We meet Serena at the end of Bride. She is best friends with Bride's protagonist, and she'd been kidnapped because she was half-were and half human--something heretofore unheard of in this world. At the very end of Bride, Koen Alexander, the Alpha wolf of the Northwest pack runs into Serena, and it is immediately clear that she is his mate.
We discover Serena at the beginning of Mate as she runs for her life from a vampyre. It turns out that Serena had been feeling very ill, and after talking to some Were doctors, she thought she was dying. Instead of telling anyone (like her best friend), Serena decides her best course of action is to hide up in a cabin in the middle of nowhere and suffer through the night sweats on her own. Koen shows up just in the nick of time to save her, and he takes her back to his home.
But now that Serena is back among the living with Koen, it is harder for her to hide her symptoms. The two primary things keeping Serena and Koen apart are Serena's belief that she's dying and the pack law that the Alpha remain celibate. Koen cannot be with Serena, even though they are mates. And if he steps down as Alpha, there will be a power vacuum that may destroy the pack.
I enjoyed Bride much more than Mate for a number of reasons. First, Koen acted disinterested in Serena for a big portion of the book. It didn't feel very romantic to me. Second, I couldn't understand why Serena was so secretive about her sickness. She didn't want her friend to worry about her, but her friend is going to suffer a lot more if Serena showed up dead with no warning.
I was pretty certain early on that Serena was in heat (or something like that). Although it's pretty funny that all the male doctors had no idea what was going on, how did everyone around her not understand what was happening? Once it was figured out, Koen seemed to know all about it and exactly what to do. Also, how often does this happen? Is Serena effectively incapacitated for months at a time every year? Twice a year?
I was also frustrated with the, "Koen can't have a romantic partner storyline". We already know this isn't necessary because the Alpha in Bride has a mate with no issues. And people can be used as bait whether you're officially sleeping with them or not. It felt like an artificial block in order to keep the story going.
This was still a quick read, and generally kept my attention. However, I preferred Bride, and I do hope that Hazelwood takes a break from paranormal and goes back to my favorite type of her books.
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