CHAPTER 4: MATE PULL

CELINE

The word detonated inside my chest like something physical.

Mate!

The pull struck again, but harder this time, coming from three directions at once, like invisible hands reaching into my ribcage and pulling simultaneously.

My own hand rose slowly and I pointed a trembling finger at each face in turn.

"One." Silver eyes. "Two." Ice blue. "Three." Bright green, then I lowered my hand.

"Alpha Zithan is fucking three people?" I exclaimed aloud, my eyes almost popped out.

Silver eyes and green eyes both broke into a smile at exactly the same time. Ice blue remained perfectly, glacially still — staring at me with an expression that could have frozen the drinks behind the bar.

This particular dude probably hated me.

"She's our mate," silver eyes said, his voice low and wondering, like someone confirming a dream they didn't entirely believe.

"Our sweet little mate," green eyes added, his gaze moving over me with that slow deliberate appreciation I was already learning to recognise as his permanent setting.

Ice blue said absolutely nothing. He just stared, while his expression remained cold and unreadable, so intensely still that looking at him felt like staring down a wolf that hadn't decided yet whether to move.

I stood there for three full seconds completely dumbstruck. Like… this was unbelievable!

Even without my wolf?

A mate? I had spent years dragging myself to Mating Festivals and coming home empty. Years swallowing the humiliation of standing unclaimed while everyone around me found their person. Years listening to Muize tell me I was too broken, too wolfless, too unattractive to ever be chosen.

And now the Moon Goddess has given not just one? But three fucking mate?

My mother had destroyed one marriage. Just one. She couldn't keep a single mate and had burned everything down around her trying. What made anyone think I was equipped to handle three full grown Alpha males?

Absolutely not.

The panic hit fast and confused. I shoved the bottle onto the bar, pushed through the crowd and fled back into the mansion. My chest raised and fell rapidly.

I barely made it through the bedroom door before it opened again behind me.

One of the triplets stepped inside and closed it with a quiet click, and I knew immediately which one he was. Not from the face, not even the height, but I knew him from the eyes. Silver, steady, warm.

The one who had carried me. The one who had made me feel worth being careful with.

"Alpha Zithan," I said carefully.

He didn't answer right away. He stood just inside the door looking at me — really looking, the way you look at something you've been searching for without knowing what it was, and the expression on his face did something complicated to my chest.

"Mate," he said finally. His voice came out rough at the edges, like the word had been sitting inside him for a very long time waiting to get out.

He crossed the room slowly and his hands moved over my shoulders gently, checking me like I might have been hurt.

"All these years without a mate—" He stopped. Swallowed hard. "And now you're finally here."

Something cracked open quietly inside me. Because I understood exactly what he meant. Every empty Mating Festival. Every moonrise was spent watching other people find their person while I stood at the edges pretending I wasn't counting. Every year that passed with the absence growing heavier.

They had been doing the same. These three powerful Alpha men had been standing on the other side of the same empty space, waiting.

Until tonight.

My eyes burned with tears. I hadn't expected to feel it this fast, the sheer accumulated weight of all those years of not being chosen, pressing up against the reality of standing here now with my mate's hands holding me like I mattered.

He leaned in, his face dipping toward my neck, and his breath came warm and deliberate against my skin. Then his lips touched my throat.

The effect was instantaneous and calm. Heat rushed through me from the point of contact outward, lighting up every nerve ending I owned.

My eyes fell shut, as my hands found his shirt without my brain making the decision.

This was the mate pull and it was strong. This flooding warmth, this sense of rightness so complete it made every previous version of okay feel like a lie.

The heat between my thighs made itself known immediately. It was insistent and impossible to ignore.

He drew back and looked at me with those silver eyes, then he leaned close to my ear.

"I can smell your arousal, mate," he murmured, his voice dropping to something that moved through me like warm liquid.

"Then take me," I whispered, almost like a moan.

That was all he needed.

His mouth came down on mine and the last coherent thought I owned dissolved completely.

I threw both arms around his neck and kissed him back with everything I had — fast and shameless.

He matched me differently, his lips moving with a deliberate devastating tenderness that somehow made it more intense. Like he was determined to feel every single second.

We moved to the bed without deciding to. He stepped back and held my gaze as he unbuttoned his shirt one button at a time, no hurry whatsoever, and let it fall from his shoulders.

Holy Goddess!

He had a Broad chest, abs that made my mouth go dry, every line of him carved and defined and completely unfair. A wolf tattoo covered the left side of his chest, dark ink curling all the way to his shoulder.

Damn! I was wetter just looking at him and I didn't even try to hide it as I stared at him hungrily.

His hands moved to his belt and When his trousers followed I stopped breathing altogether.

His cock was already hard,fully, impressively, almost intimidatingly. It is long and thick, veins tracing the length of him in a way that made my inner walls clench around nothing.

He came to the bed slowly and laid himself over me, holding his weight off with both forearms, and dipped his mouth to my ear.

"I don't want to hurt you," he murmured. "Tell me to stop if it hurts."

The gentleness of it, from a man this size, completely undid me.

"I'll be fine," I whispered. I raised my head and dragged my tongue slowly along the shell of his ear.

"Fuck—" The word tore out of him low and raw and something in him cracked open, the careful restraint splintering at the edges.

He guided himself to my entrance and pushed in slowly, inch by careful inch, and I felt every single one. My back arched sharply trying to accommodate him.

"Oh—"

He stopped immediately. "Are you okay?"

Looking down at me with those silver eyes full of genuine concern, not performance, not impatience. He actually cared. Like my comfort mattered more than anything else in this room.

Goddess. What kind of man was this?

"Keep going," I breathed, smiling up at him.

He began moving, slow, strong strokes, pulling back and pushing forward with devastating patience.

He slid one hand between us and found my clit, his thumb working slow firm circles, and the sensation that exploded through me was so immediate I came off the bed.

"Oh Goddess—"

No man had ever touched me like this. Not like I was worth the patience.

"Harder, Zithan."

He responded immediately, his hips driving forward with a force that punched the breath clean out of me. He found his rhythm, deep, powerful, relentless — his cock driving into my wet pussy over and over while his thumb maintained that devastating pressure on my clit.

"Yes— right there—"

The sounds filling the room were obscene and I did not care even slightly. I was feeling every thrust, every hit of the right places.

"You look so beautiful," he said hoarsely, eyes moving over my face with an expression that made my chest ache alongside everything else.

Muize had spent years making me feel like no one would ever want to look at me. I wished he could see me right now.

Something inside me began winding tight — low in my stomach, climbing higher with every stroke, building into something I had no name for.

"Wait— something is happening… I think I need to pee—"

"Cum for me, mate." His voice was commanding and soft simultaneously, right against my ear. "Relax. Let it go."

My body obeyed before my brain could argue.

And it broke open, a wave of pleasure so absolute it took everything with it. My voice, my breath, my grip on the sheets.

“Pleasesss!” I shook beneath him, crying out into the room without a shred of self-consciousness, wave after wave crashing through me until I was trembling and completely wrecked.

He pulled out and finished with his fist, a rough groan tearing from his chest. then gathered me against him and within minutes his breathing deepened into sleep.

I lay against his chest staring at the ceiling, every nerve ending still humming. Then I looked at him sleeping. The harsh lines of his face had gone completely soft, and he looked younger.

He looked like someone who had finally been allowed to put something heavy down.

Something in my chest pulled toward him so hard it almost hurt. Which was exactly why I needed to move.

I removed myself carefully, without making a sound and slipped into the bathroom, cleaned up, changed back into my own clothes, grabbed my bag and walked to the door.

My hand rested on the handle one second longer than necessary. “I'll come back,” I told him silently. “I just have something I have to do first.”

I opened the door and stepped out. It’s time, I needed to find my father.