Cassius’s POV
The words she spoke hung in the air, and for a moment, everything went still. My breath caught in my chest, my pulse pounding in my ears. A werewolf. She was a werewolf. I already knew that on some level, but hearing it spoken aloud, coming from her lips, felt like a sudden revelation. It was like being hit with a truth I wasn’t ready for, a truth that sliced through all my carefully constructed defenses and left me exposed. Vulnerable.
But then… why hadn’t my wolf reacted to her the way it was supposed to? Why hadn’t I felt that gut-deep, unshakable pull the way I’d read about in all the old texts? That primal, uncontrollable need to claim her? My wolf had always been attuned to power, to dominance, to the presence of another.
Yet… nothing. There was no calling out to her. No ferocious instinct to make her mine. Just a soft, steady pull. It was there, yes, but it wasn’t the way it was supposed to be. It should’ve been overwhelming.
Fuck! This confirmed that she was not my mate, but was it wrong of me to badly want her to be?
The alpha bond. The pull. It should’ve felt like fire coursing through my veins like the earth itself was shaking with the knowledge that she was it. My mate. The one. And yet, all I’d felt was this quiet, steady tug that didn’t make sense.
She was one of us. And yet… it didn’t make sense.
I leaned back in my chair, trying to calm the storm raging inside me, but there were too many questions and too many conflicting thoughts tearing at me. Was I missing something? Had I overlooked some sign? Or was it possible… was it possible that the bond just didn’t work the way I’d been led to believe? Could it be that the truth of our connection had been hidden from me all this time? Was the connection I felt all in my head?
“Cassius,” April’s voice cut through my thoughts, and I looked up to see her watching me carefully. “You’re thinking too much.”
She had to see it-the way I was struggling to make sense of all this. The truth she had just given me shattered everything I thought I understood about mates. I don’t know why every bone in my body screamed at me that she was mine but how come my wolf did not call to her? Hell, How could I, an Alpha, not know she was even a werewolf?
I shook my head, trying to push the chaos out of my mind. But the questions kept coming, one after the other, like a flood I couldn’t stem. “I don’t understand. You’ve been here… this whole time. How did I not know? Why didn’t my wolf…?” My voice trailed off as I struggled to find the right words.
April’s gaze softened, but there was a hard edge to her expression, too, like she was bracing for something. Maybe she could feel the tension in me, maybe she knew what was running through my mind, but for some reason, I couldn’t shake the feeling that I was on the verge of some revelation-one that could change everything.
She sat up straighter, her eyes never leaving mine. “Cassius, I don’t know what to tell you,” she said softly, her voice steady. “Maybe it’s because of the way we both are. We’ve both been carrying so much weight. You, with your role as Alpha. Me, with my own decisions and the life I’ve led. There’s so much we don’t know. So much we haven’t said. Maybe that’s why.”
Her words didn’t hit me like a revelation but more like a wave that I had to let crash over me. She was right. There were so many layers to us, to the lives we had lived separately. So many unanswered questions. Maybe we were both carrying too much baggage to let the bond form in the way I expected. Maybe the weight of our secrets was enough to keep us from fully understanding what was happening between us.
But still… I couldn’t ignore the gnawing ache that was beginning to fill the empty space in my chest. Why hadn’t my wolf reacted to her? I could feel it now-the pressure building inside me. That part of me that wasn’t human, that wasn’t a man, but was a beast, a creature of instinct, was clawing inside, trying to make sense of it all.
I had been so sure, so certain. The connection was undeniable from the moment she stepped into my life. But even as the pieces fell into place in my mind, the primal part of me kept scratching at the surface, demanding more. What was I missing? What was wrong with me?
“I don’t know,” I said, more to myself than to her, my voice rough. “It’s like everything about us is supposed to fit, but… there’s this part of me, this part that’s supposed to know, that’s supposed to feel it. And I don’t.”
I could see the struggle in her eyes as she tried to process my words. She was trying to give me space, but I could feel the tension between us growing, like the truth was inching closer, just out of reach, taunting me with the fact that there was something I wasn’t understanding.
“Cassius, maybe it’s not about what we’re supposed to feel,” she said quietly, her voice calm but firm. “Maybe it’s about what we’re willing to accept.”
Her words struck me like a blow to the chest. I was so caught up in what I expected, in what I thought should be happening, that I had missed the most important part of all this. The truth wasn’t just about the bond, about what my wolf should feel. It was about accepting her-about accepting us as we were, with all our flaws, all our hidden truths.
I looked at her, really looked at her. She wasn’t just some woman I’d been drawn to. She wasn’t just a complication in my life. No, she was herself-a fierce, strong, complex woman who had kept so much hidden from the world, from me. And I couldn’t let that go.
I leaned forward, my eyes locking with hers. “I need to know why. Why you’ve been hiding. Why you’ve kept so much of yourself buried.” My voice dropped to a whisper. “Tell me, April. Tell me everything.”
She looked at me for a long moment, her eyes flickering with a thousand emotions I couldn’t quite place. But then, finally, she nodded.
“I will,” she said softly. “But you have to be ready for it. There’s more to this than just our bond, Cassius. There’s a lot more.”
And in that moment, with the weight of everything hanging between us, I realized something. Maybe my wolf hadn’t called out to her the way I’d expected because we weren’t meant to follow some script. Maybe we weren’t following the same path every other mate bond had followed. Maybe we were creating something new. Something uniquely ours.
Was I being delusional?
The tension, the uncertainty-it was all part of it. All part of us finding our way to each other. The path wasn’t clear yet, but I could feel it now. Something was shifting. Something was growing.
And no matter what the answers were, no matter how long it took for the truth to fully come to light, I wasn’t going to run from this. I wasn’t going to run from her, no matter what.
Not now. Not ever.