KYLE

#Chapter19 KYLE I had again planned to eat my dinner in my assigned room, away from the pack members dining in the kitchen. I needed my privacy tonight. I have felt this restless in my life. The urge to find my mate, someone who is in this pack but hasn’t yet let me face her. My wolf was prowling in the recess of my mind, driving himself crazy about being this close to our mate, sensing her, and being out of reach of her. It was plain torture to endure. But when Noah had stormed into my room twenty minutes ago and told me there was going to be a packed announcement after dinner and had told me that everyone had been instructed to be there, a heavy weight had eased from my chest. I had no desire to be considered a pack member and attend any meetings, but since the whole pack was going to be there, there was a hundred percent certainty that my mate would be there too and I’d be easily able to sense her presence. I had played with the twins after coming back from the training sessions, a desperate way to release that uncoiled energy in my body. At least, being with them made me feel light and unburdened and that’s all I had wanted to feel after this wretched day. I had still refused to speak to Mom, because we were in this pack, so far away from home because of her warped sense of motherhood. After all, she genuinely believed that I needed to be here to reign in my wolf. Stupid, utterly stupid logic. Without a word shared between us, we had put the twins to sleep as they were not required to attend the meeting, too small to know what was happening anyway. So, here I am, sitting with my food in the pack’s dining room, where I can feel everyone glancing at me from the corner of their eyes. As tonight we were all waiting for an announcement, the pack members had segregated into age groups on their own. The teenagers in one corner, the young adults in one place, the older adults in another. For the very first time, perhaps, I was glad for this division, because it kept my mom far away from me, and by the way, her eyes kept turning to me, I knew she had been dying to talk to me about everything that had been happening. A part of me wants to go to her too and tell her how I might have found my mate today, but there’s another part of me that wants me to keep it from her. Noah slides into the bench beside me and I relax a bit in his presence. “Have you sensed her yet?” his eyes slide over me and I shake my head. “Don’t worry, people are still coming and the announcement isn’t for another fifteen minutes. Finish your dinner till then.” Wordlessly, I get back at my dinner, my eyes pinned to the door, my senses heightened to catch a whiff of my mate’s scent. There was a lively chatter in the communal dining room and I spotted Noah’s father walk to my mother’s side. An attractive woman sat down gracefully beside Aaron and I watched my mother turn into stone, her body completely rigid as she regarded the woman at Aaron’s side while the woman completely ignored my mom. I can feel the history that lingers between these three and before I can ask Noah about it, I smell it. The scent. The reason I have come to participate in this announcement. I watch the back of her head as she slips inside the room and my eyes follow her as she hands over a small child to an older man, most probably her father, before heading towards the part of the hall where the teenagers are assembled. She turns around and through the crowd of the people assembled, I see her red hair, bound in a ponytail flick this way, and that before she finally winds through and settles herself in the back, away from the prying eyes, most probably not used to the attention. I will her to look at me because her sharp senses must have informed her of her mate’s presence and if she’s not doing that, she likely doesn’t care about having a mate or she’s trying to come to terms with the fact that I’m not a part of this pack. She might also be gathering strength to reject me; a dark voice whispers in my head but I slam it down before the seed can grow in my mind. I put my spoon on the table and get up from the seat as the hall hushes into silence. I move to get out of my chair and talk to my mate when I feel him entering the hall with all his authority and dominance. Moving towards my mate when the alpha has entered the hall would be a disrespect of the highest order and Noah tugs me to sit down. #