Page 34 of Daddy's Mail Order Mate

Gwen watches me a moment more before she storms off ahead. I let her set a leading pace before I slowly march after her for my own walk of shame.

What did I expect, trying in vain to make up for the wounds I’d given her? My wolf whines and snarls, pacing as though injured and caged within the confines of my body. A headache pulses between my eyes and all I want is to be back at home, safe and sound with my boy…

And Gwen.

But if things kept going at this rate, I might not even get to drive her back.

Chapter 9 - Gwen

Last night was one of the most miserable I’ve had in a while, and I’ve had a pretty rough time of it for the last… Forever, really.

Despite my exhaustion from a sleepless and stressful night, I’ve decided that a walk might be my only saving grace to dig myself out of the hole. So I step outside into the dawn twilight, take in the cool air, and set myself off on some blind trajectory. I don’t need to know where I’m going. I just need to outpace my own head for a bit. Just so long as I remember my way back, I’ll be fine.

I used to go for walks just like this back in the day. Taking the quiet hours of solitude and just covering ground until I was too exhausted to think had been my only way to get through it all and actually get some sleep. Otherwise my head just kept drilling down, looping through the same miseries over and over again.

My eyes vaguely log my surroundings as I go, though my mind is everywhere and nowhere.

I can’t ask Thorn to leave early, and I can’t confide in anyone about any of this. Not even if I wanted to, but I certainly don’t. All I would get from any of them is ignorance, misunderstanding, and the heedless privilege of people who would never understand how cruel my circumstances were and would clearly always be.

And one of the lines of thought I’d been gnawing away at all night in the corners rolls back around. Rowan had been born from a human mother, apparently. He’d been forthright enough about that during our first conversations over the app. But that means that there’s no telling if he’d have strong enough wolf shifter blood to be like his father. It had been one of the reasonswhy I even agreed to the trial in the first place; my anonymous match had seemed compatible enough with me, and I would have the opportunity to maybe help a child who would otherwise have suffered in isolation like I did.

If I leave for good at the end of the trial, who would be there for Rowan if his wolf never came?

I’ve blindly made it onto one of the trails leading off from the main buildings and dully register that there’s a nice wooded path running straight before me. I ground myself back into my body from such far-flung thoughts by hurrying my pace along. I try, anyways. My mind is still buzzing, crammed full of doubts and fears, all these old wounds bleeding away.

With a painful past and an uncertain future, it’s no small wonder I’m in such a state. But I still feel an oppressive weight of shame choke me. All the years of rejection and struggle had branded awful things into my soul: Ideserveto be looked down on, I’m inherently worthless no matter how hard I try, I willneverget to be happy because I will never be enough, do enough, have enough. I’m doomed to suffer and struggle. All I’ll ever be good for is rotting at the bottom of the pile. Discarded.Worthless.My view of the path blurs and distorts, and I force the unshed tears back with a self-loathing snarl. The anger spikes through the pain wracking through me, but only twists the knife of my despair.

“Goddamn it Gwen,” I scold myself under my breath, “Stop crying.”

I lean forward and try to force a march to shake myself out of it—

But some animal instinct has me stop dead in my tracks. Fear runs cold through me and chokes my breath.

Through the brush slinks a dark figure fifteen feet in front of me, canine and unhurried.

The wolf’s head turns towards me and fixes me with its unblinking yellow stare.

Several others pace out after, filling the path with their forms.

The largest is phantom white and stares at me with uncanny icy blue eyes. Like the man from last night; it had to be him. But it’s not the color that makes me associate the two. It’s thedisdain. The primal scrutiny he’d looked at me with last night had reached its natural conclusion. He had judged me and found me wanting, as everyone did. And now I get to have the lovely follow-up of him actively looking down on me like the trash I am.

I hate being around packs.

I hate wolves.

I have never been able to be like them. I’ve never been able to be one of them. Not since my peers started to get their wolves and I was left in the dust. Thorn had been one of the only people to not give up on my slow development—

Until he did, in the most vicious and absolute way possible.

I break eye contact, clench my fists, and stand still.

Their paws softly sound off on the path as they walk towards me. The atmosphere as they drift by is of silent superiority. I suppose I might have to get used to even humans walking by me like this, if I wound up being stuck truly homeless.

One of the smallest in the back suddenly snaps its teeth towards me, and I flinch, almost falling back. There’ssome guttural noises from the other wolves which I know unmistakably to be the closest thing they can do to laughter.

I hang my head and hide my heating face, tears welling up in my eyes. I’m sick and tired of being left mortified for just existing around wolves. I’m sick and tired of being the pecking order’s punching bag.

But I’ve never been able to break the cycle.

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