Page 45 of A Beta Protects

I don’t have a home. Never have. Until now. My home is not a place. It’s the woman who has her husband standing behind her shoulder, watching me like a hawk.

I nod tightly, tuck the present into my bag and back away from her. The cab driver taking me to the airport is looking impatient, and Bryce is suddenly smiling as I once again do my utmost to put space between Kira and me.

If only he knew the reason I do it is so I won’t tear his throat out.

Kira’s smile fades. Bryce noticed my retreat, and so did she. And I hate that, but I can’t have my mate touching me. Not with her husband within ravaging distance.

I toss my bag in the cab's trunk and he drives me away from my mate.

I carry the imprint of Kira’s scent with me. To the airport, on the plane, and to the base where I’ll be flying to my deployment. Far beyond the point I should’ve stopped smelling it. She’s imprinted her scent onto my skin. My bones. In me. If the war I went to fight was on the surface of the moon, I would still carry a piece of her with me.

In the plane bathroom, I open her gift for me. I smile as I read her note, saying she hopes I stay safe, and she’s thinking of me, carefully tucking everything into my bag again. And I leave before the person banging on the door thinks I’m up to no good.

Nearly forty-eight hours later, I’m with Aaron, and I shouldn’t still be smelling Kira’s scent on my clothes, yet I do.

Everything over the intervening days and weeks and months is about driving all thoughts from my mate out of my mind.

I go through the motions of being the perfect Marine. I do my assigned nightly patrols. I do everything right. And when I have a moment, I slip into the night, shrug out of my clothes and let my wolf free for a few minutes so I don’t go mad, and neither does he.

But I never stop thinking of Kira.

Then the first of the mail comes.

I’m not expecting anything. I don’t have a pack. Don’t have a family. So I sit on my bed, polishing my boots and checking my weapons, head down as all around me, my platoon catches the mail tossed at them by the mail guy. They tear into their packages, laughing and chatting, showing off their goods.

I remember that small package Kira gave me before I left Missouri. Like she’d said, it wasn’t much, but it didn’t need to be when it came from her.

She could have given me a staple and it still would have felt big. She’d baked cookies, wrapped up some socks, added some gum, a small card with a handwritten note saying she hoped I would come back safely and she was thinking of me.

“Matherson!” A thud hits the palms of the Marine in the bed beside mine. Aaron getting his mail.

I peek up. It’s a box, wrapped with the same paper as the one Kira gave me.

He’s tearing into it, grinning as I lower my head to my task, then…

“Wolfe!”

It wasn’t wise to use that name, but it’s mine.

Locals who found a nearly naked ten-year-old boy wandering around the Minnesota backcountry gave me my first name: Dom.

Social services gave me my surname after no one could find out where I belonged or whose family I belonged to: Walker.

They figured that since I was out there walking on my own, the name fit.

Dom, I didn’t mind. After I shifted for the first time at seventeen and discovered I was something that shouldn’t exist, I decided Wolfe fit me better than Walker. So I changed it.

I became Dom Wolfe.

Neither are my real name. Whatever it is, I’ve never known it, and likely never will.

I drop my boot and catch the box hurtling my way. It slaps into my palms instead of my face, the contents bouncing around inside. What the hell is in this box with the pretty turquoise spotted paper?

When I lower my nose to it, I swear I catch the faintest hint of Kira’s scent. I shouldn’t. Not with where we are. Not with how many hands have touched that parcel.

But I swear I do.

I don’t tear into the parcel the way everyone else does. This might be a one-time thing. A sympathy parcel. I intend to savor this experience. It might never come again.

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