Olive the Other Werewolves

Chapter Twenty Four

I glanced over at Matteo and the moment he returned my gaze I dropped mine like a skittish child. From the corner of my eyes I saw Matteo roll his eyes as he reached over an collected my hand into his.

Immediately my eyes fell to our interlocked hands, what were we doing? I internally sighed but it was after seeing Matteo's suddenly concerned expression I realized that it hadn't been so internal after all.

"Is getting to know each other really that terrible?" He teased me with a good natured smile.

Why, yes it actually was terrible but now I was in the same boat as Matteo. My wolf depended on me salvaging this relationship and that was everything to me. I wanted to be a werewolf more than anything else in the entire world so I could more than handle this.

There was another part of me, perhaps the logical side that reminded me I hadn't found Matteo all that terrible when we were madly making out with each other. I was always making excuses for my behavior, explaining away why I was slowly letting my walls down around him.

I hated that part of me mostly because I knew it was right, I was a hypocritical and indecisive little b:tch.

Was it so bad that I found myself intrigued by Matteo, my mate, my captor and adversary?

I offered him up the best smile I could forge in that moment, "It's just a lot to process." It seemed like I'd been giving that answer a lot lately.

"By Devin's account, we've got a couple more days worth of traveling which means we have the liberty to take this slow, you've got all the time you need to process." Matteo assured me and gave me an affirming hand squeeze.

He could tell I wasn't convinced. "My favorite color is brown." Matteo informed me as we lazily walked through the woods, taking our time to return back to the rest of the group.

"That's awful." I let out a soft giggle.

"It is not," He defended quickly, "Not like sh:t brown but more like..." Matteo trailed off in thought as he searched for the best way to explain it, his eyes resting on my brown hair and I felt my face heat up.

Nervously I tucked my hair behind my ears, "Mine's yellow."

He quirked an eyebrow at me, "And you thought mine was bad." I elbowed him in the side and kept walking, tugging him along behind me as I moved on.

"Alright, I have a question for you." Matteo asked from behind me, "What's the story behind your name? Because, Olive is quite the name."

I playfully scowled over at him and he quickly raised his hands in innocence, "In the best way possible, of course."

Nice save.

I cleared my throat, there was no profound explanation behind my goofy ass name but I didn't want to share the real story behind it because that would mean talking to Matteo about my deceased mother and I could barely do that on my own. "My dad just really loved olive martinis so he decided to name me after his favorite alcoholic vegetable beverage."

To my relief instead of pressing me over the details Matteo just chuckled, easing my nerves. "I don't think olives are a vegetable, Olive."

I was skeptical but honestly who the hell really cared what was an olive anyways? He accepted my version of events and that's all that mattered.

"My turn." I wasn't really interested in delving into the intricacies of my family or rather lack of family, I was keen to change the subject and shift the attention away from me as quickly as possible.

I could ask him a similarly meaningless question, I mean how could my favorite color and the backstory to my name be beneficial for the both of us anyways? Instead, I decided to pick from the thousands of unanswered, pent up questions locked in my head from the course of our time together.