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Nora smiled, her eyes as bright as he had ever seen them. In an instant, she was on top of him. Kane was pushed onto his back. Nora's hair fell in his face as she looked down at him, a hunger in her eyes that surprised him. She slowly lowered herself until their lips touched. There was that clarity again. Kane held onto it as much as he could to ground himself.

He reached his hand up to cup her face as they kissed. The thought of making out with a girl before all of this happened wouldn't have interested him at all, but this seemed different. When he could feel the bond like he could now, it wasn't about gender, it was just about it.

His eyes caught a glimpse of the fairy lights that hung above them on the wall. A bright watercolour painting sat under the fairy lights. Kane had a suddenly intrusive thought. He wondered what kind of water coloured paintings Mason made. He wondered what Mason's room looked like. Was it filled with his paintings?

Nora suddenly sat up. It shook him out of his weird thoughts. She ripped her shirt off over her head, revealing the blue lace bra underneath. Kane took a deep breath. She stole the air right out of his mouth as she kissed him. He felt drunk under her, with the power of their bond making his head spin. He wondered what it would be like to kiss Mason.

Kane sat up, his head hitting against Nora's. "Woah," Nora exclaimed as she fell off of Kane and onto the bed next to him. "What happened?"

Kane didn't know what happened. The thought had popped into his head of its own volition and it had surprised him. His head kind of hurt where he had collided with Nora. "Are you okay?" he asked, he reached over and touched the tiny red spot on her head. "I don't know what happened."

Nora just laughed. "I didn't think this would be a hundred percent smooth, but I didn't envision head-butting you," she told him with her lips turned up at the edges. "It's okay. My head's fine. Come here," she said, curling her finger at him.

Kane ended up on top of her this time. After a few minutes, Nora's hands were under his shirt. She started bringing the edges up and he allowed her to pull it over his head. When he lent down he could feel the lace of her bra against his bare skin. When she threw her jeans over his head and onto the floor, that was when his heart started hammering against his ribs. This was really happening. He leant down and pressed small kisses all along her neck in a path that lead him back to her lips. As they kissed, something changed. It was just like at the diner, the feeling seemed to explode from his gut and suddenly every fibre of his being was screaming at him. Nora gasped. He threw himself back off the bed and found himself on the floor, with his back pressed against the cold wall. The horrible, sickening feeling made him want to throw up. He grabbed his head in his hands.

It took everything he had not to throw up. The room started spinning around him. He had to close his eyes to keep himself from passing out. He couldn't believe it. He had really thought that feeling had gone. He had been nervous for days that it would come back, but it hadn't at all. Now that he felt safe with Nora and actually wanted to be with her, now it came back? He couldn't understand.

He wanted to get up and punch the wall. He was so mad. How could he live the rest of his life like this? He had been holding onto the hope that the bond would be fixed and now he had the sudden, sinking feeling that this was as good as the bond would ever get.

He lifted his head after a few moments. He had seen disappointment in Nora's eyes before but he didn't even want to imagine the image he was about to see. She was going to hate him for sure. He didn't want to explain to her what had happened. He was shocked when he lifted his eyes to see that Nora was on the edge of the bed, her head pressed against the wall and her hands over her ears.

"Nora!" he crossed the distance between them quickly. "Did I hurt you?"

She shook her head. She was breathing out harsh bursts of air. "I feel so sick."

"Sick?" Kane asked. He had thought she was upset, not sick. "Wait, you felt it too?"

Nora turned to him. "How are we supposed to fix the bond when it won't even let us be together in the way that matters most?"

Kane wrapped an arm around her shoulder and pulled her close. "I don't know why that happened. I'm so sorry."

Nora pushed his arm off of her. She stood off the bed and started pacing around the room. "What are we supposed to do, Kane?"

Kane felt like a weight sat on his chest as he watched her pace around, so much anger and confusion in her face. "I don't know. I really thought that would fix it. There's some glitch in our bond, maybe a mate ceremony will fix it? That makes all bonds stronger, why wouldn't it make ours stronger too?"

Nora shook her head. "What happens if we get up there, in front of everyone we know and love and we end up on the ground, writhing around in pain?"

Kane didn't have an answer for that. He sat on the bed, his hands in his lap. He was out of ideas. He didn't want this to be his life, a half-made bond that liked to throw curveballs at him whenever he was happy.

Nora stepped towards him. "I dreamt about these moments my entire life and so far, every single one has been ruined by this bond. I don't understand. At the diner, I thought that feeling was just because I was shocked that you ran away, I didn't-" she must have realised her mistake as she paused, her eyes slowly coming up to meet Kane's.

"Wait, what did you just say?" Kane asked. He stepped off the bed. "You had a feeling at the diner?"

Nora shook her head slightly.

"Nora," he said, "you just said-"

A single tear fell from her eyes. "I didn't want you to know. I'm so stupid."

"You lied to me?"

Nora nodded. Her eyes were cast down towards the floor. "I felt the same feeling when we met. I just pretended that it never happened because I didn't want it to be true."

"I asked you that night if you felt what I did and you lied to my face!" Kane accused. He shook his head at her. "You made me feel like I was alone, like there was something wrong with me!" Kane couldn't understand why Nora had lied to him.

"I thought that if you believed that my side of the bond was normal that you'd still want to be with me," she admitted. "I thought you would have rejected me otherwise!"

Kane's mind was suddenly hit with questions. He was second guessing everything. "So, you never felt the bond the way you said you did?" he asked. He realised that she had been lying the entire time, not just about the feeling but the bond too. "You told me that it felt warm and comforting, that you felt safe. You told Jade that you were worried I'd never love you, but that's not all of the truth is it? You're scared that you wouldn't love me, too."

"I don't know what Jade told you-"

"You call her crying, you blamed everything on me and my side of the bond."

"She had no right to tell you that. Even so, I couldn't tell her that I don't feel the bond properly either. She would have freaked out and told her father. I can't have everyone knowing that we have a messed-up bond."

"You've lied to me this entire time. We could have gone through all of this together, but instead I felt like I was letting you down. I thought that there was something wrong with the bond because I'm gay, but that's not it. The bond itself is broken."

Nora's expression changed. "It really is broken, considering the lies you've told me."

"Me?" Kane pointed his finger at himself. "Me? You're the one who's faked her feelings since we met."

Nora took a step towards him. "Don't talk to me about lying, Kane."

"What are you talking about?"

Nora huffed out a sigh. "You really thought I wouldn't find out that you tried to kiss your ex-boyfriend at Tyler's party?"

Kane paused. He had almost forgotten about what he had done. He had hoped she would never know. "How'd you find out?"

Nora picked her clothes up off the ground and hastily put them back on as she spoke. "Duncan called me yesterday. Wyatt told him everything. Duncan thought he would warn me that you were still in love with your ex-boyfriend." Tears slid down her cheeks. "Do you have any idea how much that hurt me? I was trying to make us work and you were upstairs kissing another person."

Kane sat on the edge of the bed. "We aren't meant to be together, Nora. I shouldn't have done what I did. I messed up. You shouldn't have lied to me. We were set up to fail from the moment we met. We aren't compatible. If we were, none of this would have happened. Maybe the bond knows that and that's why its stopping us."

The anger in Nora's eyes dyed down. She slowly made her way to the bed and sat with her back against the headboard. "So, what do you want me to do, Kane? Should we just give up on us?" The sadness in his voice broke Kane's heart.

"No."

"No?" she seemed surprised.

"Do you think we can we just forget all of the lies and start fresh?" he wondered out loud.

"I don't know," Nora admitted.

"Even if we do, what kind of future can we have?" he asked, knowing the answer.

"I'd rather a future with you, than a future alone," Nora told him in a quiet voice.

"Look, we will go back to my pack tomorrow and we will talk about it. I can't right now. I'll be on the couch."

He didn't wait for her to say anything, instead he just grabbed a pillow from her bed and made his way down the staircase. The tears rushed to his eyes the second he got to the ground floor. He threw the pillow on the couch and walked out the back door and onto the patio that overlooked a large garden. He turned on the light and sat down on the closest chair pushed under the timber table which sat on the patio.

He was hit by an overwhelming wave of sadness. Tears fell from his eyes and he didn't try to hold them back. He found his phone in his back pocket and called the first person who came to mind. He knew that he would be the only one who could make him feel better.

"Kane? Are you okay? It's late!"

"You weren't sleeping, were you?"

"I was just painting," Mason told him. "You sound weird. Are you okay?"

Kane sighed into the phone. "No," he admitted. "I'm not okay."

"What happened?" Mason asked in a hurried tone.

"Nora and I had a fight."

"I'm sorry, Kane. Do you want me to come get you?"

"I'm hours away in Maysville." Kane looked out at the darkness around him and wished he was back home.

"I'll still come get you," he said without hesitation.

Kane smiled even though tears rolled down his face. "Can you just tell me about your paintings?"

"My paintings?"

"Yeah."

"Will that make you feel better?"

"That would make me feel a lot better, to be honest with you."

He could hear Mason's smile through the phone. "Okay, so right now I'm painting you actually."

"Me?"

"Well, your wolf."

"Why would you paint my wolf?"

"It's a thank you present for saving my life. Now, before you argue about that, let me tell you about the colours-"

With every minute he spoke to Mason, less tears fell from his eyes. He didn't know how Mason's voice comforted him so much, but it made him almost forget about the disaster his life had become and allowed his mind to be consumed in Mason's words. He felt like he could see the colours in his mind. Hours later he drifted off to sleep on the couch, the phone still pressed to his ear. 

What do you think of their mate bond? Why do you think that it stopped them?