The sun was streaming in my bedroom window as I woke from a wonderful sleep. I stretched and pondered what I could remember of my dream, it had been about meeting my mate. His features were fuzzy to me, but I just knew that he was undeniably gorgeous.

Most of my dreams about finding my mate ended up as disturbing nightmares, so this one was a nice change.

Of course, it hadn’t all been sunshine and roses. I had been forced to contend with his pregnant ex-girlfriend who was irrationally mean to me. Luckily, it turned out the baby was not actually his, but rather his best friend's, who was really the bad guy in disguise.

Even more fortunately, it turned out that for my entire life I had suppressed my powers and they came out at exactly the right moment. Apparently my father carried medusa genes, who could have guessed? And conveniently I had perfect control of my abilities from the moment I discovered them, so I only turned the villains to stone. All the likeable people in my dream were unharmed.

The absurdity of my subconscious amused me.

Shaking off my sleep, I got up, showered, and ate breakfast at the kitchen island. Even though it was my day off, since I had nothing exciting planned, Mom sent me to the store to buy sugar since she ran out while baking cookies for one of her volunteer groups.

As it was a beautiful mid-morning, I decided to walk. Strolling down the side of the road, I passed a few of our neighbours' houses before I made my way into the town proper, which was not saying much.

I have personally seen tumbleweed rolling down Main Street, so you can imagine how busy it was likely to be.

The grocery store was only another couple blocks away when the most amazing scent hit my nose.

I could not place what it was exactly. The scent was not food, nor drink, nor a bouquet of flowers, nor a scent of nature. It was something I had never smelled before, but was achingly familiar all at the same time. It made me want to find the source and lick whatever it was—probably the influence of my wolf, Maria, who was stirring in the back of my mind.

My eyes followed the direction of the wind, an unusually strong gust from the north-west, and found the town’s lone gas station. But it was definitely not gasoline I could smell.

A trio of men on motorbikes were refuelling their machines. They all looked delightfully fit and my brain went into overdrive.

That smell was my mate. It had to be.

{YES!!! Finally!} my wolf howled.

Oh no. This had the potential to go so terribly wrong.

{Oh yes!} she trilled, completely ignoring my misgivings.

My stomach sunk. Every girl dreamed of her mate, and I was not entirely immune to those flights of fancy. But I couldn’t ignore the truth. For every happily-ever-after, there was a story of two mismatched people who kept hurting each other with their terrible ridiculous choices.

Because the wind was blowing towards me, he had not detected me yet. It was simple. I could just walk away and whichever one of the helmeted riders was the source of the tantalizing scent, he would never know I had even been there.

But then, I would never know.

My wolf whined in the back of my head at my thought. She wanted to take control of our physical form.

It was a terrible idea. If I handed control over to her I would probably already be sitting on his lap on his bike making out. That was not going to happen.

Still, I could not just walk away.

Darn it, I thought, as I walked forward, unable to resist the urge of the pull.

I had the strongest urge to shout, "Release the drama!" to whomever was holding all the drama hounds back by their leashes, but that would just make me look crazy to the delicious smelling man. I instinctively knew I did not want that.

{At least you have some sense,} my wolf muttered.

As I got closer, I figured out that he must be the rider on the silver and black motorcycle. He was the one who smelled of exciting familiarity. My reflection in his visor walked towards me as I approached. He had seen me. There was no going back now.

My heart pounded and my stomach tightened as I prepared myself for the potential of a curt rejection. It had happened to my older sister when she met her mate, so it could happen to anyone.

He pulled off his helmet and revealed a face that I knew would be burned into my brain until I died.

He was a vision of chiselled good looks and piercing blue eyes framed by messy sand-coloured hair. He was also dishevelled and sweaty, and I could not care less. On a scale of one to ten he knocked off the top with a solid twelve.

"You're my..." he said as he stared at me like he couldn’t believe his eyes.

"Yep," I agreed.

We both gaped at each other, dumbstruck.

I could not say how long we stood there like that, but one of his companions voices broke into the awkward silence. "Hey, Arthur. Who's your friend?"

This companion had apparently removed his helmet, too. His colouring was dark: dark eyes, dark hair, dark pigmentation, and he was aesthetically a definite ten out of ten. I was completely unaffected, because he looked like nothing next to this Arthur who I couldn’t stop staring at.

It was obviously the power of the mate bond warping my perception. No one could look that good. Could they?

My mate glanced towards his friend, and confusion passed across his features. I swallowed. Now, here it comes. I steeled myself for him to say the words no girl wants to hear.

He looked back at me. "What's your name?"

Well, that was unexpected. Or maybe he wanted my name so he could really stab me in the heart with the blade of his rejection. I heard it was worse when they used your entire name. That's what Wilson did to my sister. And if that weasel was willing to do that to Ellen, then how did an ordinary werewolf like me compare to this perfect man?

{Tell him,} my wolf demanded.

"Anne."

"I'm Arthur," he told me, as if I hadn’t heard his friend just call him that.

"Nice to meet you," I lied. This was absolutely going to haunt my dreams on future lonely nights for the rest of my life. Darn it.

He still seemed to not know what to do about our connection, because he just kept gaping at me. It should have been uncomfortable, but apparently I was perfectly happy to have him stare at me indefinitely.

His ten out of ten companion said it for him, as the third member of their group came out of the gas station.

"Hey! Brandon! Arthur found his mate!"

"Whoa, really? Congrats, man," the next perfect specimen of maleness said cheerfully, but I heard a catch in his throat. The brown haired one apparently had reservations about the matter.

My mate, Arthur, responded without taking his eyes off of me. "Yes, thanks. So, Anne, where are you heading?"

"I'm picking up sugar for my mom. Figured I'd walk, nice day and all," I told him.

What an inane response. It would be way more exciting if I were running for my life from rogues or something. No, wait, that would be a bad thing. Apparently this mate bond thing was already rotting my brain.

Eureka! That explained all the mate drama nonsense. Mate bonds were actually a tragic mental disorder. Those poor mates could not help it. It was bad enough we already heard voices in our heads.

{You are a terrible human,} my wolf complained.

{You're a terrible wolf,} I shot back.

{I'm an excellent wolf. It's you who slows me down.}

"Can I come with you?" he asked, interrupting my silent argument with my inner wolf.

{You'd better say yes.}

{Stop telling me what to do, or I'll reject him to spite you.}

{You would not!} my wolf growled, her tone full of indignant fury. She sulked, muttering in a low growl under her breath.

It was an empty threat and my wolf knew it, but perhaps she would keep her jaws shut for a while at least.

But he hadn’t straight out rejected me, which meant this whole mate thing was going considerably better than I had worried. The half smile on his face made him look hopeful.

"Yeah, sure," I agreed.

Still, some part of me was waiting for the other shoe to drop.

"Take care of my bike and everything," he said carelessly to his friends. He tossed his jacket over the seat and tossed his helmet to the brunet one who was apparently named Brandon.

"Okay, lover boy," said the loudmouth who had announced our status to everyone within a two block radius. Luckily the town was dead quiet so probably no one heard.

Arthur did not spare them another glance. "Which way were you going?"

“This way.” I started walking, and he kept pace with me, close but never touching.

We were silent, but I kept taking what would have been furtive glances at him if only he hadn’t caught every one.

Finally, I broke the stalemate. "So, um, what happens now?"

He paused. "I don't know. We could answer each other's questions."

So of course I blurted out the question that was nagging at my mind. "Are you going to reject me?"

"What?" His brow furrowed and he looked at me with concern. "No, of course not. I just found you. You're my mate. Why would you think that? Are you planning to reject me?" he asked.

I shook my head emphatically. Maybe I hurt his feelings, and that wasn’t what I intended. "It's more like you seem too good to be true, you know? And that sort of thing happens a lot. You know something like fifty percent of mate bonds end up in dysfunctional misery, right?"

"And fifty percent don't," he responded without missing a beat. "And trust me, I've got more than enough problems to satisfy your worries of me somehow being too good to be true."

I drew my eyebrows together. What sort of problems could he mean? Did he have a love child already? A split personality? An obsessively antagonistic psychopath of a long lost brother who would kidnap me for revenge against Arthur?

He read the question in my eyes and elaborated. "A whole werewolf kingdom's worth of problems."

I did not understand his words.

And then I did. I put two plus two together, and it definitely equalled four no matter how much I might have preferred the answer to be five.

"Kingdom?" I repeated slowly.

{Kingdom?} my wolf echoed with none of my trepidation.

This was not just any Arthur. This was the prince.

The fact he was the heir to the crown and the alpha above all werewolves made him about two hundred percent hotter if the hotness scale even goes up that high. I am a female werewolf, so I won't lie about that sad reality.

Unfortunately, it also was going to make my life about two thousand percent more difficult.

I was surely doomed.

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