But I felt the little hairs on the back of my neck stand on end. Something in the air changed, grew thick and hot. I felt it coat my skin. I started breathing harder, trying to focus on the guy who was currently placing his order. I was thankful the table of guys had no idea I was in my mating heat.
Humans didn’t have the sense shifters did to know these things. They’d probably look at me and wonder if I’d just gotten done exercising, or hell, done a line of coke for how jacked up I felt in this moment.
But I hadn't missed the look from other males in here, the ones who housed an animal. I heard them inhale and growl when I’d walk by. It had my belly tightening in disgust, knowing they weren’t what I wanted.
I made my way back to the bar to give the drink order, and Tally, the female panther shifter currently tending, stopped and looked at me, giving me a sympathetic look.
“Help to distract me,” I found myself saying before I could stop the words from tumbling out.
“Your first heat?” she asked low enough only I could hear.
I gave her a pained look and nodded. “I shouldn’t be here. I can practically feel all these assholes eyeing me.”
“They won’t touch you,” she said with conviction. “They know that if they did, your mate would tear them apart.”
I was about to let her know I didn’t have a mate, but she started speaking again, as if she’d read my mind.
“Doesn't matter if you don’t have one. You know how a mated male gets. If one of them was to touch you, and your future mate found out, they’d be destroyed.”
I gave her a small, grateful smile, because at least that made me feel better, even if I didn't know how true that was. A horny male would do just about anything, right? And add liquor to that and it could be a disaster.
“But if you feel that miserable, go home. Seriously.”
I shook my head. “I’m good,” I lied, but she knew that. She could smell the lie in my words. Tally didn’t say anything else on it, thankfully. “Just talk to me while I wait for the drinks. Help to keep my mind off… this. Please?” I didn’t care that I looked pathetic begging like this. I was alone in this new town and about to tear through my skin. She gave me another sympathetic smile and nodded.
“You’re so new to Badlands that you probably don’t know about some of our more reputable residents, huh?”
I shook my head, focusing on her words. She seemed resolved then in helping me, and I was forever grateful.
“Okay, so on the edge of tow is Axel, he cougar shifter who doesn’t make it a secret he’s waiting for his mate.”
I lifted my brows. “He doesn’t make it a secret?”
Tally shook her head. “I mean he doesn’t go around telling people, but he won’t let any females near him, and will mutter the only one he wants is his fated mate. He’s also more on the feral side, if I’m being honest. But then again most males who have gone their whole life without finding their other half are like that.” Tally looked off as if she were daydreaming. “I need to find a male like that, one who has searched the country for his fated mate.”
“Wait, he’s searched the country?” She nodded and smiled.
“Yeah. For years he was out there going from state to state, corner to corner of the country looking for her. He hasn’t been back to Badlands for too long, but since he came back alone it’s clear he didn’t find her.”
Oh, that’s deeply sad.
“Anyway, then we have Jay, the recluse who lives alone, because he’s so scarred and broken.” I grew interested in this, but she didn’t make me wait to ask details as she kept going. “He fought an enemy pack, trying to save his mate.” This deep, sad look crossed her face, and I felt my heart hiccup in my chest. “But it didn’t work out like it should have. He lost her, and although most shifters die when they lose their mate, miraculously he stayed alive.”
I didn’t even know this shifter, but my heart broke for him.
“Then there is Brea, who I’ll just outright say is a bitch.”
I chuckled at that.
“She owns a coffee shop in town, and it’s no secret she wants an alpha for her own. Although she was born human, her dad is a shifter, but she didn’t get the animal gene.” Tally sneered as if even talking about Brea annoyed her. “She wants an alpha like Havoc, who is part of the Havoc pack here in town.”
I knew there were many shifters, humans, and even different packs in town. It was funny how people had loose lips to anyone who was around, as if they didn’t get a lot of “newcomers,” so they felt the need to gossip. “But like the majority of the packs here in the Badlands, they all want the same goal. Peace.” She finished putting the drinks on my tray and gave me a warm smile. “Did me rambling help?
I nodded and mouthed, “Thank you,” as I went to deposit this new order to the table of human males.
My pussy was embarrassingly wet—dripping, if I were being honest. My underwear was totally soaked, sticking to the most intimate part of me. It was uncomfortable as hell.
The humans were pretty drunk, so loud their voices carried over the music that played overhead. I could scent their arousal, and when I bent over to set the beer glass across the table, I felt their arousal grow.
And just as I straightened, I felt something change. I swore the ground shifted underneath me. It was so pronounced I actually reached out and gripped the edge of the table. My body hummed, positively came alive. I inhaled deeply, not sure what was wrong with me, but breathing in had me taking in the most intoxicating scent.
The scent of a wild, primed male filled my nose, and I had to hold everything inside me and not moan. I knew that scent despite never having smelled it before.
My mate. He was here.
A gasp left me, and I searched the bar, feeling him, scenting him, letting that smell move into my lungs.
I couldn’t breathe, couldn't think.
I felt it—him—in my blood. My heat spiked violently in me, stronger than it ever had been. My body knew the only thing that could ease it, sate this hunger, was close by. My breasts felt even fuller, my nipples aching as they stabbed painfully against my bra. My pussy tingled, my clit throbbing in time with my pulse.
Slowly turning around, I scanned the bar but didn’t see anyone who would cause this reaction in me. I didn’t see my mate. And then the front door opened, and the biggest male I’d ever seen walked in.
I inhaled again. Polar bear.
He stepped inside, and I took note that everyone seemed to take note of him. He was massive, well over six-and-a-half-feet tall, muscles upon muscles stacked under his golden flesh. He wore a dark-gray T-shirt that was stretched over his broad shoulders and wide chest. The fabric looked stretched to capacity, like it could easily tear with just a flex of his bicep.
His jeans were worn and dark, his thighs so thick they were easily double the size of mine. His boots were black, scuffed. I let my gaze slowly rake back up his body. He had this scowl on his face as he looked around. There were a few human females dancing close by, their beer sloshing over the rims of their cups as they tried to get his attention, their moves sexually suggestive. But he paid them no mind.
He was just so dominant that it poured off him as if his body couldn’t even contain it all.