MATED TO MYSELF-The Alpha I Hated Is Me

8: Are You Trying To Sleep With Me Again?

Chapter 8

"Like what?" Kael asked, genuinely confused.

My stomach dropped straight through the floor, he wasn't feeling it.

The mate bond was only going one way. I could feel it pulling at me, could feel Ivy going absolutely insane in my head, but Kael felt nothing.

"Kael is in Nathan's body," Ivy said, and for the first time since this whole thing started, she didn't sound angry or demanding. She sounded thoughtful, like almost calculating.

"And the mate bond that we've been waiting for all these years just appeared out of nowhere the second he touched us."

"So what are you saying?" I asked her silently.

"I'm saying you were mated to yourself this whole time," Ivy replied, her tone deadly serious.

"That's why you never felt anything when you turned eighteen, that's why we've been waiting four years with nothing. The bond was always there but it couldn't activate because Kael was inside you instead of another body."

I looked at Kael again, really looked at him, he was still standing there waiting for me to explain what was going on, patient and concerned in a way Nathan had never been. And I could feel it, that pull toward him that made me want to close the distance between us and never let him go.

But he felt nothing.

I took a step toward him, my hand coming up like I was going to touch his face. I needed to confirm it, I needed to see if the bond would strengthen when I made contact again.

But halfway there I stopped, my hand froze in midair as the full weight of the situation crashed down on me.

This was Kael. My Kael.

The soul that had protected me and comforted me and been my constant companion for fourteen years, and somehow, impossibly, he was also my mate.

But he was in Nathan's body. Nathan, who hated me. Nathan, who had thrown money at me and told me I was nothing.

Nathan, whose soul was apparently just gone now, displaced by Kael's presence.

What did that mean? What did any of this mean?

"Ara, what's happening?" Kael asked again, taking a small step toward me. "Is something really wrong? You look like you're about to fall over."

"How do I tell you?" I whispered, more to myself than to him. My hand was still suspended between us, trembling slightly.

"How do I explain that the mate we've been waiting for is you? That I'm somehow bonded to my own soul? And you can't even feel it because you're not a body?"

He moved closer again when I didn't answer him properly. His hand reached out and wrapped around mine, the one I'd been holding up between us, and the moment his skin touched mine Ivy went ballistic.

I yanked my hand back like I'd been burned, stumbling away from him.

"Can you take it easy, Ivy?" I snapped out loud, not caring that Kael could hear me yelling at the wolf in my head, my voice came out harsh and desperate.

"It's not my fault!" Ivy snarled right back. "He touched you first! I can't help how the bond makes me react! This is what it's supposed to feel like, you i***t! This is what we've been waiting for!"

Kael was looking at me with so much confusion and concern it made my heart hurt.

"You can talk to me, Ara," he said gently, using that soothing tone that usually calmed me down instantly. "Whatever is happening, we can figure it out together."

I wanted to laugh, I wanted to cry, I wanted to scream at the universe for playing such a cruel joke on me.

Instead I just stood there breathing hard and trying not to let Ivy take over my body completely, that will be a chaos.

"I don't know what's going on," I finally said, forcing the words out.

"But it seems like you thought something bad happened to Nathan. Don't worry about him. I'll try to find a way to leave his body and go back to where I came from, his body is soulless right now and I can't feel his presence at all. It's not like when I'm inside you where I can sense you all around me. This feels empty, but you don't have to worry about anything. I'll figure it out."

My mind was wavering while he talked. His voice was washing over me in waves, trying to calm the storm inside me, but it wasn't working this time, all I could focus on was the bond thrumming between us, invisible to him but painfully obvious to me.

He reached out and took my hand again, and this time I didn't have the energy to pull away. I just stood there and let him hold my hand while Ivy went crazy and my heart pounded so hard I thought it might break through my ribs.

But then Kael's entire body went rigid, his hand clenched around mine painfully tight and his head snapped to the side like someone had slapped him, gis eyes went unfocused and his mouth opened in a silent gasp.

"Kael?" I said, panic flooding through me so fast it made me dizzy. "Kael, what's happening?"

I grabbed him with my other hand, pulling him closer, Ivy finally went quiet in my head, shocked into silence by whatever was happening to Kael right in front of us.

"Kael, what's happening?" I said again, louder this time. Tears were already streaming down my face. "Please…” I don't even know why I was begging,

My stomach was clenching so hard it hurt. I could feel something changing in the air around us, the warmth that had been radiating from Kael's presence was fading, being replaced by something colder and darker.

After what felt like an eternity but was probably only a few seconds, his body relaxed, the tension drained out of his muscles and he went still in my arms.

Then slowly, so slowly, his eyes opened.

They weren't silver anymore, they were dark gray, almost black. Cold and hard and completely devoid of the warmth that had been there moments before.

The expression on his face shifted, the softness disappeared, his features hardened into that familiar mask of cold indifference I'd seen a thousand times before.

"Kael?" I whispered, even though I already knew the answer, even though I could see it written all over his face that the person looking at me now was not Kael.

"Who the hell is Kael?" he snarled, and that was definitely Nathan's voice.

The real Nathan this time, not Kael speaking through Nathan's body. "And why the f**k are you touching me?"

His eyes dropped down to where my hands were gripping his arms, his face twisted with disgust and he yanked himself away from me so violently I lost my balance and fell backward.

My butt hit the floor hard and my palms scraped against the tile as I tried to catch myself.

"What the f**k are you doing touching me with that expression on your face?" Nathan growled, standing up and brushing off his pants like I'd contaminated him somehow.

I stayed on the floor, unable to move, unable to process what had just happened, kael was gone again? He'd been ripped away from me just as suddenly as he'd appeared, and he did enter me back ?

And Nathan was back, alive and whole and just as cruel as ever.

"I was just…" I started, but I couldn't figure out how to finish that sentence. What was I supposed to say? I was checking to make sure you weren't dead? I was holding Kael who took over your body for a few minutes? I was dealing with the fact that I'm apparently mated to my own soul?

Nathan stood over me, looking down with that cold expression I'd seen so many times before.

But there was something else there too, something I couldn't quite identify, his jaw was clenched tight and his hands were balled into fists at his sides.

"I told you not to come close to me," he said, his voice low and dangerous. "I told you not to touch me, are you trying to lure me into sleeping with you again? Is that what this is?"

The words hit me like physical blows, each one landed right in the center of my chest, right where the mate bond was still thrumming, still pulling me toward him even though he was saying the cruelest things he could think of.

I'd been worried about him, when he collapsed, when he was convulsing on the floor, I thought he was dying, I'd been terrified that I'd somehow killed him.

I'd called Marcus in a panic, I'd cried over his unconscious body.

But… but now..he was standing here accusing me of trying to seduce him?

"W–what?" I asked, and my voice came out so small I barely recognized it as my own.

I pushed myself up from the floor, my legs shaking so badly I wasn't sure they would support my weight. "What..did you just say?"

"You heard me right," Nathan said, taking a step toward me, his eyes were blazing with anger and something else I couldn't name.

"Are you trying to sleep with me again? Using those pathetic expressions, touching me like that. What? you want a repeat of the other night? You want me to f**k you again so you can pretend it means something, do you enjo–"

Before he could finish, before I could stop myself and before I could even think about what I was doing, my hand flew through the air and connected with his face.

The sound of the slap echoed through the kitchen, loud and sharp.

Nathan's head snapped to the left from the force of it, my palm stung and I could see the red outline of my hand appearing on his cheek.

We both froze