The Prince’s Unwilling mate by Mutya

211 Ayla Normally | would wake up to the smell of coffee and the sounds. of Griffin placing the mugs on the counter. Today | woke up to Griffin cussing and running out of bed to the kitchen. It was cute. | don’t know what got into him yesterday when he clutched the onesie. He was a bit like how he was when we just met. Nervous, and only focused on makinghappy. | actually like the fact that he seemingly was more at ease around me. That he was just being himself, not scurated version of himself.

Our relationship had been a little rocky though, he was right we needed this one day to ourselves. | hoped this slight panic at oversleeping was just because he wanted today to be perfect. I'd hate for him to go back to his insecure self. Or insecure about the relationship because that was it. He wasn’t insecure about himself. He had all the confidence you would expect from a royal alpha wolf.

“Here you go Darling, your coffee” | was so deep in thought | hadn't noticed Griff walk back into the bedroom with me. Not until he placed my coffee mug on my nightstand. Now that | was pregnant | was very limited in my coffee intake. This morning's coffee we shared in bed was almost sacred though. Griffin knew, so it was sweet of him to care so much about gettingmy coffee. | decided to not worry about it, | would often worry about little things, blowing it out of proportion and | wasn’t going to do that again today, we would take my family to the airport and say our goodbyes. Then we would drive a little further so we could go to a big baby and kids store in human territory. Not only was it one of the biggest stores in the state, and fairly close to us. It was just far enough so that we would not run into pack members. Of course discovering a new town, finding new places to eat at would be a lotgegfun too.

“What's on your mind, Darling?” Griffin asked, | hadn't even realized | just sat there in bed. Silently sipping my coffee thinking about how much fun we were going to have today.

“Just how much | am looking forward to today, baby.” Griffin was too so we spent our morning drinking coffee in bed and just chatting about our plans. Not just for the day but for our wedding and the pup and their nursery too.

“I know you're a smart she-wolf, but just be careful okay? Don’t forget you're pregnant now, it’s not just you, that you need to take care of.” Grandpa whispered in my ear as he hugged me.

| Much like Griffin, he meant well, so | couldn’t be mad at him. Like | couldn't be mad at Griffin every tit felt like he was being overprotective. But it sucked, every tanyone aroundwas extra careful. Or promptingto be more protective than | normally would be. It stoppedfrom moving on. It heldback more than anything and the only thing | wanted to do was to move on. | just didn’t know how to tell my family to stop worrying aboutso much. Not without losing my cool, not without snapping at them. That was the last thing | wanted to do. So just like with Griffin | told Grandpa | knew, hugged him back, and tried to just ignore it. More so because he was traveling back to the White Oak pack, and | had no idea when | was going to see them again.

Even if | felt safe now like my life finally was how it was supposed to be. The kidnapping left sscars. More than anyone | knew the importance of goodbyes. When | was kidnapped by David | at least knew the last words | said to the people | loved were kind. It instilled a fear inof being angry or saying something angry or something that made the other person feel bad about themselves.

Two hours after we saw the plane that had my family in it take off we arrived in the town that had the baby store.

After such a long drive and such an early morning | was craving a snack. It still was far too early to have lunch, but to my luck, my mate was a mind reader.

“Darling, want to go find a restaurant we can have breakfast at? | mean | am kinda hungry again and | can’t imagine you're not?” He asked the second he parked the car.

That's what we did we found a dinner that served breakfast. | could not have a coffee with it but other than that breakfast was perfect. There was just one thing we needed to discuss that was somewhat work-related. Even if it was a personal matter too. Griffin's gamer friends now knew what we were. Riven would get

an invite no doubt. We would invite all the Alpha’s and Luna’ from the packs in the entire country. We had to, nothing we did was just for us. Not ecen our wedding, but I did not mind inviting all the leaders of the packs didn't botherthough. I hardly knew them all but most leaders were good and kind wolves wanting the best for their packs. And we wolves know how to party. Other than the leaders of the packs we were free to invite every other wolf we wanted present.

Therein lies the problem, because we didn't just want to invite wolves. And to be able to invite humans, open the pack to let them in. Always required permission from your Alpha and Luna. Rodrick and Isabella in our case. We were cautious that they might be a bit reluctant since it was no normal wedding and no normal pack we would invite our human friends to. We needed to get an answer soon because we would need to send out the invites. To make sure everyone had enough tto RSVP and make arrangements to cto us. We decided we would ask Rodrick and Isabella first thing in the morning tomorrow. Today we will not talk about the pack business.

Leaving the pack behind, leaving all our responsibilities behind even for just one day felt liberating. Griffin must feel the same, he was back to the person after I accepted him as my mat. And before I got kidnapped, I didn't know that it was possible but | fell even more in love with Griffin. As he wandered about the baby store, getting excited about the furniture options there were to decorate the nursery. We had the stastes and the sideas of what we wanted not only for the nursery but even the clothes we picked out. It was fun and romantic, again it made wonder if we would ever be able to get back to this feeling. To make our relationship this strong when we needed to lead a pack and a country. We were just training now, helping our Rodrick and Isabella. And we barely managed it, the pressure on our shoulders would only grow heavier. What are we supposed to do if we find ourselves unable to hold on to the best parts of our relationship when we were leading the country?