Tug-of-war

8- Our honeymoon is awkward

Owen's pov

Obviously, this wasn't really the mate honeymoon I had imagined. Whenever I fantasized about finding my mate, it seemed obvious that the mutual attraction would overcome both of us, and the mate bond would pull us so close that we would spend the whole week barely leaving our bed.

I mean, I guess I was kinda right about that last part... in a way. Since I didn't want to overwhelm her with a whole pack of curious strangers who would ask her a thousand questions, I had planned for her to stay in this room. She didn't object, probably relieved to have some time to process everything. And since the mate bond still prevented us from being more than a few feet apart from one another, I stayed right here with her. The bed being one of the only piece of furniture we could both sit on, we mostly stayed on it. So yes, in the strangest way possible, I was still locked in a room with my new mate, barely leaving the bed. But the similarities with what I had imagined ended here.

This situation was bittersweet. On one hand, I had something I had always wanted. A mate. My mate. I felt butterflies in my stomach every time I looked her way, and the wolf part of my mind was practically dancing with joy. I could've spent hours just looking at her in amazement - but I refrained, as I figured that would be a tad creepy. Something tugged at my heart, wanted to pull me closer to her. It was a painful tug if we strayed too far apart, but even when we were near enough to be comfortable, I was still pulled towards her like a powerful magnet. I was drawn to her warmth, her scent. Even when I held her earlier, it was like I still wasn't close enough. Like we needed to melt into one another, to not have even a single atom in between us. I longed to hold her again. I didn't know when I would get to do that, when she would trust me enough to let me.

And that was the bitter part. Knowing she didn't feel the same way. Loving her with all of my heart already, while she was still vaguely suspicious of me at best. I knew the bond could somehow hurt her too when she walked away, but I didn't know to what extent she could feel it otherwise. A part of me hoped the fact that she could feel the pain from the bond meant she could also feel some of the attraction. I didn't count on it though - the way she kept a distance from me at all times was proof that she wasn't consumed by the same powerful attraction as me. She was human, after all. I didn't even think it was possible for a werewolf to have a human mate. The Moon goddess had definitely put a surprising twist in my life by bonding us together.

Her reluctance to open up to me and get closer to me hurt my feelings, but I tried not to let it show. After all, she was scared, confused... How could she not be? She got whisked away in an unknown village. She suddenly had a mate, and didn't even know what a mate was. Unlike me, she hadn't been eagerly waiting for the moment her soul would be magically linked to another. She probably expected to find love when a human man would say hi to her in a coffee shop, and... buy her enough hot beverages to win her affection? I didn't really know how human courting worked, to be honest. I had seen it in movies but I failed to grasp its unspoken rules. I had always lived in a werewolf village, where we could just wait to find our soulmate and therefore had no need for dating. Point is, being my mate had turned her life upside down too and was even more of a shock for her than for me. For now, I had to focus on making her comfortable. There was no time to dwell on the heartache of my unrequited feelings.

Besides, I was confident those feelings would not be unrequited forever. I had to be. I had to trust the path the Moon goddess had traced for me. Even if having a human mate had its challenges, I knew we could overcome them together. They would make our relationship unique. Her trust was simply something I would have to work for, much more than in a regular werewolf relationship. We just had to get to know each other better.

I looked at her. She was sitting on the edge of the bed awkwardly, like she was about to leave. She glanced at me occasionally, but avoided eye contact. She idly swiped through her social media on her phone, but I suspected it was just to keep her hands busy and make the silence less awkward. We had made small talk on and off since lunch, but never really seemed to keep the conversation going. None of us really knew what to say. There are unspoken guidelines for how to engage conversation with a stranger, an acquaintance, or a friend. But there are no social codes on how to act with the person you just met but are expected by the universe to spend your life with. We needed a prompt. I finally broke the tense silence.

"Wanna play twenty questions?"