Chapter 38 - Ray's Mate

Chapter 38 - Ray's Mate
Axel

Axel sat at the booth in Runagate that he now presumed to be his own and as close to the stage as he could be. He swirled his whiskey that the little Pixie waitress Flit had brought him in its tumbler as he silently seethed about his misfortune.

He had come to the club tonight under both Oscar and Ray’s insistence, convinced he would see his beautiful Mate on stage and finally have a chance to speak to her afterwards. It seemed like a solid idea; after all he was getting along quite well with the owner now, Sigmund. He was sure the vampire wouldn’t mind doing him one favour, to which he would be eternally grateful, the chance to speak to her and hear her melodious voice dance around his ears. After all, he had let him experience her Siren free of charge and he had found out later from Alpha Duncan just how expensive that experience truly was.

Unfortunately, as they had entered through the front room and were met with the ever, falsely cheerful Ruby he found out that Raine; or as she was known around here, Siren; was not performing tonight but they could still go to the VIP Lounge and see her partner Lunarr. Right then Axel was ready to go back to Warrior Harpe! What was the point of even being there if he wasn’t going to see his love, and Leon was in absolute agreement! However, both his Beta and Delta begged him to stay and see her wolf friend perform, so Axel caved and agreed they could stay for a little while.

Before they were sat down, Sigmund appeared and took Axel to one side as his friends sat. He apologised for Siren not being on tonight and explained how he believed she would need rest after Maria and that due to her stubborn nature he had to sometimes trick her into resting by having other team members ‘swap shifts’ to give her more time to recuperate.

Axel sat down after this explanation as the vampire vanished. He was happy his mate was being cared for but he still wanted to see her. Maybe his presence would make her recuperate faster, the mate bond was said to work wonderful magic at the best of times. He could be exactly what she needed at that exact moment! Or maybe she was what he needed…

He shook the thoughts from his head, he couldn’t sit miserably wallowing! It would do him no good; he wasn’t going to see her no matter how much he wished he could! He could only pray he didn’t have to wait too long for their next reunion, he wasn’t sure he could hold back Leon from taking control and up turning the entire city to find her for much longer. They both needed her, to be near her, to smell her and to kiss her! He had gotten a taste of her delicious lips and that was all he needed to become addicted to them forever.

He shook his head and slyly adjusted his legs an attempt to hide how excited he got from the mere thought of her soft and supple lips crashed against his own. He directed his attention to his friends, for he couldn’t think of a bigger boner killer than his Beta, Oscar.

Oscar was not too discreetly eyeballing all of the young women in the bar. Not just some, literally all of them, whether they were members of staff or patrons or creatures of an entirely different species, it didn’t matter to him whatsoever apparently. Yep, Axel was right to look over at Oscar; the reek of his desperation killed is boner immediately.

He turned to Ray, ready to begin mocking Oscar along with his Delta, but he stopped in his tracks the moment he looked at him. Ray was fidgety; his eyes were dashing around the room desperately; like he was trying to find someone in the sea of faces that surrounded them. His breath was fast and shallow and he hadn’t touched a single drop of his drink. This was not like Ray! He was always the calm and collected one, but Axel had noticed that he had been acting strangely the last few days. He was distracted when they were working, he had had a distant look in his eyes whenever they stopped for breaks and when that bear from Runagate stopped by to drop something off to Alpha Duncan; Ray practically ambushed him and fired questions at the poor guy for twenty straight minutes before being rescued by Luna Eloise.

He was acting very strangely indeed and Axel had had enough. He needed to know what was going on before something bad happened.

He was about to ask Ray that very moment, when the lights of the bar went down and he watched his Delta’s eyes fly to the stage, no longer distracted but trained on it. Axel followed his gaze, as the hush fell all around them. The curtains of the stage slowly glided open and the stage lights came to life to reveal the wolf who was partnered with Axel’s Mate, Lunarr.

“Mate…” Ray whispered as he stared at the stage and his gaze never left Lunarr.

But Axel and Oscar’s heads whipped round to look at him in absolute shock.

“What?” Axel asked.

“That’s him!?” Oscar gasped at the same time.

Ray just nodded his head, barely paying them any mind. His eyes trained on Lunarr as he stood on the stage waiting for his music to start. Ray’s eyes sparkled with new life as he watched him, a smile slowly spreading across his face as Axel and Oscar both continued to stare open mouthed at him.

Now, their shock wasn’t because Ray’s mate was a man. No, they had known since University that Ray was gay; in fact they found out the night his mate ran from him.

To cut a long story short, Ray had been acting weird with them after the first few months of University and they knew something had happened that he had yet to reveal to them. They found out one night after a party; Ray had kissed some random girl and as soon as his lips left hers, he started freaking out and ran from the party into the night. They had no idea what was going on with him until they tracked him down back at the dorms for the supernatural students. He wasn’t in his room however; he was in a rage tearing apart someone else’s room. When they eventually got him to calm down enough to stop tearing through everything, he broke down and confessed everything to them.

Ray told them how he had met his Mate and to his utter surprise, his Mate was a man. At first he didn’t accept it but his wolf was ecstatic and he couldn’t stop thinking about him. He started meeting with him in secret, just to test the waters of his life with a mate of his own gender and he loved every second he spent with him. But, he was still torn between wanting to live his life with his true Mate as a gay man and the life he thought he should appear to have, the one he thought others wanted for him. He confessed that he was terrified at how Axel and Oscar would react to his news of having a male Mate and had been trying for weeks to work up the courage to tell them.

It was at that party that fateful night that he had downed a lot of alcohol; even by werewolf standards; and was trying to give himself Dutch courage to confess to them. The alcohol was his downfall though, as his drunken mind concocted the idea that if he tried kissing a girl he would have his definitive answer and it would give him the strength to come clean about his Mate. So he found the random girl and kissed her and he described it as the worst sensation of his life. It felt like his gut was burning and he was actually worried he was going to throw up all over her. But once the kiss was over he felt a pain in his heart, a pain he knew was not his own and he realised too late that his Mate had felt when he had kissed her. He raced to his room on the campus, but it was too late, he was already gone. When they found him, he was tearing the room apart for some clue, any clue to where his Mate would go.

After the explanation, Axel had admonished him for being such a stupid bastard and Oscar joined in. They told him they didn’t care who his Mate was or what species they were, as long as they made him happy then that was all that mattered. After telling him how much of a utter fool he had been a bit more, they then set about helping him find his Mate’s whereabouts.

They searched for a long time and even took leave from Uni to continue looking but they couldn’t find him. It was like he had just vanished from the face of the planet; similar to the way Axel’s Mate appeared to do so. But now, seeing him on stage, it made sense. He had been in Andromeda city under the protection of the vampire Sigmund. Just like Raine…

The music suddenly began to play and Axel found his eyes drifting away from his Delta and back towards the stage, where Ray’s Mate was about to begin his performance.