Finn's Redemption

Chapter 1

Word count: 4396

Lenore

My phone alarm awoke me in the bright morning, the sun high in the sky. My hand reached to throw the damn thing away. A crash had me bolting up. I had thrown the little device against the wall.

This is a great way to start a day, I thought. Note the sarcasm.

I flopped back against the pillow, fell into a soundless sleep. An image of my handsome mate started to surface, but faded as soon as I heard my little sister squeal. "Lenny, get up, it's time for school!"

"Go away," I grumbled, trying to fall back to sleep. I heard the sound of the door being unlocked. "What the actual–"

And, of course, it was Adelia who walked inside my room with a proud smile on her tan face. "You forgot I have claws. I have known since I was little how to unlock doors with my claws."

Adelia was fifteen, but she looked much younger due to her small height. Not that I could complain because we were the same height, almost. She was 5"3' while I was 5"4'.

She was really fit; she had been ever since she was born. Her long wavy blonde hair matched her bright blue eyes. Her skin tanned caramel. She had a few freckles on her nose and cheeks, her face oval shaped. She had beautiful long dark lashes that made her eyes stand out, her light eyebrows were high-arched.

"Earth to Lenore." I slapped her hand off my face. I pulled the cover over my body with a grunt. "Go away, I want to sleep." She tried to pull the covers off of me, but I held on tight. "Mom says you have to get up."

"Tell Mom I'm sick or whatever," I grumbled.

"I don't like to lie. Are you going to lie like that to your mate too? I don't think it will end good." Adelia laughed.

I threw off the covers. I sat up to find her sitting on my bed with her legs crossed and a huge grin on her face.

"Please don't speak about my mate. I'm probably never going to find him so why should I care about anything I say?" I muttered under my breath. Adelia pushed me playfully which earned a laugh. "Lenny, you can't give up. I am positive your mate is out there waiting for you."

I exhaled. "I'm almost eighteen."

In our world the mate bond started to show itself truly when you turned eighteen. That was when you had the highest chance of finding your mate. The bond started right when you turned sixteen. That was when you would start to feel it and turn into a wolf too. I'd heard that when you turned eighteen then the heat would start and you could only have sex for the first time during it. For females and men, it was a rule that you couldn't have sex before the heat and mate bond and it had to be your mate. I did not know why because no one had ever told me. But I knew of girls who'd cheated their ways around it, so I wondered how they survived.

The heat would start with or without your mate. My mom said she met my dad a few weeks after she had turned eighteen and it was the worst experience she had gone through. She was burning every day and considering it was summer, she couldn't go outside because the sun only made it worse. She spent hours taking showers and lying in a cold pool, that was built inside her house for this specific reason. She couldn't leave the house because other males would come near her and try to mate. If other wolves did try to come near you and they had not been mated, then they might've been thrown into the cells or be banished from the pack because it was taking advantage of someone when they were their most vulnerable.

The female wolves could not control themselves and it was not their fault, but the male ones were a whole different category.

Mom told me that the heat lasted for a year and would only get worse day by day. And if you had not found your mate in a year then there was a high possibility of death, since the heat would most likely kill you because of how strong it was. And the male would feel it and possibly die too of the agony.