Not My Wolf by Eden Cole

Chapter One
     
    “You can’t put it off forever, you know,” Blaine reminded him. “Every day, more and more of the men are asking about when you’ll mate.”
    “It’s not like my mate is sitting outside my door waiting for me to take her,” Corey complained. “You know that as well as every wolf out there. And the bigger issue here is not whether I have my mate. It’s whether we’re going to escalate this issue with the rival pack.”
    Blaine nodded. “Yeah, there’s that too.”
    Corey growled at him, but his second in command was not fazed in the least. Blaine was a good man, a great fenrir shifter. He’d stayed beside Corey for many years and was comfortable not challenging him for leadership of the pack. The others might assume it was because Blaine was openly gay, but Corey knew better. Blaine was one of the strongest, most self-assured men he knew. He was comfortable in what and who he was, but he also felt his place was to support Corey. If today or tomorrow, Blaine changed that view, Corey knew he’d learn it from his Beta firsthand. That made Blaine his best friend aside from his duties.
    “Anyway,” Corey began, breaking eye contact with the other man and staring down at his desk, “I might be meeting my mate a lot sooner than you or I thought.”
    Blaine, who had been rearing back in his chair with his face hidden beneath his Stetson, shot forward. His chair slammed down on the floor. “What? Why didn’t you say anything, you ass? Where is she? How do you know?”
    Corey winced at the explosion of sound. All of the fenrir shifters in his small Rocky Mountain pack had sensitive hearing. “Watch it, would you?” he snapped. At Blaine ’s apology, he continued. “I had a dream last night—”
    “A dream?” Blaine whistled. “So you did get the gift from our ancestors. Shows up in the Alpha sooner or later.”
    “Yeah,” Corey agreed, “and that’s another thing that others have questioned about my authority. Not those who want to challenge me of course, just troublemakers.”
    “The dream?” Blaine led.
    Corey hesitated again. The dream had been sensual, hot. He’d awakened that morning drenched with sweat, his cock rock solid. If the experience wasn’t a premonition of what was to come, it was at least enjoyable, until he woke up. “She was in it, my mate. I’m pretty sure it was her because I heard myself say ‘ you’re my mate?’” He shrugged, all of a sudden feeling stupid.
    Blaine laughed. “You didn’t sound too sure.”
    “Oh, I’m sure,” he insisted, becoming more so as he spoke. “The feeling was right.” He closed his eyes and leaned back remembering the scene with them together, both naked on a bearskin rug. The setting he recognized too, his cabin. The pack lived on a plot of land kept for their own kind, and the occasional stray from another type of shifter. Ownership had passed from one Alpha to the next over the last centuries. They worked the land to produce their livelihood, whether it was crops or cattle, all to allow them a sanctuary away from the big city.
    Fenrir shifters were different from regular wolf shape-shifters. They were descendents of the Norse god Fenrir, and their fur when they changed to their animal form had an electric blue quality to it. They were bigger and stronger than regular wolf shifters. They were fewer in numbers than other groups. This was partially the reason his pack members kept pushing at him to find his mate, so that he could have children and keep the bloodline going. The more Corey looked out over his small pack and watched as they mated and started families, the lonelier he became from one year to the next. But the matter was more serious than him just picking out one of the unattached women and going for it.
    “What did she look like? Maybe she’s one of us or someone from a neighboring pack.”
    Corey shook his head. “I’m not sure. Actually the entire scene was hazy. All I could see very clearly was my