Chapter 10

“We can’t fight fate. Instead, we must accept that fate has given us a special opportunity.”

Lisa See

You’d think, after somehow ending up in a fictional novel, that I would no longer be capable of surprise. I thought so too…and maybe surprise wasn’t the right word for it.

The term felt inadequate for the pure shock that flooded my system the moment that Alpha Enzo looked me dead in the eye, and called me his mate.

There was a brief second that I actually thought I’d hallucinated it. Maybe Alpha Enzo *had* tossed me into the wall or taken my head off, and this was my brain’s last ditch attempt at some form of self-comfort.

But all my body parts seemed to still be intact, and Alpha Enzo was still staring at me with that expression on his face.

Pure, unadulterated awe – like I’d single-handedly hung the moon and stars.

I couldn’t look away.

Nobody had ever looked at me like that. Not my friends, not my parents, not my short string of relationships. Something warm and peaceful and right rolled through me like a wave as I stared at him.

And then reality crashed over me, and I remembered where I was.

*Mate? There’s no way!*

This had to be some kind of mistake.

I wasn’t supposed to be here, I wasn’t supposed to be part of the story. This was Scarlett’s story. She was the character, not me!

This had to be some kind of mix-up, some magical miscalculation that was making him think I was his mate.

A familiar whimper made me break eye-contact, and I glanced over at Scarlett, who was crumbled against the wall, nursing her fresh injuries.

I made to move toward her, but before I could take a step, a loud growl thundered through the cell, and I was suddenly pressed against the wall.

It happened so fast that it took me a moment to realize *he’d* pressed me against the wall, so much so that I could feel every bit of his lean, sculpted body pinned on mine. He was so tall that we weren’t even face-to-face – more like face to chest. Even more, I could feel where every inch of his bare skin touched mine. My skin tingled at his touch, like my senses had suddenly been heightened by ten.

His scent enveloped me, the smell of vanilla. And not the overly-sweet kind that makes your nose crinkle up, but light and airy and just sweet enough.

I didn’t seem to be the only one affected by it either.

While he pressed me to the wall, he leaned down and nuzzled his nose into the crook of my neck, breathing deeply. As he did so, he let out another growl, but this one was low and quiet and it didn’t sound angry. More content, like a cat who’d been scratched in just the right spot.

It took me a moment to come to my senses about the situation.

There was definitely a millisecond – okay, maybe a whole second – where I just let it happen. I let him pin me to the wall with all of his firm muscles and nuzzle his nose into my neck while I breathed in that intoxicating vanilla scent of his.

And then Scarlett whimpered again.

That was all it took for me to jump into action.

With every ounce of strength I had, I tried to push him off me – and my hands definitely didn’t linger on his large biceps peeking out from under his cotton t-shirt.

Unfortunately, I might as well have been trying to push a city bus with my bare hands. He didn’t budge an inch, and when he realized what I was trying to do, he shoved his face even further into my neck and let out what I could only assume was a warning growl.

In any other context, I would not have had any complaints about a beautiful man invading my personal space…but this had to be about the only exception in the world.

This couldn’t be right. This man was fictional, and I was not. Humans didn’t have mates, and certainly not humans that came from other worlds. And if I could get all his sculpted muscles and addictive scent away from me, I might’ve been able to think clearly enough to come up with a more logical explanation.

*That’s right. There’s got to be some logical explanation for this, even if I don’t know what it is yet.*

So I tried pushing him again.

“Why is my mate pushing me away?” He growled, his face still pressed into my neck. And just so you know, I definitely did not get wobbly at the knees when I heard the sound of his raspy, honey-like voice.

Since it seemed that my physical attempts of earning space were fruitless, I decided to try a different tactic. “I’m pushing you away because we need to talk,” I said, “And that’s a little hard to do in this position.”

“You sound like you can talk just fine,” he retorted without moving an inch, “And I like this position.”

Had I not had two-hundred pounds of pure muscle on top of me, I would’ve sighed. This was not how this was supposed to go. In the short amount of time I’d had to think through how I was going to approach Alpha Enzo, having him assume I was his mate? That had not been on the list.

“You know,” I said, although it was hard to think, let alone talk, with him so close, “I think there’s been a misunderstanding here.”

“And what misunderstanding is that?”

He did not move, and from the tone of his voice, he didn’t seem particularly convinced that there was a misunderstanding.

I took the deepest breath I could in my current position. “The misunderstanding is that…I’m not your mate.”

I felt him tense, and I couldn’t help but also freeze.

He raised his head from the crook of my neck, and with his body weight on mine, stood to his full height. I had to crane my neck to even make eye-contact, but for the second time that day, I found myself unable to look away from those striking gray eyes.

"Is that so?" He said, and something about the tone of his voice made me want to run.