Tiger's Mate

Chapter 23

•Katski•

I was grinning the entire time I walked back to my borrowed house — as I had begun to get used to calling it. As my thoughts kept carrying back to the events of the day, I was not exactly all that in-tune with my surroundings. Meaning I nearly ran into five trees, tripped over several boulders, and stumbled clumsily over multiple different tree roots. So much for being considered 'graceful' as a cat — that part was inaccurate when my head was focused exclusively on a certain werewolf.

I had been nervous — like, beyond nervous. More nervous than nervous could get when I took him on wha we did today.

Yes, I knew we were mates — it was kind of hard not to know that by now — but still, like anything else I supposed in life, there was always a reason to be nervous, to doubt, to fear that something might go wrong. And I hadn't wanted that, I had wanted things to go as right as they possibly could — knowing nothing was perfect. But you know what? It was perfect.

Hell, he was perfect.

He was stubborn as hell, a little (a lot) rough around the edges, not always the friendliest to people, and by god, not all that well in-tuned with his emotions or admitting what he felt — believe me, I knew. But still, to me, everything about Ethan Drayre was perfect. From his looks to his eyes to his scent to his stubborn personality.

Maybe it was just my natural instinct to like everything about my mate — we were supposedly made for each other — but even without the link, even without the whole 'fated to be together' thing, I couldn't see myself thinking any differently.

He was mine.

And believe me, no one was more happy about that fact than me.

It almost felt wrong to feel this strongly already about someone I had met merely a few short weeks ago...but hell, sue me because I just couldn't help it.

It was hard to explain, nothing like this had ever happened to me before. Granted, our breed of shifters — werewolves and werecats alike — did usually only have one fated mate.

The fate of the moon goddess was a complicated thing to sun up into words. In my opinion, it was all about perception, and what you chose to see it as.

To some; mates are someone you are meant to be with — and sometimes, that might make it seem like an absence of choice, like because you were mates, you had to fall in love. It didn't mean that those souls would be unhappy, but I always thought that was a rather closed off way to look at it.

For me, I had always chose to believe that although our supposed mates were fated to be, they were souls that we would have eventually been drawn to anyway by our own calling — that the so called 'fate' was just a fortune to tell and give a name to what we would have eventually figured out for ourselves.

Of course, I never assumed that meant I was right. Like anything else, that was just the way I chose to perceive it, was I really liked to believe from the bottom of my heart. The world worked in mysterious ways — especially the supernatural world. Nothing was ever just one thing — it was all about beliefs and the choices we made. Wasn't that how the world worked?

A werecats mate was a special thing something I had come to this town not expecting to find. But I had, and I was more than grateful.

I just hoped that I didn't bring him any more trouble than I was sure I already had.

He was already lying to his alpha and his pack by keeping me a secret — and I knew that wasn't something to simply brush off. The clans and packs worked in many similar ways after all.

I wanted to tell him I was grateful for what he was doing, and also apologize that he had to do it in the first place, but then again, I had no idea how to bring it up without being up the uncomfortable awareness of our situation. Plus, not to mention I felt like he might smack me out of frustration for even thinking like that in the first place.

As I said, he was rough, and stubborn. But also more soft hearted than I think even he knew.

I honestly had no idea where the two of us would head. Where this newfound thing between us would lead. But thinking about it just seemed to over complicate things, and I didn't want that. Might as well not dwell on everything that could go wrong and just keep going forward — living things one day at a time and choosing not to focus on the bad.

I tilted my head back, facing the ever darkening sky bringing forth night, and inhaled a deep breath of the easing forest scent. I didn't know any were-shifter that couldn't find peace within the natural forest, and I was no different.

Spending time with Ethan had left me with warm fire in my chest, flickering more alive with ever thought of him, but never burning with singing heat. It wasn't a compassionate feeling I had ever remembered expressing since my father's passing...

I smiled softly to myself as I reached my front steps, thinking that if he was watching me now, he would be glad to know that I had found someone who was making me happy.

Even if that person was a pain to deal with at times, I thought with a chuckle.

I walked inside the house and slide off my shoes before padding softly into the room I had claim as my bedroom with all my stuff in it. Quite soon I found, that even after showering and changing, any thoughts of sleep eluded me. I lay on my back, facing up at the ceiling from my bed, just thinking, relaxing to my own thoughts.

Eventually my eyes found themselves glancing around the room, coming to a rest atop my dresser where my current sketchbook lay on top of my stack of other school books.

I sat up and reached over to it, pulling to book down with me as I sat on the floor by the edge of my bed and began looking through it. I flipped through the first half, observing the results of my work and nitpicking at errors I had made or things I could have made better — like any other artist.

It was nice going back and looking through the works inside my sketchbook. I took pride in how far I had progressed in terms of my sketching ability, as when I was a kid, all my 'drawings' were nothing more than scribbles and stick figures. But I was prideful to admit, I had gotten a lot better, much more advanced than any stick figure. My dad had always said I inherited my gift from my mother — which I guess a part of my always held close to heart, since I had never known her enough to find that out for myself.

The next page I flipped made me stop and smile. It was one of my more recent pieces, one I remembered doing in class when I was supposed to be working on — something. This was one sketch I didn't begin to nitpick at, because in all honesty, I couldn't.

The dark shaded wolf made with black charcoal fur, the large dominating statue above everything it surrounded, and those eyes that in my mind, were ice blue as applied to the light grey of the pencil. I honestly didn't think that any pencil, no matter the shade or technique used, could ever create something that could measure up to the real thing. Because the real thing was perfect.

This was the sketch I had unconsciously drawn while thinking of Ethan — after seeing him in his other form for the first time, in all it's domineering glory.

His wolf form was the image of power and strength, and yet, it only made me smile when I thought about how flustered I could make him when he was him. A teenage boy like me — who yes, happened to have a few supernatural perks — but otherwise, was like any other person. He had a stubborn personality, was talented and obviously had a passion for music, a secret fear of heights that he didn't want anybody to know about (though he was actually terrible at hiding it once up high somewhere), and above all else, my mate.

Despite the circumstances in which I came here, I was glad I had met Ethan — even if we started out more rough than others. I fell asleep that night wondering if he was aware of half the things he did to me without even trying. I just hoped one day soon when the time was right, that I would get to tell him.