Hate Mates

Landon and Alexa were promised to each other from birth, and their pack has treated the match as settled ever since. No one in the pack considers challenging it. The pair have never gotten along, though. They clashed as children, and now that the time for their pairing has come, the pack expects them to finally join. Instead, they have spent three years carefully avoiding each other and refusing to act on the pull they were born with.

When a close friend of Landon's attacks Alexa, the alpha hands down a punishment: the two must remain bound together until they recognize they are mates. Forced to share a home, they lose the privacy each of them once took for granted, and they are constantly in each other's company.

The central twist in the setup is that their hatred was never as deep as they believed. Living as a couple turns out not to be the ordeal they expected, and being together all the time makes it harder to keep denying what they want. Desire and affection are rising to the surface, leaving them to wonder whether they have waited too long to reach for each other.