The Housemates

Reunions

Chapter Six

Reunions

Her bedroom door flung open; no knock, no warning. Groggily, she sat up on her bed and looked at the doorway. Noah had been there for a day and he was already invading her space. As soon as she caught his scent, a smile spread on her lips and she understood why he was storming into her room. She refrained from giggling, because she knew he didn’t want that right this moment.

“Eye contact!” he shouted as he walked inside, slamming the door behind him. He immediately began pacing the small space. She watched him walk from the door to the window and back repeatedly. “All it takes is eye contact! Do you have an idea how much that sucks? You could be walking down the street and just happen to glance at someone and not even know their name and then you’re stuck with them for the rest of your freaking life! Eye contact, Elli. Fucking eye contact.”

She knew this. He knew she knew this, but he wanted to rant. He needed to rant.

“We pissed off the werewolf gods and so we knew that they would get even. We left our pack and now we’re getting screwed in the mate department! I knew that would happen. I knew it, but damn it, I didn’t see this coming. Human! My mate is practically human! Fragile and breakable and human!”

That wasn’t even the worst part. Humans didn’t mate. There was no guarantee that he would get to be with her. No guarantee that she would ever love him. Mating with someone who wasn’t a werewolf was considered a punishment from the gods and it was a terrible fate. Noah wasn’t angry about this, he was terrified. He had found his perfect other half and she probably would never feel the same. Elli couldn’t imagine what that felt like, but she knew it was a reality that she would face eventually.

“I never should have moved in here! I could’ve gone the rest of my life without finding my mate. I’d be okay with that. Uncle Will did it and he didn’t have any issues. But nope. I move in here and all it takes is eye contact and my mate is human! Gah! Do we really deserve this?”

She patted the bed beside her, inviting him to sit down and quit patrolling the room. He did so and she pulled him into a hug. “No. We don’t. But we broke werewolf law and left our pack, so this is what happens. And when I find my mate, I’ll get screwed over, too. So who is she?”

Addy was human, but Kate was ‘practically’ human and then there was the chance that this girl didn’t even live here and she was just a friend of someone’s visiting. Who knew?

He sighed and pulled out of the hug, looking away from her. “This is where I really got the short end of the stick.”

She raised an eyebrow, curiosity piqued. “How so?”

Another sigh before he muttered a response that she barely heard. She made him repeat it, louder.

“It’s Richard. Richard, who’s probably, more than likely, completely straight, because that’s how not friendly the gods are. A human male, damn it. A human. Male,” he snarled out.

As terrible as it was, that was where Elli lost her composure and started laughing, because it was kind of funny. Her brother had never dated a guy, ever. Not that it mattered, really. The way wolves were raised taught them that their mate was their mate, it was that simple. Race, gender, and being didn’t matter. That one person completed them and living a life without them wasn’t an option. Richard being a guy didn’t matter. Richard probably being straight did.

“So are you going to tell him?” she wondered, between giggles.

He glared at her. “No! It’s…I can’t. I can’t burden him with that knowledge. At best it would make things awkward and I hate to think about the worst case scenario.”