Page 35 of Her Second-Hand Mate

“I just remembered I made plans with your mother’s friends,” I yelled out and ran down the stairs. Heather was lingering at the door, clearly not wanting to leave.

“Hi, Heather,” I even managed a small smile at their confused faces. “Vera is waiting for me, I’ll see you later,” I told Dominic and left before he could get a word in.

When dr. Jackson opened her office door, her eyes widened in surprise, and her nose scrunched slightly.

“I’m sorry about that, I didn’t have time to shower.”

She pressed her lips together, clearly suppressing a smile.

“Please come in, Luna. What can I do for you?”

“I need you to teach me how to block my feelings from my mate,” I said and squared my shoulders as I sat down across from her.

“Well, I did not expect to hear that,” she admitted.

Then she smiled a somewhat mischievous smile and said, “Alright.”

7

September 28, 2021

Dear Nana,

I must inform you that, sadly, my heat was unsuccessful. I hope we’ll have better luck in December. Dominic has been very relaxed and supportive about it, and it meant a lot. I cried a bit but now I'm looking ahead. No more tears.

In happier news, Grace is most likely pregnant and I couldn’t be happier for her. If I felt this awful after one failed heat, I can’t even imagine how she must have felt during her five years of trying.

She still won’t let us celebrate or acknowledge it because she’s dealt with multiple losses so far, but I have a good feeling, Nana. Please remember her and her pup in your prayers.

Now that classes are over, I’m focusing on my duties as Luna, although Florence and her group of females want me to take an aptitude test – apparently, those help you determine what you should study at University.

Dr. Vera and Prof. Ophelia are adamant that I should continue my education, and Florence insists that she can help with all the Luna work if I choose to do it. I don’t know what to do. What if I have a pup next year, how can I do it then? Florence said that that was what grandmothers were for, and all of them were very encouraging, but they also respected my reluctance.

You were right when you said that a big part of being a good Luna consists of throwing pack parties whenever possible! Last week I organized one to mark the end of the summer, and it was a huge hit. I am sending you some photos that Anthony took (I offered him a part-time job as the pack photographer, and it is working out really well) of the party and the wolves – I included one of me with Dominic, isn’t it a beautiful shot?

And it really was a great photo. If you didn’t know us, you’d think of us as a happy couple. And you’d never guess that my mate left the party shortly after the photo was taken because Heather had another PT appointment. She apologized to me a million times right before the two of them left, wearing that wounded-doe look that seemed to be her trademark expression whenever she was around Dominic.

I felt like I had to be the better wolf since she was basically a sick pack member. If I had to be honest with myself, I wouldn’t have minded if it had been Anthony who’d needed the ride. I didn’t look at anyone too closely for the remaining hour that I stayed at the party. I didn’t want to see the inevitable pity in their eyes.

I’m going to frame it and give it to him as one of his birthday gifts, what do you think? I was thinking he could keep it on hisoffice desk. The other present will be one of the sweaters from my trousseau. I always imagined gifting them to my mate for the holidays, but since he has an October birthday, I’m gonna use the sweater for that and buy something else for Christmas. I still have to figure out what.

Nana would probably wonder why I didn’t know my mate better by now. The sharp blade of shame that I was extremely familiar with sliced through me again. My only consolation was that now Dominic wouldn’t know me either. Dr. Vera hadn’t asked why I was doing this, and I couldn’t have been more thankful for that.

All she’d said was, “In the beginning, your defenses will be weak because you’re still learning how to do it. And whenever you’re sick, tired, or even very emotional, things will slip past them. But the majority of it you’ll be able to contain.”

“You must think I’m horrible,” I started, but she quickly shook her head and interrupted me.

“Don’t even finish that sentence. I would never dare presume what goes on between a mated couple or pretend to know someone’s reason for doing things before I had all the information. You asked me for help with this, and I’ll help. We’ll do part of it today and part of it next week.”

And we did. She asked me to imagine a strong wind blowing at me as I walked from our house to the pack offices and to imagine myself wearing a coat with no buttons. I’d have to wrap the coat around myself and hold it tightly to protectmyself from the wind – and that was what she wanted me to visualize in my head, around my thoughts.

That whole week, Dominic kept coming home early, kept staring at me whenever we were in the same room, and kept searching my face for something, but he never asked anything directly. I assumed my defenses were still not very good, but that he was starting to notice something was amiss.

If only I could give him food for his birthday, that would be easiest. The male can eat! I even brought him lunch to work one day this month and he loved it. Oh, maybe I’ll make dinner reservations at a nice steak house in town! I bet he’d enjoy that.

The second time I went to see Dr. Vera was right after the lunch debacle. As per the sleepover suggestions, I tried surprising Dominic at work by bringing him some lunch andI thought that maybe we’d eat together and spend some time together outside of the house, maybe we'd talk to each other for a change.

He seemed pleasantly surprised to see me, and his happiness about the food was unmistakable. I could fault him for many things, but he’d always been very enthusiastic about my cooking.

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