The Lost Mate
1 Examination

Max

The day I discovered my mate was a school day like any other, except extra stressful since we were in the middle of exam week. As I trudged through the halls on my way to my second last final, I was more than sick of the whole ordeal. I wasn’t too worried about the one I was heading to since math wasn’t very hard, but as for the last one, I already knew how to speak English and I really didn’t care about the fine details of it.

Still, as long as I squeaked by with about a sixty percent or something, my parents wouldn’t get too down my back about it.

My lean best friend Will ran into my side deliberately and nearly shoved me into the lockers lining the hall before I managed to stop myself. “Hey, Max! Ready for this exam?”

I grinned and shoved him away from me. “Math? Yeah, ready to get it over with,” I agreed. “English, not so much.”

Will’s voice became dreamy. “I can’t wait for this to be over, either. Summer days at the beach, secret parties, sneaking out skinny dipping with the girls...”

I snorted. “Like any of the girls are going skinny dipping with you. And it’s going to be tons of training. You won’t have time to mess around.”

“I’ll replace some,” Will said, placing his hand over his heart like a pledge, a lock of his wavy black hair straying onto his forehead with the movement. He was a shade darker than my own moderate skin tone and we were nearly the same height, but that was where the similarities between us ended. His eyes were nearly black in contrast to my own very light brown, and my hair was dark brown and pin straight, and I had a more of a natural fighter’s build.

Also, unlike me, Will looked like a fool with his head in the clouds, grinning about things that would only ever happen in his wildest dreams.

“Good luck with that.” Our alpha believed that if you gave kids too much free time we’d just get into trouble, so instead we got a lot of training and extracurriculars during school breaks. There would be some free time, but realistically those hours would mostly just be Will and me and maybe some of the other guys sitting around playing CoD until 3am and then getting yelled at for being late for training the next morning.

Who knew what mysterious things the pack girls would be doing during that time? Will liked to pretend he was an expert, but that was total bullshit since he had no more experience with the girls than I did.

We walked into the gym which had been repurposed as an exam hall for the week. The typical stench of sweaty athletes had been replaced with the stale anxiety of nervous students, and it wasn’t much of an improvement.

All the desks were evenly spaced to prevent cheating and our alpha would have our hides if we somehow got caught using the pack link to help each other out. I didn’t actually care enough about my marks to be tempted to take the risk. I’d already determined that the life of a scholar was not for me, and I figured I’d probably just work for the pack as a fighter after I graduated. It was a pretty solid life, with more time to run in my wolf form than if I were working a job in the human world. I could barely wait. Two more tests, then one more year, and I’d be free to start my life for real.

The tests were already on the desks, but the monitoring teachers kept up a monotonous refrain of “Don’t flip over your papers until it starts.” It wasn’t like I was that eager to begin. Finally it started and I worked my way through it methodically, finishing about a half hour after we were allowed to leave. Will caught up with me by the time I got to my locker, a wide grin on his face, the expression of a free man since unlike me, it was his last for the year.

He didn’t say anything aloud, but his voice in my head through the pack connection was quick with excitement. “Shit, man, Holly offered to go out on a date with me for the answers in there. My life is sweet!”

“Until you get caught cheating and Alpha makes your life a living hell,” I responded as I grabbed my bag. Now that I thought about it, it had been weird that he took longer than me in there since Will was usually the first person out the door. Even though my hyper best friend sounded like an idiot whenever he opened his mouth, he was actually really smart.

“I’m not going to get caught, but it would still be worth it even if I did. Have you looked at her? The girl is flipping hot. Best summer ever!”

If Holly actually came through with it, he’d probably talk about nothing else for the entire break, and that did not sound like the best summer ever to me. Even though she was pretty cute, I still didn’t envy him, because from what I had heard, no girl, no matter how hot, could compare with a mate.

But he was practically bouncing off the walls in excitement that Holly was willing to be seen with him, so I wouldn’t rain on his parade. “Happy for you, man.”

“See you later,” I added out loud as I grabbed my English study notes and my backpack full of snacks and wandered through the halls to the nearly deserted cafeteria. I sat down at an empty table and chewed on a hot rod while I read through pointless information I was probably never going to use even once in my life. What a waste of time. But there was no point in going all the way back home only to come back again a short time later.

A couple of hours passed and I was trudging to my last final when my wolf started acting up. My first thought was annoyance, it was seriously difficult to take a test with an energetic wolf and I needed all the concentration I could muster to BS my way through this final hurdle.

And then, as if to obliterate my good intentions, a delicious scent hit my nose. It was soft and sweet and almost floral, familiar but at the same time new, and it had my wolf’s full attention. I knew the scent, but I couldn’t place it, because nothing and no one I had ever encountered in my life had smelled this good. My throat suddenly dry, I tried to figure out where it was coming from.

Then I was shoved forward as a couple of humans pushed past me into the exam hall. I’d unknowingly stopped frozen in the doorway so I hurried to get out of the way. Sitting down in the first available seat in my row, I thought through the implications of what I’d detected while the voices of the exam monitors buzzed irrelevantly in the background.

It had to be my mate, even though it didn’t seem possible. I hadn’t expected to replace her before I finished high school, most wolves didn’t replace their mates until they were closer to twenty, and I had just turned seventeen a month and a bit ago. But the scent was unmistakeable. Could she be here now?

A quick check over the other students in the gym told me no, she wasn’t here in the room, but her scent was still pretty fresh so she had been, probably taking the exam before this one. If only I’d realized, I could have waited in the hall outside the doors for her instead of wasting my time down in the cafeteria.

So, where had she gone? If she was pack, I must know her. We’d probably crossed each other’s paths a thousand times already. I ran through all the pack girls I could think of, and all the human girls, too, and I couldn’t place her. If I did know her, she definitely hadn’t smelled this good the last time I had seen her.

Throughout the exam, her scent drove me crazy. I tried not to disturb the other students with my unrest but my foot kept tapping impatiently. I forced myself to focus long enough to scribble down something resembling answers for each question. By the end I was sure I’d be lucky to have scraped by with a pass for this one. I didn’t care as long as I didn’t fail and have to do the whole course again.

As soon as the mandatory hour was over, I dropped my test paper in front of a monitoring teacher and bolted out the door.

“Are you okay, Max?” he asked, but I didn’t stop to answer.

I rushed down the halls, trying to track her scent. She’d been all over the place today and it was obscured by many other scents of students. Finally I found it disappeared in the student parking lot, which was convenient, since Will was already waiting there for me with his car.

My plan formed. I’d systematically check everyone in the pack, and if she wasn’t there, I’d go through the yearbook and track down every human in our high school, one by one, even if it took the entire summer.

“How was the test?” Will asked as I got closer.

“Shite, but I don’t care. We’ve gotta get home.”

“What’s the rush?” He grinned as we jumped into the car. “Someone bribe you for help, too?”

“In English? Maybe it they didn’t want to pass. No, I need to check something right away.”

Will shrugged before he hit the gas and peeled out of the student parking lot.