Fated Mates: The Alphas's Choice

Elena: Chapter One

Elena

I growled playfully, pulling Joss into my version of a bone crushing hug, feeling excited to finally see my best friend after the longest summer with my dad.

Her scent hit me like a train. My heart sped up and I felt my entire body start to react to her intoxicating scent.

My wolf began pacing wildly inside my head. She whined loudly and I laughed. My mate! I pulled away from Joss. wondering if she felt it like I did. She grinned at me and pulled away, a strange expression on her face. Joss didn't look how I felt. She didn't look like her whole world was complete or like she had scented her mate.

"What's up with you," she asked as she walked back to sit on her pillow top bed. " You're acting weird."

My elation slowly started to ebb. My wolf, Mika, whined. She hadn't staked her claim. Joss wasn't my mate. The confusion on her face perfectly explained how I felt. If I wanted to be honest with myself, I didn't have much of a preference when it came to coupling. If anything, I avoided everyone that wasn't family or in my inner circle of friends. But smelling my mate, I hadn't minded that it was her.

I walked closer to her and sniffed at her, feeling like a creep, but needing to know why I had scented my mate.

"Sorry, Joss, you just smell..." I didn't know how to explain to her that her scent was driving me crazy. It was a mixture of crisp, mountain air, peppermint and rain. "Good. You smell really good. New perfume?"

My wolf was agitated. She seemed to know something I was just now starting to realize.

No, not our mate.

She was p*ssed. I continued to sniff at Joss, going as far as pressing my nose against her neck and pulling her long, curly, brown hair to my nose. The scent was stronger on her, but mixed with something different. My wolf senses had just come in on my eighteenth birthday over the summer, so I had just started getting acquainted with everyone's scents around me. I was a late bloomer with almost everything in my life, from getting my wolf at fourteen instead of twelve to getting her heightened senses now, instead of when I got her.

Joss giggled and tried to push me away. I smiled at her, the realization of what I was smelling on my best friend bringing bile up my throat. Not him. I thought. Please Goddess, don't let it be him.

"No, silly! No new perfume. What's up with you? It's like your summer away has turned you into an animal." She elbowed me playfully, winking dramatically. "Bud duh tsss." She played an imaginary drum and raised an eyebrow. "Get it?" she asked, grinning. "Your birthday? Your wolf?"

I gave her a weak laugh. My wolf snapped at the very sound of her voice. I scooted away from her and nodded."I get it." I told her quietly. I looked down at my hands, swallowed the lump in my throat and glanced back at Joss.

My beautiful best friend with aqua eyes, chocolate locks and flawless tan skin. Her perfectly sculpted eyebrows creased at my sudden sullen, mood.

I could smell him all around here. He had been here recently, in her bedroom, doing Goddess knows what with my best friend.

"What's wrong?" she asked me as I sat there, trying to figure out what to do. His scent was intoxicating and the anger I felt at scenting it here was conflicting.

I have loved Jocelyn since we were pups. Despite our positions in the pack, we had gravitated towards each other and have been inseparable ever since. I always came to stay the night with her and a couple of our other friends. We would have dozens of movie nights and we'd gossip about her older brother and his skanky beta-chasing wh*res. She knew all of my secrets and I knew all of hers.

I was there for her when her first boyfriend moved away to another pack and she chased away all of the other pups in school when they poked and prodded at me for being smaller than most of the wolf population in the Blue Crescent Pack.

How could the Goddess be so cruel?

"Nothing," I grinned at her, feeling like a giant piece of crap. "I just missed you, is all."

"Oh! Lainey! I missed you too! I hated that I had to miss your birthday this year! How was it at your dad's? Did you by chance find your mate?" She wiggled her eyebrows playfully with a smirk.

Before I could answer, I felt something, almost like a gravitational pull, telling me to open her bedroom door. I stared at it and my wolf jumped up in excitement. Joss's bedroom door opened and my eyes connected with ocean blue eyes, so beautiful I had never taken a chance to notice before. My heart hammered in my chest and I whimpered at the internal fight I was having with my wolf

Mine. She claimed loudly in my head. Mate