He jumped wide awake, nearly falling off the bed and breaking the bedframe. Jason was taking in big gulps of air, as if to take up all the oxygen left in his nearly cramped room. The adrenaline was still being pumped through his blood and he knew that meant his eye colour had changed, he quickly stabilized them just as his mom came bursting through the door. 

"Are you alright, honey," Matilda asked as she carefully scrutinized his body, "you look shaken up."

"I'm alright mom, I just fell over as I was asleep." Jason was still panting, covered in beads of sweat and he looked like he had just been chased by the boogie man—he looked scared shitless. 

"You don't look alright to me, are you sick?" She inched closer, stretching out the back of her right hand to feel his temperature. Jason casually stood up and moved back a bit.

"I'm fine Mom and if you don't stop babying me, I'm going to be late for school."

“Ok, ok.” 

 Matilda threw her hands in surrender, giving him a once-over before finally heading out and shutting the door behind her. 

  Jason sat down on the edge of his bed, worry creasing his eyebrows. He had a nightmare but it seemed like he was reliving a particular memory, a memory he liked to keep buried and forgotten because of how weak and vulnerable it made him feel—the night he got turned by the Alpha.

 Flashback...

"You're going to that party tonight, right?" Dave queried while taking off his shirt. 

 They were in the locker room preparing to take a shower as they had just completed a rather unsuccessful basketball game. The air in the locker room was filled with the musty scent of sweat coming from teenage boys who probably didn't use deodorant when leaving the house very often. 

"Of course, I always come through for a good party!" Jason hollered. He stood by his locker, a towel over his blond, damp hair while he smirked at Dave.

"Party freak!" One of the boys yelled from the showers. 

"Shut up!"

  Dave and Jason dressed up and walked out of the locker room, both headed off to their separate classes and after school was out; Jason and his girlfriend—Janet—went to Jason's car in the school parking lot.

Janet detested this car and her disgust was always shown plainly on her face. As popular and as “hot” they both were, as she would say, she expected her ride to be up to standard—which of course her ride is Jason's car—which was sleek, smoking hot and cool enough to keep people staring. And this beat down old truck—which looked like it had been given as a hand-me-down from the past two generations before Jason—the colour had faded so much that the once green truck now had a rusty turquoise, the truck always coughed and cackled before it started and sometimes it didn't start at all for at least an hour and worst of all it didn't have air conditioning, which was nothing like what she wanted to attach herself to.

"Earth to Janet," Jason peered through the passenger window, sitting on the driver's seat, "won't you get in?" He had a wide grin on his face. Janet would so love to wipe it off right now. She was shooting darts with her eyes. Tensing her shoulders, she carried her nose up in the air and stiffly strut to the beat down, old truck. 

Janet was hungry so he took her to get some food before driving to the party. The party was massive and there was a lot of booze and lots of girls clad in mini skirts and crop tops, some were so tipsy that they had taken their tops or their skirts off. Jason drank a lot and had begun to sway, wait, he had a curfew right? He reached for his phone in his pocket and checked the time, it was freakin' 1:34 a.m and his curfew was 12:00 a.m. He stumbled around looking for Janet and Dave to let them know he was leaving but there were too many people in this huge vacation house, there was no way he was going to find them. So he made his way out of the house and ditched his car, he'd get it the next day after school or something.

  There was no moon in the sky and no stars and if not for the street lights, the lonely road would have been pitch black and nearly impossible to see. He kept moving along and something seemed strange about the lights, at about two lights away from where he was right now, those lights were not on—they seemed to be twitching. Too drunk to care he stumbled on, engulfed by the darkness and walked into the road, a speeding vehicle with no headlights on came towards him knocking him off the road and ran off without stopping to see what it hit. He lay there, sprawled on the ground, no part of him was moving and he didn't seem to be breathing. With every passing minute, his heart rate became slower and slower, he couldn't see anything, couldn't feel anything, his brain couldn't tell his body to get up and for a minute he thought he was going to die.

 Until...he felt someone roll him over not minding his state or the fact that he could be in a lot of pain—which he was. He couldn't yell but it felt like sledge hammers were being used to turn his body into powder and it hurt. The next thing he felt was teeth—very sharp teeth—digging into his chest, following the feeling of something burning through his veins. This time, he let out a high pitched scream while he shook violently on the ground. He could tell this person—or animal—was still there. Watching him. Waiting for him. Probably waiting for him to die or pass out. He eventually blacked out and the following morning he woke up in his room. 

 He thought it was a all a dream but his chest hurt when he moved his arm and when he looked into a mirror, sure enough, a bite mark with dark red blood oozing out of it. After putting bandages on the injury he looked for his phone. Switching it on he met the face of a man on his wallpaper. A dangerous looking man with hard features staring into his soul through his own wallpaper. Just then a text came in, "I saved your life, beta." 

Beta?

Jason remained confused because what kind of a bad shit joke was that?

One minute he was hit by a car, the next minute he's waking up with a bite mark and a scary looking guy on his screen. 

This all made sense with months to come and he came to realize he'd been initiated—without his permission—into a group of supernatural creatures he only read in stories and watched on television.

Hairy creatures. Abnormal looking humans with animalistic instincts. An abomination. Werewolves.

Bad. Shit. Crazy.

Back to reality...

It was a time Jason never wanted to relive, even remember ever again. His phone lit up, it was a message from his leader—alpha—Adrien .

"I'm in prison."

"Bullshit." Jason spat out.

There was no way any police were catching Adrien and if it did happen, shit was about to go down—wild shit. 

Because, No. Fucking. Way.

Adrien slouched in his seat. He slouched a little lower this time spreading his legs a bit wider with his hands in between them. He wasn't looking at the interrogator even after he had been asked a lot of questions. Adrien looked bored and unbothered by this situation, someone had been staring at him for quite some time now. He could feel it. He turned his head to the left facing a petite, blonde female officer. She looked so small to him that he felt a flick of his fingers would send her into the wall, breaking the cement and probably take her flying into the next room, giving him enough time to escape but he thought against it, it was a stupid idea and there was no one in the state that didn't know him and his place of residence.

It would not be deemed normal for a man to send someone flying the next two rooms with two fingers. He would get locked up and used for experiments.

Adrien Stonehart, businessman and investor, with an unknown net worth but was still counted as one of the richest men in the country. People knew he was rich-rich, the type of money that made presidents shake his hand with two hands, the type of money that could make a whole state disappear like it never existed without anyone asking questions. The real reason his net worth wasn't known was because he was earning too much money, money that couldn't be counted, there was no specific range, he was just...wealthy.

She was still staring, not noticing that he was staring back, Adrien cocked his head to the side and smirked, mouthing the words, "Hey, baby girl." Her eyes widened, snapping out of it and her cheeks flushed red.

She covered her face using her right hand and he could tell she was embarrassed, he could hear her heart racing even after she had composed herself. He chuckled. You couldn't blame her though, Adrien Stonehart was quite the spectacle, he looked like he had just fallen out of a woman's fantasy novel. From his head he has sleek, jet black hair, the hair was so healthy that girls would kill to get their hands on his treatment, his jawline must have been carved from stone it looked like it could cut diamonds into bits, his mustache gave him quite an edge almost making him look a bit Italian; he had fierce, dark brown, hunter eyes with black, bushy eyebrows to compliment them.

From the left side of his neck he had tattoos trailing down his left arm to his left index finger, no one actually noticed but that was the finger he always used on the trigger and on it were the words, "click-click," his shoulders were very broad and through his white, button up shirt—which hugged him rather too tightly—it was evident that he worked out enough, enough to have his muscles threatening to pop a few buttons, his one veiny hand was big enough to cover the officer's entire face so it was no wonder she stared, probably thinking of all the things he could be doing to her with those hands—

"Mr. Stonehart!" Adrien looked up to the bald police man sitting across the table. Without saying a word, he just glared.

"You do understand what you'll be charged with, don't you?" The officer spat. "Gang activity and murder, you'd be lucky if you got a second degree murder charge, so you better cooperate."

Adrien glared for a while before bursting into laughter. The three officers in the room glanced at each other before looking back at him. There was dead silence before he spoke up, "I want my fucking lawyer."

The officer gave up trying to make him speak about whatever he might know and gave him access to a landline.

"Hello?"

"Hello, father." Adrien said calmly. He seemed in no rush, his time not hinting towards any case of emergency.

"Adrien, what do you want?"

"I need the family lawyer."

"How does a businessman not have a personal lawyer?"

"I do not need to remind you how many lawyers I have for business purposes," he hissed, "not for federal offences."

"What trouble are you in now?" Adrien's father queried, raising his voice in frustration.

"Just get the lawyer!" He hung up before his father could say another word.

Adrien and his father didn't have the best father-son relationship. Ever since his mother died—was murdered—his father was too much of a coward to actually be there for him like he was supposed to, thereby causing distance between them.

The officers were still firing questions at him.

"What were you doing at the scene of the crime?"

"Why did you possess a firearm with you at the time?"

"People around said they had witnessed shootings from supposed gang members and one saw you involved."

He had had enough.

"You have no evidence that I shot anyone. I am a well known person and it should be basic information by now that protection is always required— 'protection from me,' he thought—and I was just passing through that area, when I arrived at the scene, the man was already dead." His expression remained stoic, expressionless. It was hard for the officers to tell whether he was lying or not.

"What were you doing there at that time?" Another question fired, this time it was from the female officer. “And why didn't you alert the police?” She continued.

Before he could open his mouth to reply, the door flung open. A stout officer, with his belly ready to pop his belt loose, stood at the door, blocking whoever was behind him, Adrien could tell it was a woman, he could perceive the feminine scent emanating from her and he could also tell that she might've rushed here, she seemed out of breath—and sweaty. This should be the lawyer his father sent.

"Get up, you're free to go. I must say, you have quite the lawyer, competent and," he paused to eye her down but stopped halfway, "nevermind."

She stepped in front of the officer, revealing her face. "Mr. Stonehart, I—" she stopped mid sentence and stared and not because she found him attractive but because she felt it and Adrien felt it too. It was strange at first to Adrien and he thought it was his mind playing tricks on him because he hadn't slept for two days now. The force was so strong that he had felt it right before she even stepped foot in the building—the mating bond.

"It can't be," she whispered.

Adrien had one mate and one mate only, or so he thought, Mia. His childhood love, the only one he was willing to give his life to—and his death—and they had a mating bond right from when they were kids, so what in the moon goddess's name is going on?

She quickly brushed it off and said, "I'm Addison and I'm here to—" Adrien brushed past her without giving her a glance, he seemed quite angry. Addison rolled her eyes and walked right after him.

There was something definitely wrong and he was going to find out just what it was.

Mia was sat on one of the seats in the station. She couldn't even feel her bottom anymore. When she heard that her boyfriend was in prison, she got here as fast as she could hoping that he would've been out by the time she arrived, it never really occurred to her that rules could also apply to Adrien—he always seemed to break them and get away with it. She was clad in her usual baggy clothes, she wore an oversized, black shirt together with some big pants, both were large enough for triple her size. 

 Mia couldn't understand why she loved baggy clothes so much, she loved her body and sometimes wore other things but she just loved wearing stuff bigger than her size. It was no surprise she borrowed from Adrien's wardrobe, like she did today.

  Darting up immediately she saw Adrien , she ran into his arms, standing on the tip of her toes, she hurriedly plastered several kisses all over his face then drew back to scrutinize his body for any trace of blood or bruises. Sure enough, there was a wet blotch on his black pants and from the whiff of it, it was blood, she widened her eyes in terror. In an effort to see whether it had healed or if it was still bleeding, she stretched out her hand but was interrupted by Adrien taking a firm hold of her hand and pulling it up to his face. His hand was much bigger compared to hers, she had small, slender, and long fingers. So it would be hard to even try and wriggle free from his grip—even with her abilities.

"I'm fine, Doe." He murmured into the palm of her hand and kissed it gently. His hold on her hand was hardened but still quite gentle, not enough to break her bones at least.

   He called her Doe right from their childhood because of her big, hazel, doe eyes. He always looked into them to gain the warmth and comfort he lacked in his cold, damp life, he was a dying rose and she…the sun.

"But it's your blood." She complained.

"It's healed, I swear to you," he whispered calmly, his eyes saying a plea for her to put an end to worrying about him.

He glanced to the seat where she had stood up from, Jason stood right beside and gently threw a nod in his direction, Adrien nodded back, a silent appreciation for him showing up.

"Mr. Stonehart," Addison stood behind him, body rigid, she was quite frustrated now as she had been trying to get his attention for a while. 

 Mia felt something strange but quite familiar, something close to a mating bond but this one was a bit different. She felt the attraction of it but not for Adrien. She knew it. You can't feel a mating bond twice for the same person. Could it be that this woman standing before her, the depiction of a stereotypical Barbie was who she felt a strong sense of emotion for? And why did she feel it between Adrien and this woman?

 Adrien didn't show any signs of anything being amiss as he always didn't show a lot of emotions but she knew what had happened and for the first time in a while, she actually felt a pang of jealousy. 

  "They let you out on bail but I need you to know that you can not be seen in any position that could put you into trouble with the police anymore. And next time, you do NOT speak to any police officer without me being present." Addison heaved. For a lawyer she seemed too emotional. Lawyers were like Adrien on normal days: calm, collected, unable to read easily and tactical. But Barbie here was everything but collected.

 Adrien said nothing to her and Mia just stared at Addison. She was putting on a pink suit which seemed to hug every inch and curve of her body, her black, stiletto heels looked very expensive and her shiny brunette hair was placed in a perfect bun, unlike Mia's which trickled down her shoulders to her waist. Addison looked like a doll and Mia had to admit, she was very pretty.

"I'll take my leave now." She turned towards the door and walked off but not without giving Adrien a haughty look first. All in five minutes, she proved she was pretty, had a high degree of entropy and very egotistical.

"Let's go, I'm staying at your place tonight," Mia stated, not giving Adrien any room to protest about how nothing was wrong with him. Not like he wouldn't like the idea of Mia curled up in his bed, sound asleep.

 Jason opened the door, letting both Adrien and Mia go through before going out himself. His plan was to follow Adrien with his car trailing behind, just to make sure there were no issues on the drive back home. But to hell with the plans because Janet just brought her car to a screeching halt, blocking his car from moving forward while he watched  Adrien take off.

Janet scurried out of her precious car—which she was very proud of as she claimed it was "befitting of her status"—towards Jason who had also gotten out of his car to understand why he got blocked in front of a police station.

"You dumb bastard!" Janet yelled, nearly tripping in her heels as she walked angrily towards him. 

"What did I do now?" he sighed.

"You came here to see some bitch didn't you?" She threw her hands dramatically in the air.

"You are my bitch! My one and only bitch!" He yelled back frantically. Jason was frustrated, it wasn't the first time that Janet would be causing a scene in public. “This is a police station babe!”

"Oh, spare me the crap!"

"Baby, can we not do this right now? That was my boss and I have to follow him home."

"Bull-SHIT Jason." She screamed, baring her teeth at him.

"When have I ever cheated on you? Can you leave me the fuck alone for at least two hours so I can get some work done?" Jason pleaded.

"Hell no!"

***********

"How'd you get arrested today?" Mia asked curiously. It was the first time he had ever been arrested, she knew that whatever they may have arrested him for, was true and she was a firm believer in justice but not when it came to Adrien—to her, he was untouchable. 

"Our competition, the one I told you about before, waylaid us. We were supposed to call a truce and we got caught off guard. I should have heard his men hiding in the bushes on time but the second I did, shots were already being fired. I shot back and didn't miss.”

"Asides your leg, did you get hurt anywhere else? She queried, softly.

"No place else, Doe." He lied through his teeth. There was a wound in his abdomen, actively in the process of healing, he had just removed the bullet from the wound in the bathroom.

"That's good, I'm still going to watch you though."

"I don't mind." He smiled tenderly, almost bearing a nice set of white, pearly teeth.

Talking of watching, he had to be on the lookout for the surviving members of his competition's gang. He was out for blood.

"I know what happened between you and that lawyer." She said in a flat-panned manner. "How does one Alpha have two Lunas?" Her voice seemed a bit shaky now and her head was bent, she was looking at her fingers which were placed on her lap. She was scared. Adrien put a finger under her chin, raising her head to look at him.

"No matter what bond forms, I will never love any woman on the face of this earth as much as I love you. I would die for you Doe, nothing changes. You have me—all of me."

Still a bit uncertain, she smiled at him. She knew it was true but she felt quite insecure. She saw the woman today, she looked beautiful and very seductive and she, she was as basic as a white T-shirt.

Adrien sensed the worry and tensed his jaw.

"Don't you believe me, Doe? Have I ever lied to you before?" His face looked tense and his eyes had narrowed a bit.

"No you haven't, I believe you."