Page 50 of Her Second-Hand Mate

“Wait.”

I remained at the door with my back to him.

“The King asked me to accompany him to Spruce Mountain to help dismantle the pack. You know that my mother is from there and I’m more familiar with it than most. I’m not happy about it, but I have to go.”

I turned to look at him.

“I’m leaving tomorrow. For two months at least.”

My jaw fell open. Wasn’t this something to be discussed with your mate first? I didn’t bother asking him because his actions made it clear that, for him, it wasn’t.

“It’s probably for the best,” I said after a while, and he shot to his feet.

“What?!”

“You heard me. You’re distant and absent and irritable all the time, so maybe it’s better if you leave for a while,” I said, fully intending for him to hurt like I was.

It was a foreign feeling, a heady one, and I could tell it was dangerous to indulge in it too much.

“Penelope, you don’t mean that,” he told me as his eyes tried pushing those words into me, begging me to make them true.

“I actually do, Dominic. See you at home,” I said and left the office. I heard him smash something as I left, but I couldn’t find it in me to care.

I stayed up reading and then slept on my comfy couch. When Dominic came downstairs with his suitcase in the morning, his face was shuttered again. Gone was the male with the pleading eyes. Alpha Dominic stood before me in all his physical glory, as emotionally hollow as he always wanted to be.

I walked him out, and he pulled me into a hug.

“Will I get one of your letters?” he asked softly.

“As many as I’ve gotten from you,” I said, and felt my words hit a mark.

The whip of his anguish hit me over the stomach, and I almost doubled over from the pain. Luckily, he held me through it.

“Take care, sweet peach,” he murmured in my ear.

“Goodbye, Dominic,” I responded.

As I watched him drive away, fatigue settled inside me, bone-deep. It wasn’t supposed to be like this. It wasn’t supposed to hurt this much. I was done fighting for something that wasn’t even there, and I sure as heck was done begging for scraps of his attention.

Maybe I couldn’t change who my mate was, but I could change how I acted and responded to him. I had a pup to think about now.

Once I was done crying, I went over to Florence’s house and tattled.

“So then he just... left?”

“Yeah,” I sighed from my spot on her sofa.

“Don’t worry, dear, we’ll make a plan with the pack and with your friends. Everything will be okay. You know that everyone is there for you and the pup, we all love you so much.”

“Everyone but my mate loves me,” I said bitterly.

Florence remained silent for a long time.

“You know, I blame myself. I can’t help but feel like all of this is my fault,” she said in a strange, strangled voice.

I looked at her and she seemed a decade older than she was a minute ago.

“When my mate died, I just... I fell apart. I was so lost in my grief that I completely neglected Dominic for months. He’d lost his father, and then his mother checked out as well. By the time I recovered, my sweet, gentle, sensitive pup was gone. The son I used to have never came back, not fully,” she said, trying and failing to wipe her face dry.

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