Calhoun drove his Ducati sports bike through the woods as he was trying to clear his head after Celine tried to seduce him. Thirty minutes had passed since he left the mansion, yet the fire below his navel hadn't died down, and it was making him uncomfortable.
Calhoun gritted his teeth. He was annoyed that his body reacted to her heat. It would be a problem if she kept using her almost irresistible charm as a weapon against him.
Unable to handle this irritation anymore, Calhoun parked his bike near the lake where he usually meditated in peace and then called his father, who had been unreachable for the past week.
Calhoun had no expectations, but when the call was finally connected, he quickly said;
—
"Dad, I need your help."
Rourke Calhoun was caught off guard by his son's sudden cry for help. Jaime was a very self-sufficient young man—Rourke had left him alone in charge of the pack as the new Alpha when he was only fifteen.
So Rourke went on alert mode instantly. "What's wrong? Did something happen to you? Do you need me to fly back to America?"
Calhoun gritted his teeth. If he could be honest, he hated having to call his father, let alone seeing his face after his father abandoned his duty as an Alpha. He saw his father as nothing but a walking bank account, only calling him when he had an emergency.
But this should be one of those emergencies. Rourke was his elder. He should've known a way to break the curse that connected Celine, a regular human, to him, an Alpha wolf.
"I need your help to break a curse."
"A curse?" Rourke frowned. "What kind of curse are you talking about?"
"A mate curse," Calhoun replied. He stared at the calm lake in front of him for a while, and the image of that woman began to pop up again. He gritted his teeth and decided to tell everyone because he wanted to get over this problem. "I gave a human a temporary mark."
"So you finally did it, huh?" Rourke's brows eased. "It's fine, Son. You're a young Alpha with a lot of prowess. You can give a woman a temporary mark. Just make sure that you don't get her pregnant, alright?"
"Dad—ugh, I'm not a horny skunk like you," Calhoun disliked how his father trivialized his commitment. He had already told his father that he wouldn't fuck anyone except his true mate. He wasn't like other Alphas who would mark many women temporarily just because they got bored of jacking off before finding their true mates.
He had been staying chaste for so long. He could not give it up just because Celine barged into his life.
"Then what's the problem? You gave a human a temporary mark so you can sleep with her, right? No big deal, you can stay with her till you find your true mate or someone else you like better," Rourke said lightly.
Again, Calhoun felt repulsed by the thought of his father sleeping with someone other than his late mother.. She might've passed away, but he should've kept himself chaste after her death!
Nevertheless, he didn't call to argue with his father. He wanted a solution to his problem. So he took a deep breath to calm himself down and continued, "I marked her last night, and a crescent mark appeared between her collarbones, the same mark that I have below my nape."
"Are you sure it's not a tattoo? Crescent moon tattoos are not uncommon among humans," Rourke said as he still tried to grasp around the possibility that his son's true mate might have been a—
"It appeared after I kissed her and glowed just like mine," Calhoun said, and that information sealed the deal for Rourke. Calhoun sighed, "Look, I know she's not my real mate, so there must be a mistake, a curse perhaps, so what should I do to remove this bond between us, Dad?"
…
…
Calhoun got irritated as there was a long silence between them, "Don't just stay silent, Dad. Be useful for a second, will you? I need to break this curse as soon as possible because she starts using our bond as a weapon to order me around!"
"I'm afraid there is nothing I can do to help, Son," Rourke sighed. "It doesn't matter if your mark on her was temporary, that crescent mark appeared and glowed between her collarbones. What more do you want me to say?"
"I called you to find a way out! It must be a curse binding me to that human!" Calhoun raised his voice. The more he talked to his useless father, the angrier he got.
"There is no curse, Calhoun," Rourke answered simply. "There are a few accounts of Alpha with human mates, and it seems you're one of them."
"Then I'll reject her," Calhoun declared without hesitation.
"Calhoun, take that back," Rourke's tone turned grim instantly. He didn't want his son to make the biggest mistake in his life. "Don't let her hear what you said. You will regret it."
Calhoun wrestled with the uncomfortable feeling in his heart. He refused to be controlled by fate, especially if it meant being forced to mate with a human—an idea that he found utterly humiliating.
"Why would I regret rejecting a human as my mate?" Calhoun challenged. "Those ungrateful humans… they are the ones who—"
"JAIME!" Rourke rose sharply over the phone. "Don't bring that up."
Calhoun clenched his jaws, recalling the event that shattered his family. And the humans were at the root of it all.
They had been so good to them, yet they gave them a taste of betrayal that ruined his family, leaving the teenage Calhoun to take on the role as the new Alpha alone.
"I'm done talking with you, Dad," Calhoun said. "You are no help to me."