Mates: Werewolf Short Stories

The Human Mate: Chapter 6

Elara POV

I wake to cold. Not the soft chill of early morning, but the unmistakable loss of the warm body that was next to me. My hand moves across the sheets before I’m fully awake, fingers brushing empty space where Thorne should be. The bed still smells like him, pine, smoke, something wild and grounding… but he’s gone. No lingering weight. No steady heat in my bed.

“Thorne?” I whisper. The room answers with silence. Confusion settles in first, then something sharper. He wouldn’t leave without telling me. Not after last night. Not after the way the world had gone quiet when he touched me, when something deep inside me had finally clicked into place, like it had been waiting for him all along.

The memories from last night came flooding back… his hands, the way his control had finally loosened, the way he said my name afterwards. Heat coils low in my stomach even as my chest tightens.

I dress slowly, half-expecting him to step out of the shadows and tell me everything is fine. He doesn’t. By the time I leave the house, unease has threaded itself into my spine. Why did he leave?

Work should ground me. Routine usually does. Coffee brewed. Doors unlocked. Familiar faces. Familiar smiles. I go through the motions, answering questions, ringing up purchases, nodding along to conversations I barely hear.

My mind keeps drifting back to last night, to Thorne’s presence but today, that presence was gone. But theres something else… a different feeling. It starts as a prickle between my shoulders and then running up my neck. The unmistakable sense of being watched.

I look up quickly, heart jumping, but there’s nothing there. Just the front windows. Just people passing by. I tell myself I’m imagining it. That I’m unsettled because he left. But the feeling doesn’t fade.

By mid-morning, I catch movement in the corner of my eye—a flicker of shadow where there shouldn’t be one. When I turn, it’s gone. The air feels thicker, heavier, like it’s pressing in on me. My chest tightens, not with pain, but with awareness. The strange sense that I was being watched.

By lunchtime, I know I’m not alone. I swear I see someone standing across the street, half-hidden between parked cars. Tall. Still. Watching. When I blink, the space is empty. My hands shake as I grip my coffee cup.

Get a grip, I tell myself. You didn’t imagine him. You didn’t imagine last night. But whatever connects me to Thorne, whatever invisible thread hums beneath my skin… feels stretched thin, pulled tight enough to ache. I try to reach for it without knowing how, searching for that steady presence but felt nothing.

By afternoon, my nerves were all over the place. Every sound makes me flinch. Reflections in the glass feels wrong, like they’re lagging just a second behind me. The shadows seem too deep, the light too fragile. And always, always, that sense of eyes on my back.

When my shift finally ends, relief is short-lived. I step outside into the cooling air and freeze. The forest looms at the edge of town, dark and watchful, its branches tangled like reaching fingers. For the first time since meeting Thorne, I don’t feel safe.

A shiver runs through me, and something dark stirs beneath my fear, not panic, but awareness. Like a part of me has always known this moment would come. That I am being seen. And somewhere far beyond my understanding, someone or something was coming for me.

Thorne POV

The moment I cross into pack territory, the bond tightens like a wire pulled too far. Not pain. Not panic. Alarm. Every wolf feels it.

I don’t slow as I reach the clearing, shifting back to human form as the pack gathers instinctively, drawn by my presence and the spike in the bond. They come fast, warriors, scouts, elders, faces grim, wolves restless beneath their skin.

“You felt it.” I say, not a question. A low chorus of agreement ripples through them. Unease. Confusion. The bond hasn’t just stretched—it’s strained, vibrating with something foreign and wrong.

“It started before dawn.” Marcus says, stepping to my side. His eyes are sharp, already calculating. “Like pressure. Like something pushing against the bond from the outside.” He continued, confirming what I felt before. My jaw tightens. Elara. The bond pulls hard in my chest, directional now, urgent. She’s alive. Awake. Afraid.

“Where?” I demand. Before Marcus can answer, the forest explodes into motion. A wolf stumbles into the clearing at a hurry, missteps, and crashes to the ground. Blood streaks his flank, dark and wet against his gray fur. He tries to rise, fails, and shifts mid-motion, collapsing to his knees with a broken gasp.

“Hunters!” he chokes out. “Not ours.” The clearing goes deadly silent. I’m at his side in an instant. “Explain.” I demand, anger in my voice but not at him.

“They were moving fast. Human lands.” His eyes find mine, wild with pain and fear. “They knew your name, Alpha. They were laughing.” His hands clench into the dirt. “Said they were on their way to kill a human… mated to an alpha.”

The world narrows to a single, burning point. Elara. The bond snaps tight with my realisation, screaming now, no longer subdued. Fear bleeds through it, hers, sharp and confused, and something colder beneath it. Predatory intent.

My wolf roars. The ground trembles as my dominance surges outward, unchecked. Wolves stagger, then straighten, eyes flashing red as fury floods the bond. “They will not touch her,” I say, my voice no longer fully human. “Not one breath. Not one drop of blood.” I growl out to my pack who growl back in acknowledgement.

I rise slowly, letting them see what they have always known but never witnessed unleashed. “Every warrior shifts.” I command. “Marcus, take the eastern line with some warriors… cut them off before they reach town.”

“Yes, Alpha.” I turn in a slow circle, meeting every pair of eyes. “Those hunters chose their fate the moment they targeted my mate.” I say murderously. “I want someone to find out how they found out about her.” I demand and several of the elders nod before scurrying away to contact their informants for information.

The bond hums, fierce and united. “She is my mate.” I continue, the words slamming into the pack bond like a vow etched in stone. “Anyone who stands between me and her does not leave this battle alive.” A collective snarl rises around me.

I shift at the edge of the clearing, bones breaking, power flooding my limbs as the wolf takes over, bigger, faster, lethal with only one purpose. As I launch forward, the bond locks onto Elara’s fear like a beacon.

Hold on, I send through it, raw and desperate. I’m coming. Behind me, my pack pours into the trees, a tide of teeth and fur and fury. The hunters think they are stalking prey. They have no idea that they have just become it.