Bonded to the Wolf

Petra Dalman had heard of Emmett O'Neill long before she'd met him. A person would be hard pressed not to, given the man had carved a swathe through approximately half the eligible females in the Apex River pack over the years, as well as some whose eligibility was questionable. She didn't really get the appeal—yet another cocky werewolf male, routinely having too much to drink and taking a pretty girl home, then going their separate ways the next morning. She'd never been much of one for one-night stands, though she'd had a few in her time—anyone who had an oversexed wolf living under their skin as a teenager had given it a try. Many of the werewolves continued the practice long after they'd reached adulthood.

Petra just wasn't built for keeping her emotions separate from a physical joining. She always found herself imagining what could happen between them in a future together, even if it was someone she'd only selected for physical satisfaction. The voice in her head that wanted more—at some point in the future, at least—always tried to fit the man she was with into the space of her imagined future partner.

At any rate, Emmett O'Neill was not someone she planned on needing to try to fit into that space, no matter how good-looking the other females in the pack said he was. She had no interest in a player, not after what had happened the last time she got involved with one, and from what she heard, he was a player of the first degree.

And then she met him.

And more importantly, caught his scent.

Incredibly inappropriately, they were in a hospital room at the time. Her friend Della, the partner of the new Blue Crescent pack Alpha, Leo Tyler, had come close to magically burning herself out during the fight for him to claim the role of Alpha. She'd been rushed to the hospital, even though there was little they could do other than keep her hydrated and comfortable as she recovered. Petra had come with her own Alpha, Simon, to visit Della, as well as pay their respects to the new Blue Crescent Alpha, who would not be removed from her bedside.

Emmett O'Neill had been with him.

She hadn't known who he was at the time. She'd rushed to Della's side, checking to see whether her friend had any obvious injuries, as Simon had greeted Alpha Leo. It was then, over her friend's unconscious form, that she'd caught the scent of… something. If she'd been in her wolf form, her nose would have twitched as she tried to drag more of it into her lungs. She worked to differentiate it from the hospital scents of disinfectant and many people, trying to catch the sweet-but-salty spiciness that taunted her, getting stronger with each breath.

"We didn't mean to interrupt," Simon had said.

"You didn't," Alpha Leo had replied. "Em was just leaving."

"I need to speak to the Alpha, wolf to wolf," Simon said. "Petra, if you wouldn't mind waiting…"

She'd half-heard him say her name, but her eyes had been following the path that her nose took toward the source of the incredible scent… which had led to the man standing at Alpha Leo's side. She breathed in again, able to focus now on the intoxicating scent that seemed to be coming from him, but feeling the expression of confusion on her face that matched the one on his own. He was good-looking, his hair too dark to be honey-colored, but too light to be called brown, and his eyes… his eyes were fixed on her, and he looked just as confused as she felt.

"Petra?" Simon said, reminding her that he'd all but asked her to wait outside.

"Yes," she said, hearing the confusion on her face echoed in her voice. "Waiting. I'll… I'll be outside." She took one step back from the bed, then another, unwilling to turn her back on the strange, beautiful man whose scent was so alluring. Finally, she had to, to leave through the door of the hospital room, though she heard Leo say, "I'll talk to you later, Emmett," then add, slowly, "And thank you."

Emmett. Was this the Emmett O'Neill, the male who had gotten into a punch-up with Pete Haverford after he tried to flirt with Pete's partner at the Deep Waters pub, barely a month past? Sure, he was good-looking enough to fit the legend and then some, but she'd been unconsciously expecting someone larger than life, maybe seven feet tall, to be capable of doing the damage he'd done to Pete and still taking a pretty girl home that night. Some mythical Hercules, to have had so many girls chasing him over the years. Though, maybe that was due to that impossibly delicious scent he gave off. Maybe he smelled like this to everyone, and that was the reason the females of her pack couldn't seem to stay away.

The door clicked open and closed once more as soon as she'd leant against the wall alongside it, and the man in question appeared, looking just as confused as she felt. She shrank back, trying to escape his notice, but he swung toward her immediately.

"You," he demanded flatly. "Who are you?"

"Me?" she asked, as though there was anyone else around them. The one time she wouldn't have minded being interrupted by a well-meaning nurse, they all happened to be elsewhere.

"You," he confirmed, then seemed to notice the confrontational nature of his approach. He took a deep breath, followed by what looked like a shiver running through him, then softened his tone. "What's your name?"

"Petra?" she said, her voice tilting upward as though it was a question. She cleared her throat. "Petra Dalman. Apex River pack."

"Good, you're a werewolf," he said, in what sounded like relief.

Petra felt her head tilt to the side in confusion. "Could you not scent that on me?"

"I can't," he started, then caught himself, "I've never smelled anything like you. I didn't know if it was because you were… something else."

"Just a regular werewolf," Petra said with some discomfort. She bit her lip and added, "What… what do I smell like to you?"

"Flowers," Emmett said slowly. "Cinnamon. Berries. And… other things. I'm still working it out."

"That's… that's good, I guess?"

"It's better than good," he said. "It's… it's incredible. I've never scented anything like it. If I could bottle it, I'd have half the world begging for a sample."

"Thank you?" Petra managed.

He seemed to come back to himself. "I'm sorry. That was out of line. I'm Emmett. Emmett O'Neill. Blue Crescent."

"I work with Della," Petra offered. "I'm the one who asked her to come fight with us against… well, against you, I guess."

"That was our old Alpha's doing," Emmett said immediately. "Nothing to do with Leo. I'm sure he and Simon are already smoothing things over. Your Alpha has a reputation for being reasonable."

"He's a great man," Petra said, trying not to be obvious about purposely taking in a deep lungful of Emmett's scent. "Very careful about always putting the good of the pack before himself. Your new Alpha could learn a lot from him."

"I'm sure that's the purpose of this conversation they're having over Della's unconscious body," Emmett said with a laugh.

"You know her?" Petra asked.

"Only by reputation, through Leo falling for her," Emmett said. "He met her at a meeting about her afterschool program thing, and bam. He was lost."

"I've been to a few of them when Simon couldn't make it," Petra said. "She's got some good ideas on the integration front." She took another deep breath, consciously stopping her eyes from rolling back in her head at the intensity of his incredible scent.

"Are you… are you smelling me?" Emmett asked suddenly.

"Um," Petra said, feeling her eyes widen at having been caught. "I might be."

"I thought… I presumed I didn't smell to you like you do to me," Emmett said.

"Not like flowers and cinnamon," Petra hedged. "More like… the sea. But sweet, too. I can't explain it. You just smell… good."

"Good?" Emmett asked. His voice had gone suddenly deeper, and when she glanced up, it was to find him standing in front of her, impossibly close. "Because you smell more than good to me, Petra Dalman."

"Oh," Petra breathed, her gaze trapped by eyes she now saw were a deep silvery blue and becoming more and more silver as she watched. "Yes. I mean… you too. More than good."

He braced his hands on either side of her head and leaned in so his face was just over the base of her neck, and Petra tried not to shiver as she felt him breathe in deeply. "It's even better here," he said softly, and she had to instruct her body not to melt into a puddle of arousal. His lips brushed her skin, and she thought she might spontaneously combust right there. "You know what I want to know, Petra?" he asked in a tone barely above a whisper.

She shook her head, feeling her ponytail sway.

"I want to know if you smell this good anywhere else," Emmett said, his lips once again brushing her skin. "I want to know if you taste as good as you smell. I want to lick every inch of your body until I know, and then do it again, just to be sure." His own body brushed hers, the hard ridge of his cock against her stomach, and she sucked in a breath at the knowledge that he was just as affected by this bizarre interaction as she was. His scent intoxicated her like she'd sucked down a bottle or two of heavy-duty liquor. "You think you might let me find that out, Petra Dalman?" Emmett asked, his breath hot against her ear.

The door next to them swung open and they jumped apart like they'd been electrocuted. Simon appeared, looking down at the screen of his phone as he said, "Petra, they need me back home. Are you ready to go?"

She met Emmett's eyes for a fraction of a second, long enough for him to raise an eyebrow almost as though he was asking her to stay.

"Yeah," she said to her Alpha. "I'll come with you."

Her wolf all but howled in frustration as they walked away from that phenomenal scent. Get more of that, it seemed to be ordering her. That one is mine.

* * *

Emmett was in trouble.

He was aware that he was a privileged male. He had a kind, if slightly over-involved, family, great friends, a pack that was back on the straight and narrow now that they'd replaced their old Alpha. When it came to women, some might argue he spread his favors a little far and wide, but the truth of it was he found himself doing what he could only describe as falling for pretty much every woman he took home. Em wanted the picket fence future someday, and unfortunately, his natural tendency seemed to be to presume that every woman he found attractive would want to fit into that future he found himself dreaming of.

But most women didn't look to him for that, especially not on a night out at the bar, so he wound up falling for each girl at the merest suggestion that they might be amenable to the kind of future he wanted. That often turned into the kind of trouble that Leo had to talk their way out of, or otherwise the three of them—Emmett, Leo, and Raj—had to prove their prowess as three of the best fighters in Blue Crescent. He had more than a few scars that he could only blame on his foolish heart offering itself to every woman who sent him more than a lingering glance and the resulting scrapes that got the three of them into.

That was before, though. He'd stopped behaving that way some time ago, when it had finally sunk in that he couldn't keep falling for every girl he kissed. However, the legend of Emmett O'Neill, the One Night Stand Man still followed him everywhere he went, and it had gotten him—all three of them—into some fairly entertaining scrapes even after Em had stopped deciding every girl who bought him a drink was his future partner.

Maybe all that would have to change now that Leo was Alpha. Maybe Leo would have to be all responsibility, all the time, especially now he had a mate to protect. He was making a good start on it, what with this refusal to leave Della's bedside as she was recovering from her near burnout. Leo had been beside himself since the moment he'd met the witch, back when the old Alpha, James, had asked Leo as Beta to attend a meeting Della was running about afterschool groups to integrate humans and supernaturals. Leo had caught his mate's scent and even though he didn't, back then, believe in what he referred to as the "mate myth", he'd been unable to stay away from her. Which brought Emmett to the reason he was worried he was in even more trouble than normal.

He'd caught the scent of the female whom Alpha Simon of Apex River had brought with him to meet with Leo—Petra Dalman, his brain supplied, as though there was even a chance he wouldn't remember her name for the rest of his life—and since then, it was like a significant portion of his brain was dedicated solely to thinking about her. About her scent at the point where her neck met her shoulder. How smooth her skin had been against his lips. The gentle curves of her body under her clothes. How soft it had been pressing against his own. Gods, he'd even pressed his hard cock up against the softness of her belly. He'd never gotten hard so quickly in his life as he did in the moment he caught her scent, and clearly the removal of blood from his brain had taken most of his IQ points with it. For some reason, he'd thought it was appropriate to accost a member of the pack they were trying to convince not to hold a grudge for James' attempted invasion and start purring sexual innuendoes at her.

If his actions cost their pack an alliance with Apex River, Leo would be well within his rights to kick Emmett out of the pack altogether. Not that he would—Leo, Em and Raj had been best friends since they were kids, and just because Leo had taken on the mantle of Alpha, didn't mean he was going to turn into a different person. But still, if Emmett's actions reflected badly on the whole pack in the eyes of Apex River, he was going to have a lot of atoning to do for his spontaneous bout of hypersexuality.

He was trying hard not to let his incautious heart start drawing the parallels between him catching Petra's scent and the way Leo behaved when he first met Della. Because as much as Emmett wanted to believe in the truth of there being a mate out there for everyone and that someday he would find her… surely, this wasn't it.

Surely, whoever he was destined to be bound to, to fall in love with and protect and provide for, would actually want to be around him?

But other than admitting that he smelled good to her too—more than good, she'd said—Petra Dalman gave no indication that she felt the overwhelming attraction that Emmett felt to her. None of the desperate drive that overcame him the moment he caught her scent and caught sight of her, to strip off her clothes and memorize every inch of her skin with his hands, then his tongue. To press himself inside her and claim her as his own, never let her walk away from him without his scent mixed with her own, so anyone who got close to her would know that they were bound. His body was aching for hers, a compulsion a million times stronger than the way he had responded to any of the women he'd thought might be his future in times past. Hell, he would settle for being around her, getting to know her, seeing the way she acted around people who weren't spitting sexed-up come-ons in her ear.

She hadn't exactly seemed repulsed by the sexual overdrive that had overcome him when they were together. Her body had shaken under his, had pressed closer to the push of his flesh against her own. Her hands had been shaking, almost as if she was about to reach out and touch him, right up until the moment her Alpha left the hospital room and interrupted them. Right up until the moment she'd walked away from him.

If it had been him, there would have been no way he could have turned his back on her. An army a thousand strong couldn't have dragged him away from the moment that was burgeoning between the two of them, the threads of attraction wrapping around his heart and tethering it directly to her. But Petra… she'd casually left with her Alpha, as though Emmett wasn't anything to her. As though she didn't feel an ounce of the attraction that was encouraging him to use his role as interim pack leader while Leo was caught up with Della's illness to find out everything about her, to find her. To find a way to be with her.

Surely, if she was his mate, she would have felt the same draw to him that he felt to her. Surely, she would have found it as impossible to abandon whatever was growing between them as he would have in that moment. But she'd walked away.

So, Petra Dalman couldn't be Emmett's true mate.

So why the hell couldn't he stop thinking about her?

Instead, his entire brain seemed to be dedicated to Petra Dalman and imagining what the moment between them could have turned into, had they not been interrupted, rather than the discussion he was supposed to be having with Raj.

Raj and Emmett had decided without discussion that they'd cover Leo's ass until he was finished lurking by Della's bedside. Those issues that they could, they'd shoot through to him, but most things they knew they would have to handle themselves for the time being. They still didn't know which of them he'd name as his Beta, but Em wasn't particularly fussed whether it was Raj or him. As much as the achievement-focused wolf in him would love to receive the accolade, he'd seen the toll it had taken on Leo to be James' Beta, and if Leo decided that Raj would be a better fit, then Em would support them one hundred percent. The three of them would always be best friends, no matter which of them held the leadership positions in the pack, and honestly, Emmett far from envied Leo that he had to choose which of his best friends would be able to act as the better calming influence and brain's trust that a Beta was supposed to be.

"Em," Raj was saying from his position on Emmett's couch. "Are you losing your mind, or is something wrong? Is it Leo? Because I guarantee he'll be ready for full Alpha duties as soon as he's not terrified for his mate anymore."

"I'm not losing my mind," Emmett said. "And it's not Leo."

"Then what…" Raj halted, apparently biting his tongue, and suddenly his eyebrows shot toward his hairline. "Gods, you've done it, haven't you? You've found her?"

"Raj—" Emmett protested.

"You've found your mate," Raj said, and Emmett couldn't bring himself to protest. It would feel like a betrayal, to deny the draw he felt to Petra, even if she didn't feel it back. Even if she felt nothing beyond finding his scent appealing, which honestly was not one-hundredth of the pull he felt toward her.

"Shit, man!" Raj crowed. "I told you the mate thing was real! I told the two of you for years that someday you'd find your mates, and would you look at that, look who was right!"

"I don't know that she's my mate, Raj," Em forced himself to say. "I just know that she smells insanely good. And who knows, maybe that's her perfume or something. Maybe she'll shower and I won't even be attracted to her anymore."

"If there's a perfume in the world that can make you this distracted, bro, I want a case of that shit," Raj said, still riding the high of seemingly being proven correct in his prediction that the mate "myth" was factual. "I'll spray it all over whatever girl I take home and ten-to-one odds, we'll be engaged by morning. So, who is she? Who've you been smelling?"

"Don't say it like that," Emmett protested. "You make it sound creepy."

"It is creepy. The entire premise is inherently creepy. You get so attracted to a woman's scent that you fall in love with her. It's creepy. That's how the mating thing works."

"Is it, though?" Em asked skeptically.

"Well, if you're doing it right. Maybe you're not smelling the right girl. What did she smell like?"

"Aw, fuck," Emmett said before he could stop himself and took a deep breath, remembering the way Petra's scent had wrapped around him like tendrils of smoke from a campfire. "Everything good in the world. Berries. Spices. Flowers. Sex. Home. Mine."

"And you're sure you weren't just smelling that you'd worked her up?" Raj asked. "I know how you are."

"I've pretty much lost interest in other women," Emmett admitted. "I used to look at them in the street and wonder if one of them was my partner. Now I don't even notice them because they don't smell like her."

"And what exactly were you doing before you smelled this on her?" Raj asked. "Because I'll say again, I know how you are."

"Nothing like that," Emmett insisted. "It's… it's the female the Apex River Alpha brought to see Leo at the hospital, okay? Petra Dalman. All we did was stand outside the room together for all of about two minutes, and it's like an entire hemisphere of my brain has dedicated itself to thinking about her. I can't get her out of my head."

"Well, damn," Raj said. "That's not classic Emmett behavior. I was expecting you to at least say you'd met her at the pub."

"No, nothing like that," Emmett said, choosing to ignore the dig about "classic Emmett behavior", not least because it had been accurate for so long. "I saw her in Della's hospital room, then the Alphas asked us to leave so they could talk, and we talked outside the room for literally less than five minutes. Then her Alpha came out, and he asked if she was ready to leave, and she said yes. So clearly, she's not feeling what I am, so I'm thinking she can't be my true mate."

Raj blinked at him for a long moment. "Wait, what?"

"If she's mine, I'd be hers, wouldn't I? So, she'd feel the same draw to me that I'm feeling to her. And if she can walk away from me that easily, then what she's feeling can't be anywhere near as strong as what her scent does to me. Thus, not my true mate."

"Hmm." Raj looked thoughtful. "Nothing I've read has ever talked about a unilateral mating bond." Given his job as a librarian, Raj was without question the best read of the three of them. In someone else, that might have meant they took what he claimed was fact as likely to be true, but the big wolf had a history of making outrageous claims, insisting they were backed up by something he'd read, and he wasn't always right. His insistence that each werewolf had a true mate out there somewhere had always been something Leo and Emmett viewed more as one of the fairy tales Raj read to children on their library days than the gospel truth that he insisted it was.

"Well, first time for everything," Em sighed. "She doesn't want me like I want her, man. I think that's pretty clear."

"What are you going to do?" Raj asked. "I remember what Leo was like after he met Della. You couldn't get him to think about anything else for more than a minute at a time. He was frantic with the need to get close to her. Are you trying to tell me you're not going to be the same the moment you get a minute to yourself?"

"Maybe I just have better self-control than Leo," said Emmett, who had been considering driving around Apex River territory until he identified Petra's scent and following it to her house, just to make sure she'd gotten home safely.

"No offense, man, but there's no way that's true." Raj laughed. "You've been distractible as hell all afternoon. Looks like I'm going to be running this pack on my own until Leo gets his ass in gear and you get your mate situation sorted."

"Gods, help us all," Emmett muttered, though he didn't deny what Raj was saying. He knew he'd been effectively useless all afternoon, so much of his brain had been stewing over Petra. Inventing scenarios where she came to him, told him that walking away from him was the hardest thing she'd ever done, and was there a chance he'd forgive her and be open to pinning her down under his body and claiming her as his own?

"There you go again," Raj said with amusement, running his hand over his beard. "What help are you going to be to me if you keep disappearing into your head like this?"

Em snapped back into reality, trying to school his body into calmness. "I don't know what to do about it. I can't just show up and inform her that she's my mate. Try to trap her with me for the rest of our lives if she doesn't want me enough to even spend time with me. That's insanity."

"Everything about this situation is insanity," Raj said. "A wolf smells someone whose scent is so powerful, they'd cut off a body part just to spend time with them and wants to fuck them so badly, they fall in love? Everything about mating is insanity. Why not lean into it?"

"And what, show up at her house? Tell her I think she might be my mate, if she even believes in it, and could she please lie down and let me ravage her before my wolf goes insane?"

"Well, you could probably phrase it a bit better than that," Raj said with a grin, "But there's nothing in the rules that says you can't go out of your way to see her again. Nothing says you have to dive straight into bed. Why not take the poor woman on a date? If you're not convinced that she's your mate, treat her like you're trying to woo her."

"She said I smell good to her," Emmett recalled. "More than good. So maybe there's something there I could work with."

"There we go," Raj said encouragingly. "Now you're thinking productively. If nothing else, you have experience wooing women. If you can't talk this Petra Dalman into spending time with you, no one can. And once you've got her spending time with you, just keep doing nice things for her, and based on what I've read, she'll eventually fall for you."

"I don't think it's quite that simple." Emmett laughed. "There's more to it than just doing nice things."

"Oh? Like what?"

"Like…" Emmett paused, scrambling. "Like actually being attracted to each other. And building on it in between the nice things. You can't just keep bringing someone coffees and expect them to fall for you. You have to, you know, get to know them."

"Take her to dinner," Raj suggested. "Chat with her. It can't be that difficult to find opportunities to get to know a female."

"Depends on the female," Emmett replied.

"Like you would know," Raj said with a laugh. "The King of the One Night Stand over here."

Not necessarily by preference, Emmett wanted to say, but knowing Raj would just turn that into a joke too, he shrugged. "I know I don't exactly have a history of creating long-lasting relationships," he admitted. "Especially with a woman who doesn't actually demonstrate much desire to be around me, scent or no scent."

"I could recommend some books to you," Raj said, slightly hesitantly. "I haven't necessarily read them, but they're romantic stories. Might tell you how to go about it."

Emmett heaved a deep sigh. Did he have a better option? "Yeah, all right," he said. "But nothing creepy, okay? None of those ones where a woman falls in love with her kidnapper or something."

"Oh, so you have read some," Raj laughed.

"My mum used to, dickhead." Emmett shoved his friend with one foot.

"I'll find you some good ones," Raj said, undeterred. "Nothing creepy, I promise."

So, this was what he was reduced to, Emmett thought as their conversation turned back to the other pack issues they were managing in Leo's absence. Trying to learn how to woo a female from romance novels. Yeah, there was no way this could go badly.

Petra was usually good at keeping her mind on her work, even when there were other things going on. She had a lot of practice forcing her other concerns to the side during business hours and focusing on work, rather than the other things fighting for her attention. Right now, she was covering some of Della's tasks—the afterschool program she was putting together to integrate young people from different species, help them get to know each other, and encourage them to finish high school. It involved navigating the complex interrelationships between not only the different species that lived in Mystic City—witches and warlocks, werewolves, vampires, and humans—but also between their packs and covens. If they were going to make it work, they needed lots of groups to sign up and ways to keep the young ones from bringing arguments the older members of their packs might have into whatever space they found to bring them together.

Having fourteen-year-olds fighting over the disagreements of their elders was not the way Della wanted these programs run. So, for starters, she was running information sessions to try to get the elders from each group on-side, so they'd encourage their young ones to be willing to work with other packs to make the program a success.

Petra had been putting together another of these sessions all morning. There would be input from representatives of different groups and a question-and-answer session, and she'd been working on it for several hours before she decided to take a lunch break. Her favourite sandwich shop was just a few blocks away, and she figured the fresh air would be as good for her as the food.

Plus, it would give her a break from trying to shove the memory of that undeniable scent out of her brain so she could concentrate. Emmett, something in her seemed to be whispering every ten seconds, even when she was trying to focus on Della's project. Something in her brain was desperate to spend time thinking about him, about the way it had felt when he pushed up against her, his lips on her skin, the intensity of his scent as she pressed her body against his.

She'd made stupid decisions before about males, as probably every female had in their youth. After her experience with Regan, she'd decided she wanted a future that was… well… reliable. She wanted the partner she could rely on to come home very night, to help care for their pups, to build a life with that was durable and comfortable.

The flashy-exciting-overwhelming-attraction thing only ever developed into something that made her question herself and eventually fell apart. So, while Emmett O'Neill's scent might be reaching out to her and trying to drag her underneath him with the strength of an army, Petra was determined to stay strong. A man like that wasn't the kind of person she could build the sort of life she wanted with, so no matter how hard the attraction was pulling her toward him, making her think about him almost continuously, she wasn't going to succumb to it. She was going to be strong and eventually find someone who would build that reliable, predicable life with her.

She was in the line for the counter at the sandwich shop, almost at the front, when the scent hit her. Rich, intoxicating… familiar. Emmett. He was here. The things she knew about him flashed through her head. He was Alpha Leo's friend, he looked like a Calvin Klein model lost on his way to a cover shoot, he had a dirty mouth that had made her entire body tremble. He had pinned her to the wall and said he wanted to know if she tasted as good as she smelled to him. He'd probably used that line on a dozen other females, she reminded herself, and made every one of them melt the way she wanted to. He smelled like… like the ocean, but better, richer, deeper, more. His scent rolled over her like a wave, making her eyes want to roll back in her head and raising goosebumps on her skin.

She could hardly concentrate enough to get her sandwich, barely managing the kind of conversation she usually had with the staff who recognized her from her regular patronage, and by the time she turned around, he was there. He looked hesitant for some reason, like he couldn't tell the effect his mere scent had on her, let alone the dirty talk that he must have practiced more than she wanted to think about for it to flow out of him so smoothly.

"Petra," he said, almost like he couldn't believe she was there. He breathed in deeply, and she wondered for a moment whether he was steadying himself before she remembered his comment that she smelled as good to him as he did to her. A rush of satisfaction flowed through her that this visceral draw wasn't just a one-sided attraction to a painfully good-looking man.

"Emmett," she managed to say. "What are you doing here?"

"I work around the corner," he said. "Samson Event Management, on Rockford Street. Do you—"

"The Youth and Community building is just down by the park," she said. "The big one with the metal fence."

"Oh, I've walked past it before," Emmett said.

"Sir, are you ready to order?" the woman behind the counter asked him.

"Um," Emmett said. "Sorry, Petra, will you wait a second?"

"Sure," she said, wondering why she was agreeing, and sat down at an empty table by the window. She had a book in her bag that she'd been planning on reading while she ate, so she got it out and was a few pages in by the time he returned, sandwich in hand. He hesitated, then put his hand on the back of the chair across from her. "Do you mind if I—"

At that moment, she would have agreed to strip down to her underwear and dance in front of the shop's entire clientele if it got her more time in the presence of his scent. "Sure, go for it."

He settled himself across from her and looked down at his sandwich like he'd never seen one before, before starting to unwrap it. "What are you reading?"

"Just a book my sister recommended," she said, tucking it back into her bag. "She likes a lot of weird stuff, though, so I wasn't sure if it'd be good, but it's okay."

"Older or younger?"

"Younger. Almost five years. She's completely nuts, but I love her to pieces."

"What makes you say she's nuts?" Emmett asked.

"She's a counsellor, and she has a lot of strange suggestions about how to deal with stress sometimes," Petra said, smiling as she remembered Francesca's suggestion of eating large amounts of coriander to increase one's distress tolerance. "She's also always jumping on some new cause or other, so in total I think she supports about twenty different movements at the moment. She's got a good heart; she just doesn't have much self-restraint."

"Do you have other siblings?" he asked. "Sorry, I'm an only child. I'm curious. Tell me if I'm asking too many questions."

"Nope, just the two of us." She looked at him through slightly narrowed eyes as each of them took a bite of their sandwiches, chewed, swallowed. "Why are you worried about asking too many questions?" she asked after the silence had dragged on long enough to start getting awkward.

Emmett definitely looked like the question, if not the silence, had made him uncomfortable. "Look, Petra." He took in a deep breath. "I was hoping to do this somewhere other than a sandwich shop, but I guess you work with what you've got, right?" He shot her a heart-stopping smile. No wonder this man works in event management, Petra thought. No one could refuse him anything when he shoots them that smile. The events would practically organize themselves.

"Hoping to do what?" Petra asked tentatively, her sandwich all but forgotten.

"I was inappropriate with you," Emmett said, with the air of someone admitting a mortal sin. "In the hospital, I didn't treat you with the respect you deserved. I was… explicit in a way you hadn't given me permission to be. And I owe you an apology for that. Just because you smell incredible to me, doesn't mean I have any right to say the kinds of things to you that I did that day."

For a long moment, Petra just stared at him. "Emmett," she said eventually, "it wasn't a problem."

He blinked at her, looking confused. "It wasn't?"

"No," Petra said, wondering how else she could explain this. "Not at all. I-I liked it." She could feel herself blushing. The way he looked, the humiliation and hope mixing on his face, had her barriers collapsing until she was being completely honest in a way she would never have imagined being in the middle of a sandwich shop. "I'm sorry," she said, "I know you probably get that all the time, but your scent is amazing, to me, as well. You're not… you're not the only one struggling with this."

"But you left," Emmett said, as though he couldn't believe what she was saying, "That day, in the hospital. I would have cut off one of my hands to keep you with me that day, but the minute your Alpha came out, you were out of there."

"I don't think you realize what kind of impact you have," Petra said, the strange drive toward complete honesty still possessing her. "You and your reputation. You're Emmett O'Neill. Half my friends have spent a night with you. I wasn't just going to fall under your spell like them, Emmett. No matter," she drew in a deep breath, "how incredible you smell. So, I had to leave, or I would have."

"You're my mate," Emmett said. Immediately, his eyes widened like someone had smacked him in the face, like he really hadn't intended to say those words.

Petra laughed. "Emmett. Mates are a story we tell children to keep them well-behaved and looking out for their perfect partner. Everyone knows that."

"That's what I thought too," Emmett said slowly. "Until Leo met Della. Until I had to watch him going through being mated to a woman who couldn't feel the same thing. This is how the most popular version of that story goes, Petra; you meet someone, and their scent is like nothing you've ever come across before. It's incredible. Irresistible. So, you spend more time with them, more and more time, just to get more of that scent, until eventually you realize you're a good match for each other, and you're attracted to each other, and," he shrugged with a somewhat desperate-looking grin, "then comes the part we don't tell the children at story time." The grin morphed into something slightly more real-looking. "Our other best friend, Raj, works at Mystic City Library. He's been going through the texts for any mention of mating and what it's supposed to be like since Leo met Della. He's also completely intolerable now because he's so thrilled that he was right about them being mated, but that's a story for another time," he added. "What I'm trying to tell you, Petra is that I think you might be my mate. That's why you smell so irresistible to me. And if the same is true of how I smell to you… maybe there's a chance I'm yours as well."

"You're being ridiculous," Petra said, returning to her sandwich, but at the same time she got a lungful of his scent again, and a voice in the back of her head said, Is he? Is it possible he's right?

"I don't think I am," Emmett protested. "If you want, I could talk to Raj and see if he'd come and present all the evidence that he's compiled that points to this exact situation—well, you know, minus the sandwich shop." He cracked a smile and took a deep breath. "Look, Petra, I'm not trying to tell you I'm going to force you to become my partner. I just think there might be a force behind us being drawn to each other so strongly, or at least, as strongly as I'm being drawn to you. I think there's an explanation for the fact that we smell so good to each other, even if the explanation is pretty much just 'magic'. And I'd like to get to know you better. No pressure, no expectations. I'm pretty much just begging to find a way to get to smell you again, and yes, I recognize how creepy that sounds."

"Pretty creepy," Petra agreed with a laugh, as though she hadn't been on the verge of the same thing herself. What the hell was she thinking? That she should join the endless list of Emmett O'Neill's conquests, and that she'd be able to happily bid him farewell whenever he decided he was done with her?

She looked up at him across the table, wondering how much of what he was saying could possibly be true. Obviously the whole "mating" thing was bullshit, a fable they told children to help them sleep. But the idea that there might be magic involved in the way their scents appealed to each other… she didn't have the kind of evidence she'd need to completely refute that.

She didn't want to join the list of Emmett's used-and-discarded girls, although none of them ever seemed to bear him any ill will afterwards. The part that made it more complicated was she kind of wanted to get to know this guy, and not just because she would have dropped in at the vampires' blood donation center if it meant she got to spend more time with his scent. So creepy. Still, she couldn't help how incredible he smelled to her. It was… unnatural. So, he must be right, at least a little. There must be some kind of magic behind the way they were being drawn together. And maybe if she found a way to break the spell, she'd stop feeling this immense draw to learn inconsequential things about him, like what his favorite color was and what he liked about his work.

It wasn't like he smelled like this to everyone, right? Otherwise, he'd never be able to get away from the crowds of shellshocked—smell-shocked—admirers. He'd start riots. It wouldn't be a case of him being able to seduce whichever girl at the pub he set his eye on, the way the rumors suggested that he could; every woman in there, and probably a good chunk of the men, would have gravitated toward him like he had some kind of magnetic draw if he smelled to them the way he did to Petra.

So, this must be unusual. Unique, even, if he'd never experienced it before, either. There was something going on, some kind of magic at work, that was magnetizing them to one another via scent. Almost unconsciously, she took a deep breath in, filling her lungs with the smell of him. It sent a red-hot shiver through her body, like someone had just run claws down her spine.

Clearly, Emmett noticed the shudder passing through her. He dropped his sandwich and reached out for her. "Are you all right?"

"What?" Petra stammered. "Yes. Fine. I'm fine." She took a bite of her sandwich, chewed slowly, and swallowed. "Look, Emmett. I agree with you, there's something magical going on here. I don't necessarily think it's the myth of mates being brought to life just for us, but I agree there's something unusual happening, some kind of magic that's pulling us together. So, what I'm thinking is perhaps the best idea is for us to combine forces and work together to find out what it is and go from there." She took a sip of her water, keeping her eyes fixed on the male across the table.

"Great idea," Emmett said, barely a moment after the words had passed her lips. "If we can work out what's going on, maybe we can find a way to understand it. To help any of the others if it happens to them."

"Exactly," Petra said, grinning at the ease of his agreement. The words she hadn't spoken, the ones hovering in the back of her mind, flashed across the tip of her tongue, and before she could stop herself, she was saying them. "And then, maybe, if we understand what makes it happen properly, we can find a way to switch it off."

Emotions flashed across Emmett's face so fast that she couldn't get a proper read on them. Hurt, longing, curiosity, a kind of want so extreme, it looked almost painful? Still, he was only silent for the briefest of seconds before he nodded. "You're right. Maybe we can."

"Great," Petra said with a smile, then caught sight of her watch. "Oh, hell. I'd better get back to the office."

"Wait," Emmett said, a hand shooting out to land on her forearm as she went to stand. Something that felt like a jolt of electricity went through her at his touch, and their eyes flicked up at the same moment, both of their gazes wide-eyed, glinting silver, and dare she think it, confused. "I was just going to ask for your number," Emmett said, breaking the silence after a moment that stretched far beyond politeness. "So, we can organize a time to start looking into this. I'll ask Raj to get some books together, and maybe we can go through them sometime."

Petra tugged back her arm to fetch her phone out of her bag, missing his touch on her skin immediately. This was absurd. How could she be having such an intense response to him? She didn't even know the guy.

Petra had never really believed in love at first sight, or even, really, strong attraction at first sight. She was much more likely to find someone attractive after she got to know them, to understand what made them tick and the ways their brain worked. The last two males she'd dated more than briefly had been men who worked in similar areas of government to her own, jobs she could really relate to, with strong family backgrounds and friends she got along with. Sure, she liked Emmett's friend Leo well enough, but beyond that, she really didn't know him. She had practically no knowledge of his background, beyond the fact that he was a close friend of the new Blue Crescent Alpha and an only child, and he worked in event management. And all that, she had found out here with him today. That was it, wasn't it? So why hadn't she been able to get him out of her head for days now? It was so unlike her, it was unsettling.

They swapped numbers, and Petra rewrapped the last of her sandwich and was almost unsurprised when Emmett stood too. He'd eaten barely more than she had, and he nearly left the rest of his food behind until she reminded him it was there.

"Right," he said with a self-deprecating laugh, collecting it and tucking in both their chairs. "Of course. Sorry, thinking about other things."

Was his mind already far away from their meeting? Maybe trying to work out what was dragging them together, since they both seemed to be feeling this draw? Or maybe, Petra thought, he was already thinking about other things. Maybe she was much less important in his head than he already seemed to be becoming in hers.

He guided her from the crowded shop with a hand on her lower back that sent tingles through her entire body. For a moment, she resented the layers of clothing between their skin, then realized what she was thinking and forced the thought from her head. Petra Dalman was not a take-a-man-to-bed-on-the-first-date kind of female, she reminded herself, regardless of how strongly she seemed to be physically responding to this one.

They paused together outside the shop, silent for a brief moment as their eyes met.

"I'm going that way," Petra managed after a minute, gesturing past him toward the council building. "I think you're the other way. Rockford Street, right?"

"Right, of course," Emmett said, but he didn't move out of her way. "Petra," he started.

"Emmett," she began at the exact same moment.

They paused, both smiling awkwardly.

"After you," she said, trying not to be obvious about the fact that she was taking the opportunity, as long as they were still in each other's presence, to breathe in his scent again.

"Can I take you out to dinner?" he asked, the words coming out of him in a rush, almost as though he wasn't sure how to say them. "Those things I said, outside Della's hospital room… I hope you know I meant them. Whether or not there's magic involved in this, Petra, I want to spend more time with you. We can use the time to talk about how to manage what's going on here, or something else, something completely unrelated. But, Petra, I want you, and I want to spend more time with you. So, I hope you'll give me a chance to prove that I'm more than just a male with a scent that, I don't know, appeals to you."

Appeals to you. The understatement of the phrase almost made her laugh. But the opportunity to spend more time around Emmett, more time breathing in the incredible sweet-seafoam scent of him, let alone the pull that seemed to be doing its best to magnetize her body to his… she didn't know how to turn that down. Before she could think it through, before she could analyze the wisdom of agreeing to what effectively amounted to a date with this man, she was nodding. "All right. Just dinner, all right?"

"I would never assume anything else," he said with that grin that heated her blood.

"I'll have to look at my calendar," she added, hedging now just a moment too late. "Work out when I have a night free."

"Text me," he said. "I don't want to make you late back to work."

The smile she sent him was a little shy, a little grateful. Why was she feeling like this toward a man she didn't even know? She took another lungful of his scent and before she knew what she was doing, reached out a hand to shake his.

He looked slightly surprised, which was nothing to the tidal wave of embarrassment sweeping through her, but she managed to hold her hand steady as he shook it, even as warmth spread through her entire body in the wake of the embarrassment from the place where his bare skin touched hers. From the combination of the two feelings rushing through her, breathing had become slightly difficult, so she shot him another smile and said, "I will. I'll speak to you soon, Emmett," then stepped around him to make her way back to the Youth and Community building.

"Soon," she heard him say in confirmation as she walked away.

She'd made it two blocks before she stopped and leaned her forehead against the bricks of the building she was passing and fought the urge to beat her head against it and hopefully gain some sense in the process. First, she gave the man her phone number, then she agreed to what seriously looked like a date, even if she was trying to shield it in her head behind the intention to discuss what they were going to do about their situation. Then she shook his hand? What in the name of all the gods was she trying to do, make herself look so foolish that he stopped wanting to spend time around her? Something in her clenched in horror at the very idea. No, judging by that harsh visceral reaction, she definitely didn't want to drive Emmett O'Neill away with her social ineptitude. She needed to clean up her act, though, or else it might not matter whether she wanted it. If she kept shaking the man's hand when they parted, he'd probably decide she was too weird to keep spending time around, no matter how good she smelled to him.

She ducked her head to her shoulder and sniffed, trying to find any hint of whatever it was that was drawing him so powerfully. Nope, she smelled the same as she always had, a hint of the perfume she'd put on this morning, mixed with the freshly printed paper scent that always clung to her after a day in the office.

The office. She glanced down at her watch, and her eyes widened when she noticed the time. She had no time for existential crises; she was already late back from lunch, and there were piles of work to do this afternoon with Della out.

Of course, being busy all afternoon didn't stop her from catching herself—not just once, but regularly—staring into space and reliving the way his hand had felt against her back as he guided her out of the shop, the need that had rolled through her body. Emmett had said this was what happened between Della and Leo, this sharp attraction dragging them together. How on earth had Della gotten anything done if she'd been feeling this the whole time she and Leo had been flirting? It was like Petra was standing in a strong riptide, and it was trying to drag her out to sea. She was swimming against it as hard as she could, but she was aware that she only had so much power, and eventually, if she couldn't free herself from the rip, she might have to allow it to drag her into the waves.

And the worst part was part of her wanted to know what it was like to be carried out to sea.