I was already struggling to maintain consciousness, the entire journey back up the stairs to my room was a nauseating blur. Matteo had somehow managed to get me back in one piece into my room with the only casualty being his shoes.

Once inside, Matteo propped up my noodle body against the bed post and disappeared for a few minutes into the bathroom, I heard water running from behind the closed door. I wrapped my arms around the wooden pole and held on for dear life as the room was spinning all around me, I suddenly remembered why I never drank back at home. This was by far the worst feeling ever. The worst and the best. I couldn't get Amias' Lady Gaga song out of my head so to kill time I had been humming it but when Matteo returned into the room, the stern look on his face piped my humming down considerably.

He extended his hand to me and I made the short walk over to him without making too much of a fool of myself, he snorted lightly. "You're walking like a baby deer." Matteo informed me as he added a hand to my lower back to help steady me. We got into the bathroom and the tub was filled up, "We've got to sober you up, get in."

I nodded sarcastically and folded my arms across my chest, like I was just going to casually strip in front of him and trust Matteo to be a gentlemen and not sneak a peak. Right. Like usual, it was almost as if Matteo was holed up inside of my head reading my each and every thought, "Relax, you can keep your clothes on, just get in."

I'd never heard that sitting in a bathtub full clothed could help sober someone up but then again, I didn't really make it a point to get drunk off of magical emotion cocktails on a regular basis. Hesitantly I stepped into the tub and sunk into the warm water. It felt lovely and surprisingly enough it actually did make the pounding and swirling in my head more tolerable.

Tucking my knees to my chest, I rested my head atop of my legs and looked up at Matteo from my little perch in the water. Seeing that I was secure and seemingly stable for the moment, Matteo turned away towards the door.

"Wait!" I called after him, leaning over the bathtub side trying to reach out to him. "I don't want to be alone." Obviously, because it was dangerous to leave a drunk person unattended...obviously.

He quirked an eyebrow skeptically over at me as I gestured him to join me in the bathtub by patting the toasty water. "If you don't come in, I'm just going to come out so either way--"

"Fine, just stop talking." Matteo grumbled and ambled into the tub, sitting on the opposite side from me. As far away from me as humanly possible in the enclosed space, just the way I liked it.

He leaned his back against the wall of the bathtub and rested his arms along the sides, he closed his eyes in complete relaxation. When he was like this, he appeared so serene and boyish. Without all of the scowling and rudeness, there was an angelic peace to him. I recoiled at my own thoughts, Matteo was hardly angelic and peace was the last thing on his mind. Just because he looked cute when he was trying to cut loose didn't change his integrity. Which reminded me...

"You were an asshole tonight." I informed him sweetly as I sunk lower into the water, allowing my shoulders to slip underneath the surface.

Matteo cracked an eye open, "Is that so?"

I bristled at his careless attitude, "Yes, that is so." I mocked back, "You sucked tonight and it really sucked having to watch you and your girlfriend make goo goo eyes at each other all night." Well, I finally said it.

His entire body stiffened, loosing that carefree relaxed look from seconds ago. "Isabel is not my girlfriend."

I rolled my eyes and gave a singular nod, "Well, not yet...but it's obvious you want her to be and that wasn't all that fun." I muttered under my breath as I folded my arms across my chest. I was being childish, even in my residing state of intoxication I could tell; but did that stop me from being a brat about it? Nope.

Matteo scoffed and returned to his relaxed position, settling back into the water. "Don't be jealous, it doesn't suit you." He paused mulling over his next words carefully, a long silence settled between us. He sighed in exasperation and ran hand down the side of his face, resolving silently. "I didn't mean that. I meant that she's not my girlfriend, Isabel's just..." Matteo trailed off, struggling to find the right words, "Isabel is the one who turned me."

My eyes practically fell out of my head, "Turned you?" It could mean a lot of things and I didn't want to automatically jump to the first assumption in my head. The first one being that if Matteo hadn't always been a werewolf and if there was a time when he was a human, it would just make all of his egregious acts even more outrageous considering his humble beginnings.

Maybe he meant it sexually? That was impossible though because sexuality wasn't a choice to turn one way or another because put your paws up 'cause you were born this way, baby. I've been hanging around Amias too much.

Matteo nodded dully, showing little to no interest in the conversation despite the magnitude of what we were discussing. "There's never been anything romantic between Isabel and I." He began slowly, "When someone turns you, you gain an inexplicable connection to them." Matteo shrugged his shoulders as if this was easy information to process, "She found me years ago and turned me, end of story."

That was the worst description of events I'd ever heard, it left me significantly more confused than when he started. "But Amias said..." I trailed off not wanting to finish my own sentence.

Matteo raised both of his dark eyebrows and sat forward, a small smile across his features. "What? Amias told you something about us and you decided to believe him because he is known for being a reliable source for veritable information?" He was teasing me.

My face flushed and I held a hand to it, blocking it from view. "I'm so dumb." I laughed at my own stupidity, I hadn't even questioned Amias about the information he'd given me. I simply accepted it and rushed to judgments.

He nodded in agreement, "You are," He paused watching me immediately drop my hand to glare at him, "But this time, it was almost charming."

He wasn't getting off the hook so easily, especially with his lame attempt to compliment me while still managing to insult me at the same time. "How come you lost your sh:t over her mark? That seems a little more than just someone who turned you."

I had pushed too far with my incessant questions, "For f:cks sake, Olive," Matteo exclaimed in irritation, "You alone are my mate, isn't that enough for you?"

I dropped my gaze to my clasped hands just under the water, he sighed and seemed content to just sit in silence but it wasn't enough for me.

"But we aren't really mates though, are we?" Whatever buzz the drink had given me had long since burned off at this point, "You hate me and I hate you. You said it yourself, the only reason you haven't rejected me already is because you are worried that if you do you'll lose your wolf and end up just like me." I wrapped my arms around my knees, "I'm not even a wolf and I know that this isn't how it is supposed to work."

The expression on Matteo's face was unreadable, "Olive, I--"

I shook my head and held out a hand to stop whatever feeble attempt at assurance or whatever Matteo was planning to say, "Just stop." I stood up from the now lukewarm water, my clothes dripping water everywhere. "I don't want to hear it, I can't hear it."

His hand was suddenly grasping mine, his touch had a certain kind of fervor to it. Matteo pulled me backwards and instead of tumbling back down into the tub and no doubt cracking my skull open on the porcelain, I collided straight into his arms.

Matteo's lips were on mine in an instant. He wound his hand through my hair and pulled me impossibly closer, tangling our bodies further together in the bathtub.

Wildly, my arms moved as if on instinct and wrapped around his neck. His muscled body held me fast as I straddled his waist and feverishly responded to the way his body moved with mine. I frantically busied myself with the hem of his shirt, trying to pry the soaked fabric from his defined chest.

Matteo growled against my skin and pulled away for a split second, tugging the material over his head and in another swift motion he successfully removed my own shirt throwing it somewhere unknown to me. My heart was pounding painfully in my chest as I raked my hands down his back and an embarrassing euphoric gasp left my lips when he focused his mouth on a particularly sensitive place on my neck.

My neck, the knife, all the blood, Alpha James, Matteo...

I immediately released Matteo from my lustful clutch just as he flipped me over beneath him, sloshing water everywhere throughout the bathroom. What had I done? He hovered above my body as the same constricting fear overtook my senses, it plucked me from my crazed state of ecstasy and sobered me instantly.

When Matteo lowered himself down to me I locked my arms against his chest, shoving him backwards. My refusal came as a shock to Matteo although somewhere beneath the surprise it seemed as if he too realized that what we had just done in the heat of the moment was wrong. He moved off of me, returning to his side of the bathtub.

His lips were swollen and when I stood up from the water a second time, I winced seeing the loud red marks that I had left all across his back and chest. The cold air hit me as I stepped out of the tub completely. I picked up my dripping shirt wordlessly off of the soaked tile floor and held it up to my chest in one hand and with the other I held my neck.

Right before I was about to retreat from the bathroom I paused in the doorway and mustered up the very last ounce of courage I had left in me. "You can't do this to me." One minute he hated me and the next we were tearing our clothes off in a bathtub, it wasn't healthy and more importantly, it wasn't right. He was not right.

I didn't look back at him, I couldn't. I slipped out of the bathroom and as I closed the door behind me, I thought I heard a quiet voice from within.

"I know."