Kade's POV

Today was the day that we had to go through our torturous elder test. They pushed it back due to my grandmother, which I was extremely grateful for. Joey has no idea what they will do to us, but I know that it will be bad and deal with hurting us in some way. He told me to be prepared for the worst and I think I am. I mean, they can't kill me or almost kill me because Joey and the pack would definitely have some things to say about that.

Joey grabbed my hand as we walked into the building that they told us to show up at, which was just a regular office building on the outside but I'm assuming it's not so great on the inside with what they're about to do in it. My mate looked a little nervous as well, but I think he was holding some nerves back to not freak me out.

"You know that they'll separate us, right?"

"I know," I whisper to him since we already talked about this last night.

"I told them that you should have Elder Collins since we have a relationship with him. I feel like you need a familiar face in there with you."

"What about you?"

He gives me a soft smile, squeezing my hand as we get out of the car to walk towards the entrance. "I know all of these elders since my parents worked really close with them while I was growing up. I'll be fine with any of them, I'm more worried about you."

I gave him a soft smile because I knew I couldn't say I was going to be alright because I had no idea of what was going to happen. I held on tightly to his hand, not wanting to be separated from him in this building because I knew that something bad was about to happen.

As Joey was reaching out to open the door, I grabbed his hand and pulled him to the side of it. He looked down at me as I was trying to find a way to say this. His arms came up to set on my shoulders before his hand came to tilt up my head so I was looking at him.

"What is it?" He asks me.

"Why are we putting ourselves in danger like this? Why are we doing this?"

He sighs, running a hand through his hair. "We're doing this because we have to. These are part of the people who help run our pack, so if we don't do this, they won't listen to any of my input and just make mine and Cody's lives living hell. I know this absolutely sucks, baby, but if we don't do this now, they will keep asking until we do."

I hugged myself to his body because, for just a few minutes, I didn't want anything bad to be lingering in our lives to some point or another hurt us or make our lives suck for a little bit. "Okay."

He grabbed my hand, guiding me into the building where we were greeted by a receptionist who took us behind the door and to the back rooms where we were greeted by Elder Collins. "Good morning, guys."

"Morning, Elder," Joey said, shaking his hand as I did too.

We were guided through the maze of hallways, following Collins. Joey gripped my hand as we stood in front of a door and Collins turned towards us.

"Who's room is this?" Joey asked.

"This is yours. There are two elders in there waiting for you and they will tell you what will happen and when," Collins said.

Joey turned towards me and I immediately wrapped my arms around him. His hand immediately went to run through my hair as I felt the need to never let go of my beautiful man. I just wanted to go back to the quarter house and live our lives as happily as we can.

"You'll be okay, alright?" He whispers to me as Collins turns away from us so we could have a moment together.

I nodded. "Alright."

"I love you," Joey tells me before kissing my forehead and going into the room where I can hear him greeting the Elders who were in the room. Collins places his hand on my back and guides me down the hallway to another room where there is a woman wearing a lab coat standing with her hands clasped together behind her back as he reads over something on a computer that's in front of her.

"Hi, Kade, I'm Dr. Olsen, I work with the elders on special cases with wolves around the state. I've never had the pleasure to do something with true mates, so it is a real honor to meet you," she says, reaching her hand out to me to shake.

"Nice to meet you," I tell her with a small smile as Collins is moving around the room along with a man in a lab coat who was on the other side of the room. The lady points to a metal table that seems to have straps all along the sides of it that immediately heightens my fear.

"We will need to strap you to the table because it helps us better our results without any movement coming from either parties. Your head will be strapped to this pillow," she says, holding up a firm looking pad that was nowhere near what a pillow actually is. "because we need your head as still as possible."

I nodded, not knowing what to say. I lay down on the table and I start to be strapped in tightly. One goes over my torso and another goes over my knees while my ankles are put in tight restraints along with my hands. My forehead is strapped using a soft material and my head is cushioned by the 'pillow'.

"If at any point, you can't breathe, feel lightheaded, or dizzy, you need to tell us, okay?" Dr. Olsen tells me.

"Okay," I whisper to her. She wheels a machine type thing over that has little sticky things on it and I notice that she's putting it in my view so I can see everything before she does it to help me calm down.

"These tiny things are littler monitors that will go on your chest so we can see your heart activity. With all that we'll be doing today, we just want to see if everything is linked between you and your mate. Heart activity, brain activity, and pain."

I nod my head. "How will you monitor my brain?"

"That's after this," she says, motioning to the monitor that it still in my line of vision. "do you mind if I unbutton your shirt?"

"That's fine," I tell her and she leans over me to unbutton my maroon shirt so she can place the sticky things along my chest and the machine lights up to bring up a heart monitor. She then wheels over another machine to my other side so I can see it. It's the same kind as the other one, but the screen is a little smaller.

"These sticky ones go along your forehead so we can monitor your brain," she tells me as she places them on my forehead as she turns the machine on which lights up with different colors and stuff that I can't understand.

Elder Collins comes over to me and places his hand on my arm, making me jump. "It's okay, I just need to put an oxygen monitor on your finger, okay?"

"Yeah," I tell him as the door opens and Elder Gee, the head of the elders, comes in. He gives me a soft smile as he comes into my view. He looks over at the machines to inspect them and make sure everything is in order.

"Brody, can you get the chat up on the TV so we can all see it?" He asks the man in the lab coat and he sits down at a desk in front of a computer to type some stuff up. Something is pulled up on a TV hanging on the wall, but the text is so small that I'm not able to see it.

I look up at Dr. Olsen who is writing on a clipboard. "Have you ever done something like this?"

She looks down at me and shakes her head. "Nothing with this much experimentation. We haven't seen a pair of true mates in so long that I never thought I would ever get the chance to do this. I know it must seem super scary, Kade, but this is really a good idea because it's definitely better for the future generations to learn more about true mates so they can be fully prepared when it happens again."

"Yeah, that's what they told us."

"Are you comfortable? Anything I can do to make this better for you?" She asks me as she adjusts my hand restraints to loosen a bit since I couldn't even move my wrists if I wanted to.

"I think I'm as comfortable as I'll get in this state," I tell her and Raphael walks back over to me to check the monitors before looking down at me.

"How're we doing here, Alpha? You okay?" He asks.

"Yeah, yeah, I think I'm doing okay," I tell him.

"Sir, they said that they're ready in the other room. They just need confirmation to start and we'll all be ready to go," the guy, Brody, says.

Collins nodded to him. "Okay, tell them we're ready."

We waited for a little bit, then I felt a little pain in my arm. I started to squirm a bit to try to understand what was going on. "Something hurts."

Dr. Olsen started to write something down on her clipboard as she looked over at the monitors while everyone else in the room checks to see how everything is looking.

"The pain should be gone in a few moments," Collins said to me as I continued to try to move my arm around so the uncomfortable feeling would leave it. After some minutes, the pain subsided and the elders noticed and Brody typed something to the other room.

"Okay, now we have to inflict pain on you. We will place a small cut with a scalpel on your leg. It will be a flesh wound and won't require anything other than some ointment and a band-aid, okay?" Dr. Olsen says.

"Okay," I whisper. I watch as she pulls my joggers up to my knee before putting gloves on and picking up a sharp object and leaning over my leg that wasn't covered in a boot. I feel a sharp pain on the side of my leg and I inhale sharply as my eyes squeeze tight as tears burn my eyes.

"Are you okay, Kade?" Collins asks me.

"I'm fine," I say as Dr. Olsen places gauze over my cut and puts pressure on the spot to bring some relief to the ache. Raphael is looking up at the TV screen at whatever the people from the other room are saying.

"Joey didn't feel anything." He said, mostly to Collins and Dr. Olsen, who nods as she fixes up my leg because the last thing I want is another infection.

For about 30 minutes, they kept inflicting pain on both of us and every single time, I felt pain and sometimes Joey didn't. It got progressively worse as time went on and the last few, I've ended up screaming in pain because of how bad it was. All of a sudden, I felt so much pain in my left leg that I started to thrash around as much as I could in the restraints and a scream left my lips.

"Kade, calm down!" Collins yells over me as he places his hands on my chest to help calm me down.

"I-I can't!" I said through clenched teeth as my breathing starts to fail on me, making my chest burn from lack of oxygen. My head starts to spin and everything is looking like two, making me freak out even more as my screaming ceases due to me not even being able to breathe.

I knew that I was having a panic attack and the restraints were making it worse since I felt trapped. Trapped in my own body, trapped in one spot, trapped from everything. I tried to reach something so I could get a grip on real life but my hand couldn't reach anything.

"Kade?" Raphael asked, reaching his hand out to touch my shoulder.

"He's having a panic attack. Take the restraints off!" Collins yelled as soon as he realizes what is going on. All three of the people rush to take all the restraints off of me. As soon as I am able to get up, I fall down to the floor and pull my knees to my chest as I shake with fear and panic.

"Brody, get Joey in here right now," Collins demands as I continue to shake in my little ball on the ground. Dr. Olsen kneels next to me and pulls the monitors off of me to help deal with the panic that was still coursing through me.

The door burst open and I looked up to see Joey search the room for me before he kneeled down next to me to pull me into his arms. "You're okay, baby, you're okay. I'm right here, I'm not leaving your side."

I turn in his arms to dig my head into his shoulder to smell his scent so I would calm down as much as I possibly could right now. I hear some shuffling throughout the room but only focused on the man who's in front of me.

"I love you, I'm so sorry. I should've listened to you and not walked into this building. I'm so incredibly sorry," he whispers to me, running his fingertips up-and-down my back. He stood up, making me reach for him before he picked me up and set me on the table so I was off the floor.

When he picked me up, I felt the ache in my chest all over again and my breathing was starting to cut off again. I reached out to Joey and he grabbed my hand as he tried to figure out what was going on. I opened my mouth to say something but only a choked noise left, scaring even me.

My head fell down to my chest as I tried my best to find my breath and once Joey realized what was going on, his hand went to the back of my neck and he forced my head between my knees which filled my lungs with air as tears started to fall.

"What the hell is going on?" Raphael asked, stepping towards us before Joey snapped his hand out to warn him off from taking another step.

"He stopped breathing because he was scared and you all just stood there like idiots and let him suffer alone," my mate snapped at everyone in the room as he reached over and grabbed a tissue to wipe away my tears.

"I'm so sorry, Joey. You two can leave whenever you're ready." Collins said to us as he grabs the clipboards to read over the information they gathered.

"We can leave whenever you're ready," Joey tells me.

"Now, I'm ready now. I want to leave," I demand, not wanting to spend one more minute in this place with the doctor or the elders just staring at me and wanting to hurt me to get the information they think they need.

Joey put his hands on my waist before helping me off of the table. He guides me out of the room without saying a word to the people who were in there and doesn't say anything until we're sitting in his car.

"I am so sorry," he tells me, putting his forehead against the steering wheel with a loud sigh. I reach over to place my hand on his shoulder and lean my head against my arm. We sit like that for a few minutes before we hear car doors closing, which meant there were either people here or leaving.

Once Joey heard, he lifts his head up and gets out of the parking space as fast as possible so we don't have to see any of their faces again today. Within a few minutes, we're on the highway on our way back home. He reaches over and grabs my hand in his before bringing it up to his lips to kiss.

"I love you," I whisper to him and a small smile graces his lips before he holds my hand to his cheek with a sigh. We drive home in a comfortable silence as both of our minds are wondering about what had just happened to us and as soon as we get home, he puts the car and park and looks over at me.

"Are you okay? Like actually okay?" He asks me, squeezing my hand tightly.

"I'm okay now, it just became a lot at one time. It's nothing you could've prevented or I could've prevented. You don't need to blame yourself, okay? This isn't your fault."

He shook his head. "I could've prevented it. I made us go in today when I knew that they would do horrible things to us. I could've fought back but I didn't and it got us hurt in the end and that isn't what it needed to come to and-"

I cut him off from his rambling and grabbed his face so he was looking at me. "It's okay, Joey. You were right, they would've made our lives hell if we didn't, but it's over and done with. We don't have to think about that anymore."

He moves forward and sets his forehead against mine. We sit like that for a few minutes with me running my fingers through his hair while whispering sweet things to him. All of a sudden, he lifts his head up and looks around and the first thing I can think that it's a rogue attack.

"What's going on?" I ask him.

"Two wolves are fighting in the courtyard, come on, baby. You'll be fine, but I don't want to leave you alone," he tells me as he rushes out of the car as do I. He grabs my hand as we run towards the courtyard, which isn't too far away.

Once we come into view of the courtyard, I see a black wolf and a brownish-yellow wolf fighting with people standing far away from them. As soon as we get there, Cody runs out with Melissa following behind. Joey points me to Melissa and I immediately go towards her while he deals with the two wolves.

Joey and Cody walk up and pull the wolves apart with as much force that they can with their human forms. The black wolf that Joey was pulling off immediately responds to being touched by someone unknown and tries to bite his hand, which makes my mate jump back in shock while Cody steps up and pushed the wolf down.

I try to run over to Joey, but Connor runs over to me and holds me back. "He's okay, I promise you that he's okay. We don't want you getting hurt."

He hands me back over to Melissa who wraps her arms around my shoulder as I look back over at my mate and Cody, who yells at the wolves to shift. They both do and immediately someone throws towels at the boys to cover themselves up.

"You two will be dealt with in private," Joey said to the two boys before turning to look at the large group that was still forming. "this is the third fight this week and it's not something we will tolerate anymore. If there is one more fight, big or small, in the next two weeks, hunting will be on-hold for a month."

Everyone started talking to each other, furious that the leaders were threatening their hunting. I saw some men start to step up but were pulled back by other members of the pack. I whimper as fear rushed through my body that someone could hurt Joey.

"We don't care who are the ones fighting. Any fight whatsoever within the next two weeks will be met with consequences to the whole pack," Cody says, crossing his arms.

"Are you serious? Why the hell should we listen to you? Most of us are older than you," someone in the crowd says, immediately making all of us shocked that someone would stand up at such a silly thing as this.

Joey stepped towards him with his eyes an electric blue. "You have to listen to us because we are your superiors."

"Not like you would do anything," the guy said with a light chuckle. "you're too weak."

I become furious at this guy for thinking he could question the people who run this entire pack smoothly as possible. Cody moves towards him and grabs his arm to pull him into the quarter house so they could, probably, talk to him privately and find a way to deal with the situation.

Conner goes over to the crowd to deal with them while Melissa pulls me inside. "We're supposed to sit in on the meetings when stuff like this happens with the rest of the pack so we're informed of what's going on."

I nod to her as we walk into the office. Joey and Cody sit in the chairs that are sitting at the desk while Melissa and I stand behind them. The man sits in the chair in front of us with a smug smile on his face. "Why the hell am I in here?"

"You stood out there with about all of the pack and you disrespect us and think you can just get away with it," Cody says with a disgusted look on his face as he stares at this guy who really tried to get mad for his leaders doing their job to protect the pack.

"Is freedom of speech not a thing anymore?" He says with a chuckle.

"It is, so I'm giving you a chance in private to tell us what you think would be the best plan of action for us in this situation with multiple fights in one week," Joey asks, sitting back in his seat as I set my hands on his shoulders to rub my thumbs along his back to relieve the visible tension that he carries.

I notice that the guy's face changed from smug to shocked, probably expecting for us to be unreasonable. He opens his mouth to say something before closing it and looking down at his hands. Cody clears his throat. "Any ideas? Anything that an older person would think of that us kids wouldn't?"

The guy runs a hand through his hair before looking up at him. "No, sir."

Joey nods his head. "Okay, that's all I wanted. If you come up with anything, you can speak your mind about it, but we would appreciate it much more if you did it without disrespecting us. We can be reasonable if you are too, that's all we ask."

"Yes, sir. I understand," the man says before getting up and walking out of the room and out of the house. I leaned down and kissed the top of Joey's head as he starts to write something on his stack of papers in front of him, probably just noting the incident that just happened and the warning they just gave to the whole pack.

"I feel like that was handled fairly well," Cody says with a nod of approval.

"Yeah, I agree. I feel like we can keep those two boys in suspense for about a day before talking to them. I don't really feel like dealing with all that today since so much has already happened," Joey says and the two next to us nod their heads in understanding.

"How did the testing go?" Melissa asks.

"It wasn't too great. Did my mom say she was making dinner tonight or anything?" Joey says, changing the topic pretty quickly, not wanting to go too much into it since he was still stressed about it.

Cody notices this and doesn't say anything else about the testing. "I think she did. I know she went grocery shopping earlier today, so I would assume yes."

"Okay, we'll be in our room. If you need anything, just text us. We'll probably take a nap or something until we eat," Joey says, standing up and guiding us to our room.

Once he closes the door, I move over and grab his hand to make sure he wasn't hurt or anything by the black wolf before he shifted. Joey smiles down at me and chuckles. "I'm okay, baby, I think if I wasn't, you'll be the first to know."

He taps on my hand, reminding me of the close bond we share that when he gets hurt, I do too and vice versa. I chuckle, nodding my head. "Yeah, I guess you're right."

He grabs my hand and takes me over to the bed to sit on the edge of it. He leans over and places a soft kiss on my lips and when I felt him about to pull away, I put my hand on the back of his neck to deepen it. His hand comes up to place on my cheek, his thumb stroking my skin.

He slides his hand down my body until it's on my back and he pushes me down into a laying position with him hovering over me. He slips his tongue in my mouth as he swings his leg over my body so he's straddling me. I reach up to unbutton his shirt and he helps me take it off before throwing it onto the floor. He pulls away from my lips to stare down at my flushed face with a smirk.

"What?" I ask, out of breath from our makeout session.

"Nothing, you're just so perfect," he whispers, brushing my hair out of my face as I smile up at him.

I reach up and run my hand down his chest to his stomach and down his happy trail where I place my fingers on the edge of his jeans. "What do you want me to do?"

He gave me a confused look. "I don't understand."

I ran my hand down the front of his jeans, making his eyes flutter shut while he placed his hand on my chest to balance himself as I touched him through the denim fabric. "I mean... what do you want me to do to you?"

His mouth shut slightly before he smiled, reaching down and unbuttoning his jeans. I sat up a bit before lightly pushing him off of me, so I could kneel in front of him. He moved up so he was sitting on the edge of the bed for easy access. He removed his belt and threw it to the ground. I leaned forward, helping him with the zipper.

"Don't hurt your leg, baby," he told me, breathless, as I make sure I'm leaning more on my good leg than the one in a boot. Once his pants are unbuttoned and unzipped, I reach into his boxers to pull him out. He looked down at me with his mouth open in a small O-shape. I lean forward and lick from base to tip, making him shiver in pleasure. I hold the bottom half firmly in my hand while I slide him into my mouth, using my tongue as much as I can. He moans and puts his head back while I work my mouth on his dick.

I can tell he's holding himself back from putting his hand on my head and fucking my mouth by the way his hand twitches on my upper arm. I bring my mouth down on him as much as I can at the moment and moan around it. He whimpers and accidentally bucks his hips up slightly, forcing his cock back into my mouth to hit the back of my throat. I choke around him but recover quickly as I slide up on his shaft and swirl my tongue around his tip, making him moan again.

His hand slides up my neck to tangle into my hair as he continues to hold himself back. My hand continues to work on his base as I keep taking as much of him as I can in my mouth. His hand grips my hair as he moans softly, trying to hold himself back. I remove my mouth from his cock with a pop sound to look at him. He picks his head up and looks at me as I admire his sweaty body.

"It's okay," I whisper to him as I start to jerk him off with my hand that's now covered with my own spit, making his stomach tighten. He gives me a confused look as he tries to focus on what I'm saying while also being distracted by my hand.

"W-what do you mean?" He asks as his head rolls a bit so it's leaning on his shoulder as he barely bucks up his hips because he needs more.

I reach up and touch his hand that's still tangled in my hair. "Dominate me, baby."

His eyes widened and I notice that I have his full attention now by the way he lifts his head and stares at me. "Dominate... dominate you? I can?"

I nod my head with a huge smile playing on my face. "Please do."

He smiles before sitting up and cupping my face to place a rough kiss on my lips, making my own dick throb in my pants. His tongue swirls with mine while I continue to very slowly run my hands up-and-down on his cock. He pulls away from my lips. "You can stop whenever you want, baby."

I nod my head as he sits back on his one hand that's behind him on the bed. His hand, that's now gripping my hair forcefully, guides me back onto his length. As soon as he feels my mouth on him, he starts to grip my hair more and move me up-and-down at a rhythm that makes him moan more. It's not too fast where I have to worry about him hitting the back of my throat again or too slow that would drive him too crazy.

"Yes, baby, yes," he praises as I reach my hand up to settle on his side, making him shiver against my touch. His rhythm picks up speed and I start to sweat even more as everything down below throbs even more. I use my free hand and reach into my pants to touch myself, making me moan around him which, in the end, just makes both of us moan even more.

All of a sudden, he pulls me off and whimpers as he puts his head back and breathes deeply. I run my hand up his chest before running it back down. "What's wrong?"

He lifts his head up and looks at me, more sweat pouring down his face. "I don't want to cum yet."

I smirk up at him before grabbing his hand, so he can help me off of the ground. He stands up with me and connects our lips again before reaching into my sweatpants to grab me, making my knees buckle but I manage to stay stood up as he runs his thumb over my tip as I leak precum. I move my lips away from him before setting my head against his chest as I breathe heavily on his skin.

"I want to ride you," I whisper to him as my hand runs up to find his nipple and tug on it.

"I don't want you to hurt your leg, baby," he says as he continues to move me in his hand. I reach up to grab his shoulder as my knees threaten to give out again. I feel the familiar feeling in my stomach and I desperately want to cum in my pants, but I also want to do it with him inside of me, so I pull his hand away and pull back from his body.

"I won't hurt my leg, please, Joey, I want to ride you so bad," I tell him as I stare into his eyes and he chuckles before starting to pull my pants off and helping me get it over my boot. He puts his hands in my boxers and tugs them down as well, letting them hit the floor as I step out of them. He lays down on the bed after grabbing lube from the side table. I climb on top of him so I can feel his cock on my backside, but ignore it as he squirts some of the liquid into my hands.

"You don't want to take your jeans off?" I ask as I reach behind him to lather his shaft with the liquid before prepping myself as well.

He shakes his hand. "Too much work, just let me fuck you already."

"It'll be a lot less painful if you be patient," I tell him. He groans, but to keep himself occupied, he reaches up to unbutton my shirt so he can run his hands over my exposed chest.

Once I feel like I'm ready enough, I wipe my hands on his jeans to clean my hands. "Hey, excuse me, these jeans are my favorite!"

"Oh, I'm so sorry, do you want to go put them in the washer while I finish myself off?" I tease him.

"Absolutely not," he says with a smirk as he reaches down to guide himself to line up with me. I lower myself on him, filling myself up with my beautiful, hot boy's cock. My mouth opens and my eyes flutter closed as he moans out.

I feel slight pain as I lower myself completely and have to hold still for a few seconds while he desperately wants to keep going. I lean forward a bit to settle my hand on his chest for balance as I wince from the discomfort.

"Are you okay?" He whispers to me as he reaches out and grips my shaft in his hands to help make the feeling go away easier. After a few seconds of staying still, I move up on his body which makes both of us cry out in moans. He settles one hand on my chest as he plays with my nipple while I have both of mine on his chest while bouncing up-and-down on him.

My stomach gets tighter and tighter while I move on him and he bucks his hips up to completely fill me up. I lean forward and catch his lips with mine as our tongues immediately rub together while I continue to move. His hand tangles through my hair as I start to feel my cock tightening.

"Oh, fuck, I'm gonna cum," I whisper, pulling away from his lips. He pushes me up so he can stare at my length while I move up-and-down at a faster rate. My stomach tightens again and I moan out as I let go all over his chest, leaning forward while closing my eyes as I started to see spots.

I continue to move on him while I try to recover because I can tell he's close by the way his hand keeps clenching my thigh and his stomach is tightening. My dick is throbbing with sensitivity as I continue to move. Joey reaches up and places his hands on both of my sides and starts to slam me down on him, producing a noise from my ass and his thighs hitting each other.

"Oh, fuck!" I yell while he groans out as he lets go inside of me. I can feel his warmth filling me up, making my whole body go on a high in passion from his body.

He picks me up off of him and his cum leaks out of me, falling onto his thighs. He chuckles when I finally open my eyes to meet his. He rolls over so I'm laying on my side and he pulls me to his chest. He sighs, kissing my head. "Well, that was fun."