Page 70 of Her Second-Hand Mate

Gloucester. I finally exhaled. We were in Gloucester. This was a hotel. He was probably with Dominic somewhere.

Just then, the bedroom door opened, and the male himself barged in, our pup ensconced in a wrap on his chest.

“I felt you panic just now. Are you alright?”

“I didn’t know where I was for a moment after I woke up. And I couldn’t find Gabriel, so,” I trailed off.

“We were in the sitting room, giving you a chance to catch up on sleep.”

“What time is it anyway?”

“It’s almost 10.”

“Oh my God, I can’t believe I slept so long. You should have woken me earlier! My breasts are rock hard,” I grabbed them and tried massaging some of the fullness away.

Dominic uttered a muffled curse and I looked up, but he was only struggling with getting Dominic out of the elastic wrap.

“Sorry. Here you go,” he handed me Gabriel, who was already smacking his little lips, causing my milk to start leaking before he was anywhere near the nipple.

“Hello, my love,” I cooed at him as he latched, and I felt a wave of relief as some of the tension started leaving my breast. “What did you do with Daddy this morning?”

Dominic sat down next to us on the huge bed and handed me a shriveled dandelion from his pocket.

“We picked some flowers for Mommy, then we looked at the ocean a bit, and we brought you tea and pastries from a bakery we found.”

“Thanks again, you really should have woken me earlier.”

He waved the objection away with his hand and said, “My dad always took me to get breakfast on the weekends, and we let Mom sleep in. He used to sayIf you love someone, you let them sleep,” he smiled wistfully at what must have been bittersweet memories.

A memory entered my head at that moment – him telling me he loved me after I’d given birth to Gabriel. I'd been pretty out ofit in that moment, and I must have pushed it into the corner of some drawer deep in my mind because I hadn’t thought about it before now. Had he been honest when he said it, or was it just the overwhelming emotional residue from the birth?

Nana always said that love was seen and not heard, and despite Dominic having told me only once, ever since he came back I could constantly feel love emanating from him, and I could see it in his actions toward me.

Having a window into Dominic’s inner world after a whole year of deprivation was intoxicating. Now that I had these parts of him, I wanted to knoweverything. I wanted to crack his heart open and pour all the contents out on my table so I could rifle through them in peace.

I couldn’t stop marveling at how composed his face seemed throughout all his inner turmoil. No wonder I’d often been unable to tell what he was thinking about – it was almost impossible to guess by looking at him. Only during rare moments when he was alone with me and Gabriel would he let some of his softness shine through his eyes, and even then there was only a small change in his features. What had made him train his face in the art of stillness when his soul resembled the stormy seas?

He had to inform me every time he’d be having a session with Vera because otherwise, I’d think he'd been given the news of someone's death that day. There was such grief and anguish in his heart, and he was plagued by so much anxiety and remorse; but at the same time, his capacity for love and awe and tenderness was astounding.

I used to think of myself as an emotional she-wolf, but my mate was the truly sensitive one, and that realization went against everything I thought I knew about him. It was hard to reconcile the two Dominics I’d gotten to know.

I’d seen the books on his nightstand and even leafed through one of them. It was about rebuilding trust and romantic relationships, and the fact that he was lying in bed at night, reading up on how to do that, thawed a tiny portion of my heart. Then I got upset again – why hadn’t he behaved like that from the beginning?

I knew reading his letters would reveal a lot about him and those early months, but honestly, I was too chicken to read them. I was pretty sure whatever was in them would soften me completely, and this was so much easier and so much safer.

We were together, in a way, we got along, everything was fine. All the letters would do was stir up more of the pathetic codependent Penelope I used to be, and I’d decided during those lonely three months that I wasn’t going to go back to that.

My wolf had been desperate during that time. She was paranoid that she wouldn’t be able to protect our pup while our mate was away. When I got to the point in pregnancy when I couldn’t shift, she was inconsolable. And she was darn lonely. So was I, but we got through it. Why go back to that if I didn’t have to?

Luckily, giving birth and breastfeeding put a damper on my desire, so it wasn’t so hard being around Dominic without touching him. That would have to end sometime, probably when Gabriel started eating solid food, and then I’d have to decide what to do – but I didn’t want to think about that now.

“Hey!” I reprimanded him for snatching my croissant from my hand. He took a big bite from the side I’d started eating on and handed it back with a smile.

“You stopped biting your nails,” I blinked in surprise as I took the croissant back.

“Yeah,” the smile turned sheepish.

“How did you do it? It’s a tough habit to break.”

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