Accepting My Twin Mates by Unwise Owl

Accepting My Twin Mates Chapter 126

Bonus Chapter 5 – Accepting His Fiery Alpha – I of II

Diego

My smouldering goddess’s fire flickered in a dying beat, watching Evie in the black jeep roll away. An upset frown didn’t suit her full pouting lips. A defiant smirk, a naughty smile or a dominant challenge in her onyx eyes, those were the quirks that suited her sinfully angelic face and amplified her creamy cocoa and explosive chilli scent.

I let the back of my hand brush against hers, the sparks of her touch electrified my arm and amassed within my chest. She felt it too, the twitch of the corner of her lips told me as much. Five years I had waited, from the moment of my shift, to feel this torrent of energy that my soul and wolf craved; a gift that I had come so close to losing on so many occasions, starting with my father.

‘That coño is no more our father than a broom handle is,’ my wolf, Dario, chuntered irritably.

He had never liked or felt much for our father from the day he appeared and I shifted. The only thing that had ever tethered us to him was our familial bond and even that wasn’t enough to foster any fondness from Dario.

Growing up, I had made a rod for my own back, I knew it. My disobedient and willful ways had dropped me in trouble from escuela primaria when I was six years old to the day I was issued with my ultimatum from my father…

…“Damn it all, boy. You will not disgrace me anymore with this behaviour in front of our pack,” he had yelled when I came sauntering home with another tattoo, another piercing and having spent another day with the wild horse herds in the lakes of our home in Covadonga, completely shirking my responsibilities. “It’s high time you start taking your Gamma duties seriously and grow up! And that starts with a mate.”

He threw down a photo of a girl my age with caramel hair and honey eyes. All my usual brazen swagger evaporated and, for the first time, I had no smart-mouth response.

“Her name is Esperanza and she arrives in one week. You will take her as your mate on your nineteenth birthday and that will be the end of it. Mark my words, Diego, you are the future Gamma of Cuna De La Luna and you shall behave like it. Or, you can leave.”

No help came from my mother, who stood at his side, a conflicted struggle warring in her eyes and yet, she remained silent, never once defending me. I would have swallowed my resentment and taken up my role to serve an Alpha and take commands that I had no interest in. But I would never take a chosen mate, not when my soul’s perfect match lay in wait to burn me with her fire.

My father meant it as an empty threat, thinking a sentence of a rogue status would keep me in line, that the shame of such a deplorable title would be enough to curtail me into submission. He thought wrong…

…“Diego?” The divine voice of my mate, purer than the moon, tugged at my hand. “Let’s go home.”

Home.

That word felt as foreign as the ground I walked on. When I had one, it never felt like home, just a noose waiting to trap me.

“Ever since my hermanita here…” my mate’s brother, Thiago, interrupted my brooding thoughts by wrapping his arm around the top of her head and poking her side. She squealed and fought her way out of his hold, cursing him out with every colourful insult. “…Told me about you, I’ve been dying for you to meet our old man.”

The broad grin that lay under Thiago’s heavy black stubble told me I was in for an interesting welcome. “He’s the traditional type, I take it? Likes the old-time ways and will love a tattooed rogue as a son-in-law?”

“We’ll see if we can get you sharing a glass of brandy and having a game of backgammon by the end of the night.”

“I’m sure my dazzling wit will have him hitting the roof with approval in no time.”

“Cata, the moon goddess outdid herself this time. I love this guy,” Thiago threw his arm around my shoulder and walked us over to the high-end saloon car. “Our mom’s been cooking up a storm and even tracked down a bottle of Herbero for you. She’s not as hard up as our dad, so you’ll win her over easily…” he went on.

I noticed Leah roll her eyes, as her mate talked about his mother.

Catalina caught my questioning glance, snickering into the back of her hand. ‘Our mom is great, but she’s a little overbearing at times. Leah feels like there’s three in her relationship and Thiago is too much of an oblivious hijo de mami (mama’s boy) to notice otherwise.’

A small smirk tugged at the corner of my mouth at the thought of a huge Alpha like Thiago hanging on to the skirts of his mother, but at least she involved herself with her son… unlike mine that stood back and remained quiet as I left.

“So, have you ever been State-side before, Diego?” Leah asked as she slid into the front passenger seat, pulling her pom-pom beanie off and smoothing her flyaway hair down.

“No, never. Just a few places in Europe, and France, obviously… that’s how I wound up with my ass in a cell.”

‘But you’re not there now and it led us together,’ Catalina squeezed my hand like a stable rock to anchor my storm.

Maybe fate would have given us another path to meet upon. Maybe there was no other way for our paths to cross. There was no way to know what would have happened. Those chain of events had been stolen.

I had lost count of the number of times I had stared at the ceiling of my cell, or the exposed stone of the wall I was chained to when I acted up, and cursed myself for ever biting the offer of that dressed-up motherfucker, Marceau…

…The Paris slums were a far cry away from the glamour of the city’s centre. However, for a rogue like me, they had proved lucrative. Knowing about horses served no use in an urban environment, but I knew how to use my fists and, in the slums, it was all I had to make money because I was not about to crawl back home like a pup with his tail between his legs.

There were a few spots that held bare-knuckle fights between wolves and the odd human that fancied their chances, either in dive bars, back alleys or abandoned buildings.

a sharp suit with a manicured beard and an expensive gold watch ambled over to me as

the dusty wall. “I run my own fights, in a far more affluent setting than this establishment,” he circled his finger in the air and nodded towards my pile of winnings. “What you won there, you could win double in a single match of mine. I would provide you with the best food,

over my shoulder and

“You win.”…

no home, no prospects and an over-inflated ego that told me I knew better,

sat a pristine mansion built in white stone and gilded with Roman columns and high arching windows. To the right, neighboured an equally grand-looking house on a smaller scale and dotted around on meandering roads were homes that

which is the pack house,” I joked, looking between the two impressive

home to the main pack house. Our mom, dad and Catalina live in that one to the right. Me and Leah live in the top suite of the big house,”

sooner had the car rolled to a stop, that two wolves were out, front and centre, to open the

modern mosaic tile walls and a grand sweeping staircase to the upper levels. The appearance was not what hit me first, it was the scents. Fresh food permeated every

a large-built man appearing from an adjoining archway

grumblings, muttering more

Thiago, only with a pinch of salt and pepper dusting his temples, he had to be Matías. His arms wrapped around his daughter in relief, calling her his

his son, briefly touching his forehead with Thiago’s and then his mate, Leah. “You two handled the pack well in

my own father could have looked at me like that.

slender woman, a virtual double of Catalina, hurried in from the same archway Matías had emerged that must have led to a kitchen. She hurried to take off the vibrant flowery apron from her neck that had protected her immaculate red blouse and skirt.

turned to me and I

papi, this is Diego,” Catalina wrapped herself around my arm, clasping her fingers with

you,” Julieta replied and elbowed her mate in the

he was sizing me up, scrutinising my tattoos, my ear piercings and, I gathered, my overall air of indifference. I was not ticking the checkboxes of a respectable wolf male to his little princess and, unfortunately for him, I was never going to be a clean-cut and well-behaved mate or a kiss-ass to

began, starting with

Guerra,” I bent at the waist in

Matías’s mouth parted, neither expecting such decorum from one

continental wolf packs. I haven’t seen that in at least a decade,” the Alpha admired my

I said that didn’t strike a particularly small yet agonising nerve. Catalina’s eyes cut to mine, knowing the punch to my gut that Matías unwittingly landed. My father had drilled it

my cool and calm air. “Not that I ever gave a flying f**k for the old ways. Tradition

and my mate’s face sparkled with awe. I hoped beyond anything, that was the first bloom of love

in front of his daughter,

my fingertips playing with the light material that separated me from her luscious skin, the tingles of

her father’s eye twitched, his

Matías,” I laid it

as much, that the older Alpha would think we wouldn’t

rooms my eye,’ Dario

will come to us tonight. I know she

and, between her father and me, a challenge

wolf repeated, tilting his

know exactly where

one. She would dig in her heels and double down. My mate was the biggest challenge I had ever faced, my wilful equal and I knew exactly how to play her to

family where he’ll be staying. Come along dear,” she hooked her arm with mine and began leading me directly up the ornate tiled staircase. “You’ll have plenty of time to settle in and get clean. I made all the meals tapas style, so there’s plenty to go around. I won’t have you going to bed hungry here… And Thiago!” She bellowed, cutting a glare so sharp it would slice a bead of water in half.

he shot away so quickly. A boy was never too old to receive the back of his mother’s slipper when he pissed her

stay out of trouble,” Leah

walls painted a rich and earthy orange. The hall from the staircase led in two wide directions and, to my glee, Catalina

“I thought you’d be most comfortable in the guest room just down from Catalina,” she inclined her head further up the

is cool,’ Dario nodded in approval.

developed

“It’s perfect, Luna-”

Catalina.

I should check his stitches. You know, to make sure they’re ok before Diego

raised a calculated brow. “Yes, I checked your father’s stitches too, when

walked away, shaking her head, her heels clicking

over four years. The fact it wasn’t

men there were innocent, good

women came up, out of his many conquests, he would fixate on the one he called Galina, whom he still loved. It used to irritate me, serving as a reminder of what I could

was too busy focused on her mother’s retreating steps to