TEMPORARY MATES PERMANENT CRAVINGS novel Chapter 367

Three hundred and sixty seven

Wesley POV

I woke with a headache pounding behind my eyes and the sour taste of alcohol coating my tongue. My body felt heavy, and a strange chill ran through me despite the warmth of the room. Between what I had drunk the right before, the lack of sleep, and the mess in my head, I could feel something coming on. Or maybe my mind was simply doing what it had always done when i was afraid and making everything feel worse than it was.

The bathroom light made me squint as I stepped inside. My reflection stared back at me from the mirror, and I hated what I saw I looked like a man who had spent his entire life losing fights with his own body, which wasn’t far from the truth. I was the son of an Alpha, and everyone had expected me to grow into someone worthy of taking over the packs Instead, I had spent most of my life learning how to keep my own wolf from hurting people.

The thought dragged me back to my first shift.

I had been thirteen, and I remembered how excited I was that morning. The other boys preparing for their first shifts talked about what their wolves might be like, how fast they would run and how strong they would become. I had listened to them and imagined mine would be something extraordinary. Being Alpha Cameron’s son came with expectations, and at thirteen, I had been proud to carry them.

The elders responsible for guiding young wolves through their first shifts had gathered us at the training grounds. Elder Logan had overseen dozens of first shifts and kept reminding us to relax and trust our wolves. When my turn came, the attention around me changed. Everyone knew who I was. My parents were there, warriors stood nearby, and even the elders watched me with an expectation that suddenly felt much heavier than it had for the others.

“Let go,” Elder Logan told me. “Don’t fight it. Go inward and find your wolf.”

I tried.

The pain came differently from anything I had imagined. It wasn’t simply pain. Something inside me seemed to seize control of my body and drag me somewhere I didn’t want to go. Every instinct screamed at me to fight, but fighting only made it worse. I remembered the ground beneath my hands and the sound of people shouting, although their voices seemed to come from very far away. Then there was nothing.

When I came back to myself, people were injured.

The training grounds had descended into chaos. Warriors had struggled to contain me, and if my father, Franklin, and the other men hadn’t been strong enough to bring me down, I might have killed someone. I hadn’t even known what I was doing.

For weeks afterward, I couldn’t look at my own reflection without wondering what kind of creature lived inside me. My parents took me from one healer to another, searching for an answer. My mother refused to accept that nothing could be done. She dragged me through consultations, treatments, examinations, anything that offered even the smallest possibility of giving me control

Twelve years later, we were still searching.

Only now I had spent my entire life learning to fear the thing every wolf was supposed to be proud of.

I turned away from the mirror and returned to my bedroom, where the chef was already setting breakfast on the table. He glanced at me with the careful concern people used when they thought I might notice it.

“Breakfast is ready, sir.”

“Take the rest of the week off

He stopped arranging the plates “Sir?”

“You heard me. Go home. Take the week.”

+15 Bonus

“I can’t.”

I stared at hitn. ! didn’t have the energy to argue, and apparently even my own staff had developed a better work ethic than I had. “Do whatever you want.”

He gave me another concerned look before returning to the kitchen.

I lay down and pulled the blanket over myself, hoping the room would empty and stay that way. I wanted silence. I wanted nobody asking how I felt or reminding me that everyone was waiting for me to come to my senses. More than anything, I wanted a few hours without having to explain why I had rejected the one person who might have been able to save me.

Voices drifted in from outside the bedroom, and I recognized my father’s immediately.

“Why did you let anyone in?” I called toward the kitchen.

The chef tried to answer, but Dad spoke over him.

“Hey, my son.”

“Go away.”

“I’m not leaving.”

“Then suit yourself. Just don’t talk to me.”

Footsteps moved toward the dining area, followed by the scrape of a chair and the clink of cutlery. I stayed where I was until my father’s voice came through the open doorway.

“Chef, this smells excellent.”

“Thank you, Alpha.”

I pushed myself upright and glared at my father when he came into view. He was eating my breakfast as though this were an ordinary morning, as though the world hadn’t shifted beneath my feet and I hadn’t spent the last two days trying to convince myself that losing Isabella was better than putting her in danger.

There was no point asking him to leave, especially when he had Grandpa Kieran for backup. I respected my grandfather too much to throw him out of my house, and when Uncle Franklin arrived with him, I knew whatever peace I had left was gone. Charlie came with them, which tested the limits of what little patience I had managed to hold on to.

They talked among themselves, helped themselves to breakfast while the chef seemed perfectly happy to feed an entire family without complaint, and carried on as though they had come for a casual visit rather than to make sure I hadn’t completely lost

my mind.

Eventually, I escaped to the backyard.

The mountains beyond the property sat beneath a pale morning sky, their peaks softened by the haze. My gaze settled on the chair tucked behind the flowers, and the memory came back so clearly that my chest tightened.

Isabella had sat on my lap there last weekend, making love to me while her laughter mixed with the music coming from inside. I had wanted nothing beyond that moment. For once, I hadn’t been thinking about my wolf, my condition, or the possibility that my body would betray me. I had simply been happy.

Now the same chair felt like a cruel joke.

I lowered myself into it and rubbed my hands over my face, trying to understand how my life had gone from feeling that peaceful to this.

The back door opened.

I didn’t need to look to know who it was.

+15 Bonus

“You have sotte nerve showing your face here.”

Charlie didn’t react to the bite in my voice. He pulled out the other chair and sat across from me, apparently deciding that my hospitality extended to people I had no interest in seeing

“I’m a fool,” he said. “A bloody coward, too. But this isn’t about my stupidity.”

I gave him a hard look.

“You can hate me for what I did. You can decide you don’t forgive me. I’ll live with that. But what you’re dealing with now is bigger than anything I did.”

I turned away, staring toward the mountains.

“You re not being childish, Wesley. I don’t think you’re being selfish either. If you were, you’d take whatever the bond is offering you and never think about what it might cost Isabella.”

My jaw tightened.

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