Accepting My Twin Mates

Chapter 122

Accepting My Twin Mates Chapter 122

Bonus Chapter 4 – A Worthy Challenge?

Catalina

I could have made a comment as Astennu slowly closed the door in my face, but I chose to hold my tongue. I had had my fun bothering the twins, especially Badru, and now I had fun waiting for me elsewhere. This is property © NôvelDrama.Org.

‘Quiet fun because you stuck us in this tin tube,’ my wolf, Chila, grumbled, despite her tail agitating in flirtation. ‘At least you cleared the living room so we can get a better look at all those tattoos.’

‘Roll that tongue back in until those slashes of his have healed a little,’ a frown dipped my lips, the memory of Diego’s flesh torn apart and his blood flung airborne was all too fresh in my mind. I thought I had lost him before I could have him.

Speaking of his s***h marks and blood, they needed tending to. His injuries had pulled and had stained the gauze that had been hastily taped to his chest. I stopped by the cockpit to grab the better first aid kit that had items required for sutures and obtained a rough estimate of the flight duration from the pilot. Eleven hours was all I had to discover every last detail of my mate and have him begging for us to land.

‘Please. We could break him in eleven minutes,’ Chila puffed out her chest, confident in our mission.

I had most men eating out of my hand within the first few seconds of speaking, but my mate was far more of an enigma. He was rugged and rough, taunting and confrontational, and nothing like any of the wolf males I had met.

‘I wouldn’t be so cocky, Chila. I think we finally have a worthy challenge.’

Diego sat propped up where I had left him, his head lolled back against the headrest and his entire tattooed bare-chested body stretched out for me to drink from. The notes of his scents, a heady mix of ochre and incense, wrapped and weaved around me to pull me forward, increasing in intensity the closer I came.

His eyes remained closed and his broad rough-hewn chest, studded with a perfect amount of hair across his pecs, rose and fell in small breaths. I left for two minutes and he’d fallen asleep. He needed the rest, but he needed his stitches attending to more. The silver injuries would mark him for a lifetime even with stitches, but without them, they would form thick and uneven scars.

The first signs of the healing process would be kicking in a few hours, the edges of the wound knitting together slowly over the weeks to come; far slower than the few hours a werewolf injury would normally take to vanish entirely.

I crept forward towards him, wanting to take these few moments to ogle all of him before he needed to be woken. Few wolves wore jewellery as permanent features as it remained when we shifted and could cause hindrance, especially items such as rings, bracelets and necklaces. The only time we wore such was at social events and parties. Yet, his were there intact, exactly as they had been when I saw his wolf break free.

An industrial piercing perforated the top of his left ear, a black bar with two studs on either end, and a small yet thick black loop below it depicting tiny wolves running.

I reached out to curl a finger around his ear and slid down to his jaw, but his hand flew up and snatched my wrist, a superior smirk slowly unfolding. His heartbeat and breathing never once flinched or faltered, remaining in a steady rhythm. A startled gasp hitched my throat, almost choking me.

“Mi vida, you think you can sneak on me?” A mischievous deep brown eye cracked open. “I have the reflexes of a cat.”

I grabbed a scatter cushion next to him while he was still on his lordly high of thinking he had won and socked him in the side of the head with it.

“Reflexes of a pudgy house cat, maybe,” I chuckled.

Faster than I could register, my hips were in his hands and I was yanked forward to straddle his waist. His fingertips dug into the fleshy rounds of my ass, squeezing firmly and releasing.

‘If he wants to get hot and heavy, I won’t say no. I don’t care if anyone hears,’ Chila was enthralled, on her belly for her mate.

“First you shamelessly ogle me and then you call me pudgy? Mi vida, I’m wounded.”

My hands found his wide shoulders, bracing myself at the impact of his pat to my rear, not because it was forceful but because I didn’t trust my body to not melt over him. And the thick and rigid bulge poking me from beneath did nothing to calm me either, one he was slowly grinding on me through the thin fabric of our clothes.

“Not that I mind you checking me out, but why are you sneaking?” He gently stroked the base of my spine.

“Uh… your stitches… you pulled a few,” I finally found my voice, feeling a heat creep into my neck that, thankfully, didn’t invade my cheeks.

I fumbled next to me for the first aid kit, unable to tear my eyes from Diego’s or the crooked smirk that lifted one corner of his lips. This was new, falling over myself for a man. Usually, it was the other way around.

Sliding off his lap and trying to ignore the protruding erection of his c**k, free from the confines of any underwear, I opened the kit. Next, I peeled back the gauze on his chest, revealing the four slashes

across his torso, starting at the left of his waist and crossing up to his right pec. The stitches had been done by a skilled hand, but they hadn’t weathered the fight without strain. My eye caught ten that had tugged through the skin once securing them, causing the fresh blood to flow.

“In the pit… when I fell, did you really yell ‘pendejo’ at me?” He asked as I unzipped the small pouch from the first aid kit and poked the suture thread through the eye of the needle.

“You let yourself be thrown on your ass, so yeah. I thought you heard because you looked up at me.”

“My ears were still ringing. I didn’t miss your voice,” he paused my hands by gliding his thumb over my bottom lip. “I just wanted to make sure I remembered that fiery mouth right.”

I circled the tip of my tongue around the edge of his thumb, peering up into his eyes and smiling to myself how an inky black chased his chocolate irises studded with gold flecks. He wasn’t the only one who could tease and taunt.

“This might sting a little,” I snapped on a pair of nitrile gloves and wiped over his wounds to cleanse them with an antiseptic wipe. As wolves, we were resistant to sepsis, not immune.

The thread followed the needle with little resistance, Diego’s muscles flexing as my holder forceps tugged and the needle irritated his already sore skin. As I stitched, knotting the sutures with trained ease, my gaze drifted along his cut lines to his inked skin.

I had seen the one on his back, a black-shaded skull and red rose petals drifting in the etched wind. Here and there, the odd old scar muddled the artwork of his tattoos and body. Across his left pec and shoulder was a wolf with yellow eyes, emerging through tears in his skin. The rest of his arm was a collection that blended to form one mural; a tree in blossom winding around his arm with wolves, snakes, eagles and elaborate moths that strayed onto his hand. His right pec and shoulder were its head, its spines poking up onto his neck, and its body wrapped around his arm, all in black. The only colour came from gold skulls in its claws and the soft pastel colours of the magnolia blooms. The head

of a snake came up over his left hip and stomach, now decapitated because of his s***h injury. The rest of its body disappeared beyond the waistband of his black pants.

My wolf was eager to follow that particular tattoo, pawing at the walls of my inner mind. ‘Do you think it leads to his other snake?’

‘We’ll follow it after we’ve landed.’

“How do you know how to do sutures?” He asked when I was just about finished.

“I thought about becoming a nurse. Started the training course and everything in our pack’s hospital,” I tied the final knot and fished for the scissors. “I could handle things like this, but what I couldn’t was all the bodily things.”

I sliced the tread and wiped up the residue of blood, cleaning the area to be taped with gauze. With the fresh cover to guard the stitches, I taped them into place over his clean skin.

“If you can’t handle piss, s**t and vomit, nursing isn’t the best career choice, so it didn’t work out. I train Omegas now, especially women. I never want them to feel as though they’re weak. I know what it’s like to be underestimated.”

“It would have to be a very brave individual to underestimate you,” his voice dropped, charging the space around him with a palpable electricity.

“Or handle me,” I arched a brow in challenge, sparking my Alpha aura, reiterating I was no shy type.

He slowly leant in, his defiant smirk twitching away. The air between us was thick, charged in an unseeable force; he was flexing his Gamma aura.

“I think I can handle you just fine,” Diego pulled back abruptly, spreading his arms out on the back of the sofa and daring me to come closer to play his game.

‘He wants to play, fine,’ my wolf snuffed, equal parts irritated and turned on. ‘We can play right back.’

And I knew just how…

I pushed away from the couch, going against where he expected his enticement would lead to, and strode over to my duffle bag containing the last of my clothes.

“Are you ok in what you have on? I can disturb one of the guys if you’re not.”

“Oh, I’m fine as I am,” he stretched out fully as well as his legs, highlighting his package.

His arms flexed, showing each rugged and rough cut muscle, the tattoos dancing with each of his movements. His eyelids lay heavy, adding to the sultry set of his face. I turned back to my bag and stripped fully, every item of clothing I wore dropped into a pile and switched to a fresh set of high- waisted knitted leggings and a short sweater. I had given my best set of clothing to Evie, along with the last of my underwear; a treat that I was sure those mates of hers would appreciate.

My brows scrunched when I heard no growl of approval or desire, no quick movement to claim what had been flashed to him. I swivelled my head over my shoulder to see if he had a will of iron or if he had short-circuited.

The latter was closer.

His eyelids hadn’t been heavy, they had been drooping. Diego’s head had fallen back like the rest of his body, slack and slouched against his seat, and his mouth hung open with soft snores mumbling from his lips. If he was play-acting this time, he had gone all out.

‘Did he have the nerve to fall asleep on us?’ Chila tilted her head, blinking in her dismay.

Even when I gently sat next to him, nothing in him stirred or roused. Had he been any other man, I would have knocked him upside the head for falling asleep during a strip tease. But he had a valid

excuse, so I settled for nuzzling into his side and took pleasure in the tingling heat of his skin and his heady scent that warmed me from the inside.

I grabbed up my phone to text my brother we were on our way and give a rough estimate of when we’d be landing. As I was in the middle of an exchange with him, placing bets on how long it would take Diego to send my father’s temple convulsing – my bet was within the first sentence, Thiago gave him more credit, coming in at three minutes – my mate groaned and looked around as though there was something missing in front of him.

“Did I miss the show?” He stifled a yawn into the back of his hand, slipping his arm around my waist to move me closer.

My phone and my brother vanished from memory. “You missed it an hour ago and, sadly for you, there isn’t a second showing.”

‘There’ll be a second showing, all right,’ he whispered into my mind. ‘Just not from you.’

My heart suddenly hammered, fluttering like I was some virginal teen swooning at her childhood crush. I braced my palm against his chest, pulling back instantly that I may have hurt his injuries.

“I didn’t peg you for a blusher, mi vida.”

“I’m not blushing!” I lied defensively, knowing full well my face was crimson.

What I needed was a change of topic.

“The opponent that you fought, you checked for his pulse to make sure he was alive… why?”

Diego stroked my cheek, chuckling to himself and seeing straight through my distraction. Nevertheless, he answered and indulged me.

“He may have been my opponent, but I didn’t want to see him hurt. The man has pups to provide for and fighting is the only way he can earn money to feed them. Not exactly much upstanding work for us rogues. He isn’t kept like I was, he just fights and receives a small percentage of the takes. We like to give each other our best, but we try not to severely maim.”

I raised a brow, my eyes making an obvious line to his chest that had practically been slit open.

“That was my fault, not his,” he smiled, his eyes still languid from sleep. “You see, this angel appeared,” he tugged his arm and pulled me effortlessly to his lap, his hand smoothing up my thigh. “And her beauty enchanted me so much I didn’t duck in time. Then she called me a pendejo for getting injured and I knew I was in love.”

He was dropping the L-bomb? So soon, at that. He could hardly miss my eyes doubling in size.

Forget him short-circuiting, I had short-circuited, along with Chila, who had vanished the moment Diego had woken to link with his counterpart wolf.

“I… I don’t even know your wolf’s name yet,” was the best composition of words my brain could formulate.

“Dario,” his hand squeezed my upper thigh. “You don’t need to say it back. To find you, my fated mate, this is why I left my pack, so I’m a little excited is all.”

I pulled back in confusion, my head tilting and mirroring my wolf’s.

“My father arranged a mate for me just before I turned 19, about a week before my birthday,” Diego exhaled a shaky breath, a taut agitation cutting his bravado down a slice. “He said I was to take her or leave, thinking I’d be a well-behaved pup.”

A bitter and mirthless laugh shook him, but I could see the pain wrench in his eyes. “You can probably guess what I told him.”

“Thank you, but no?”

“It wasn’t even that many words… he didn’t even try to stop me, neither did my mother.”

I stroked back his hair, pushing a wavy lock that hung low out of his eyes. He groaned in a quiet bliss as my fingers moved downward to lightly scratch the roughness of his beard.

“I didn’t want to be the pack’s Gamma, either. I think that’s why I was forced into a chosen mate. My father hoped she’d keep me in line. If you haven’t guessed, I’m a little unruly,” he winked.

“What about your siblings? Couldn’t one of them have taken the position for you?”

“Only child. So it was me or my family losing its station. And my father couldn’t have that scandal,” he rolled his eyes. “So I went rogue, bringing shame to the family and a lifetime of scandal, so I like to think I won in the end. What about you?”

“I have an older brother who’s next in line as the eldest, Thiago.”

“Your brother is Thiago and I’m Diego?” He chuckled. “Fate didn’t plan that one out very well.”

That was going to get confusing, but as long as it didn’t get awkward, I was fine with it.

“And I have an older sister, Elisabeth, or Beth we call her,” a pang of deep absence iced my chest. We were always inseparable, she and I, and suddenly, we weren’t. “She’s five months pregnant, I think? She would die if she knew what I had been up to… maybe don’t tell her exactly how we met just yet.”

“You want me to hide the fact I’m a dirty bad boy rogue?”

“Oh, she won’t care about that bit,” I booped his nose. “It’s the bit where I flew off to a foreign country to infiltrate a secret underground fighting ring and helped take down some mafia wolf where I could have died. That’s the bit where she’d probably have a heart attack… she’s been through too much these last few years to have any stress with her first-ever pup. She can find out what I did and kill me once the little bundle is out.”

The two years she had been forced to be separate from her mate had taken a bigger toll on her, more than anyone knew, anyone but me. She had thought of running off with him more than once, to go rogue and never look back. But he had obligations in his pack, a family he could never leave. He was a nice and decent wolf, albeit a little vanilla for my tastes, but perfect for her. I wasn’t about to place strain on her newfound peace or endanger her pup.

“Ok,” he chuckled sleepily, snuggling into my side and settling me against the thick curve of his neck. “I’ll be some dirty bad boy rogue you found while you were slumming it in a bar instead.”

“That was my last Saturday night.”

My provocation finally got me the reaction I was after; a deep basal growl that lifted the hairs on the back of my neck and a vice grip about my waist.

‘That’s a dangerous thing to say to a mate that hasn’t smelt a woman in four years,’ his nose nudged at my marking sight, teasing it with the point of his canine.

‘I think you landed our ass in trouble when we’re back on the ground,’ Chila shivered, rubbing her body along her mental constraints as if it were her mate’s fur. ‘I can hardly wait for our worthy challenge.’