Page 17 of Daddy's Mail Order Mate

“Then why the fuck are we still here?!”

He goes for her arm with a forceful and frustrated sigh, and a growl rips my throat raw as I step forward by pure animalistic reflex. But thankfully I don’t have to follow through, particularly since I’m still holding Rowan. Gwen jerks her arm out of reach and scowls so stonily up at her brother that it adds a new layer to my shock. She’d been a firm and fierce girl in our youth together, but there was an intensity to her demeanor that had been honed to a practically violent edge.

“Yougo to the car. I will handle this.”

Lucas turns more fully towards her, practically seeming to forget me in his indignance. My gaze locks onto his back and years of training hum in the back of my mind, long burnt-in memory listing off various methods of injury and incapacitation by autopilot.

But my wolf just wants to launch, teeth bared, and gore out his neck. An aggressor was here, on my territory. He was a threat to myself, my child, and my—

I swallow down the rock in my throat.

“You can’t be serious?! This motherfucker,” he goes on with a sharp point back at me, “Rejected you and made you miserable for years! You’ve gotnothingto say to him—”

“Do. Not. Tell me. What to do. And go sit in your truck. I’ll get you if I need you.”

The tension in the air finally seems to have gotten to Rowan, because he starts to whine and warble.

Both of them look to the boy, then exchange taut looks.

I manage to clear my throat, voice coming out coarse and low, teeth biting back every threatening syllable.

“I would…Appreciateit. You’re upsetting my son.”

Lucas gives me a furious glare, but it fizzles out as he turns and storms off the porch with his hands in his pockets.

“Fine. But when he hurts you again, I told you so.”

I watch him warily for a moment before Rowan’s cry pulls my world entirely in to him, and I adjust him in my arms to do a soothing cradle.

“Shhh, you’re alright,” I murmur, pressing a kiss to the top of his head of fine black hair.

There’s a little pique of distress in his cries before he settles back out. Even though I’ve gotten him calm, I’m still the furthest thing from. I can’t even bring myself to look at her.

So I don’t.

“Follow me.”

I turn myself back around and walk inside, traversing through the foyer. I jerk my head towards the entryway to the kitchen and make my way to put Rowan down in his little cribset off to the side in there. I’ve gotten the house nicely set up over the last few months to make sure he would always be safe, comfortable, and close at hand no matter what room I have to be in.

Her steps quietly follow after me. Each one is slow. Not with ease, but with caution.

Of course she’d be wary. Instead of an anonymous match as the whole arrangement had promised, she wound up delivering herself to the front doorstep of the man who’d rejected her all those years ago.

My son’s eyes blink up at me, little hands reaching out in gentle seeking to not be put down yet.

“It’s okay. Daddy’s right here.”

The back of my neck prickles; I don’t even need to look. I feel the shadow of Gwen lingering in the doorway, haunting me. She had a tendency to do that if I let her.

Rowan sounds out a bit more of his mild displeasure at being set down, but the application of a few kisses to get him giggling and a crinkly toy being placed in his hand to remind him that it exists set him smiling away.

I straighten and rest my hands on the lip of the crib.

Gwen is silent.

I am silent.

The drone of the refrigerator across the room is deafening to my ears. I hone in on the edges of her breath, part of me desperate for any trace of her.

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