funny," Emmett admitted. "Raj made fun of me for it for literally years. You have no idea what it's like, going to high school with your entire face covered in beestings."

"Do you love honey in your human form as well, or just as your wolf?" she heard herself ask.

"Oh, absolutely. Huge sweet tooth. I just have the self-restraint not to stick my nose inside beehives in human form, but apparently when I'm running on instinct as a wolf, I lose that degree of intelligence."

Laughter overtook Petra again, but eventually she managed to control herself. "Actually, I was kind of calling to ask something about your friend Raj," she managed after a while. "He's the librarian, right?"

"Raj?" Emmett suddenly sounded like he was on guard.

"Well, about him and this whole… scent thing," Petra said, trying to be diplomatic in a way that didn't involve saying, the way I want to tie you to my bed and keep you there for days on end, doing depraved things to you whenever the mood strikes me. "Since he's a librarian, maybe he could help us find some information about it, so we can understand it better, and then maybe…" she trailed away. Maybe do something about it, she had almost added, but that didn't seem polite when Emmett still seemed convinced that she was his mate.

"Raj would be over the moon if you asked him to dig up more information about the mate bond," Emmett said. "Do you have an afternoon you can take off from work? Maybe we can catch up over coffee or something before we go to him and see if we can come up with a list of questions we want to answer."

"That's a great idea," Petra said, a little surprised that he was coming across so happy to go along with her attempt to work out how to neutralize their bond. "Tomorrow afternoon, I could probably dredge up an hour when no one will notice if I'm gone. Would that work?"

"I'll make it work," Emmett said decisively. "Just text me the time and place, and I'll be there."

"Perfect," Petra said, feeling the smile stretch over her face. "We can work out what we need to know and tell your friend, so he knows what we're looking for."

"You sound very well organized already," Emmett said.

"Hey, it pays to be prepared," Petra teased with a smile. Suddenly it hit her that she was flirting, and she felt her eyes widen in shock. What was she doing? When she was in the process of trying to convince him not to pursue her as his predetermined partner. She cleared her throat and forced herself to return to a businesslike manner. "Okay, so I'll text you a coffee shop somewhere around here and what time I can get away from work. Does that sound good?"

"Sounds good," Emmett said, sounding like he was smiling too, and gods but his voice was smooth like satin.

"Great," Petra said. "All right, I'd better get back to work. I'll see you tomorrow?"

"Tomorrow," Emmett said, and Petra had to force herself to hang up.

She sat in the park a little longer, even though she knew she should be getting back to work, watching the children play, the people with their pets running around on the grass. There was so much joy in this space, mirroring the lightness she felt inside herself while she was talking to Emmett. It was like someone had lit a candle in her chest, and the glow from it was lighting up her entire mind. Not to mention the instinctive sexual response from her body the moment she heard her voice—the heating and swelling of her sex that was so pronounced, she could feel it, just from his voice in her ear. How could she be feeling this, when she'd already decided that she wanted to find a way to escape this bond that had been created between them? Emmett O'Neill was not the kind of man she was looking to spend her life with; she had already decided this. Why was her body responding to his voice, the sound of his laughter, like he had his face between her legs already?

Would it kill her to go there just once? Half the women her age in Apex River seemed to have sampled whatever he was offering. Would it be such a bad thing if she succumbed to this painfully strong attraction, just once? Maybe once they worked out what had bonded them like this, and how to undo it, she could extend the offer just once before they destroyed the bond connecting them?

Her body seemed to think that this was a phenomenal idea. Blood thrummed in her veins, her face flushed, her skin felt hot. She needed to get back to work before she embarrassed herself in a public park. She collected her lunch things and crossed back to the Youth and Community building, nodding to Nathan, the receptionist, as she passed. He did his usual meant-to-be-subtle once over, and for a moment she wondered if he could tell that she was currently painfully turned on, just from the thought of being physical with the male who smelled better than any spice combination. If he could see that the blood was still pounding in her veins and she was having to force herself to think of things other than a naked Emmett O'Neill hovering over her, his weight pressing her down into the bed, his body pushing her legs apart and pressing his hardness against the place she was so swollen and soft just from hearing his voice.

She stepped away from the opening lift doors and practically sprinted to the bathroom, staring at herself in the mirror. She looked flustered. Bright-eyed, red-cheeked. But a stranger looking at her wouldn't necessarily guess that it was because she was turned on from thinking about this male pressing her down into the mattress before dragging his tongue down her body and tasting every inch of her the way he'd suggested outside the hospital room. Right?

She needed to think about something else, anything else, something completely unrelated, like football scores, or the new cookie recipe she wanted to try, or her family, or… or… something. Anything.

She splashed cold water on her face and breathed deeply until she felt like she'd calmed herself down. She collected herself enough that she'd be able to make small talk with her co-workers if she had to, then all but ran for her desk and threw herself back into work.

If nothing else, she was going to make sure Della's afterschool program stuff was taken care of when her friend got back to work. Even if she couldn't handle even talking on the phone to the man who smelled like paradise without getting excessively excited, she could be trusted to take care of anything Della needed from her.

If nothing else, she needed to prove that to herself.