Page 38 of Daddy's Mail Order Mate

We’re a hell of a pair, Gwen and I: a woman who’s starved of her wolf and a man who is just a wolf in human clothing.

But maybe that’s why the mate bond sparked in the first place.

“Mmn,” she pipes up behind me, “Rowan needs changed. I’ll do that and then go lie down. Sound good?”

“Yeah,” I grunt out.

I listen to her gather my son up. Each sound sounds too sharp and too dull—they should be clearer, brighter, more pronounced. But I know that’s because my body yearns for how it sounds when I’m a wolf. Even though I know my senses are greater than an actual human’s when I’m in this form, there’s this sense in my subconscious that I’m somehow stunted and trapped when I’m in this shape.

It takes until I hear Rowan’s contended giggle in the other room and her cooing over him for me to remember where I am and what I was doing.

“Dishes.”

I resume the task and throw the dog in my skull a bone with the promise of taking her out to the woods later. Hopefully that’ll keep it at bay for now.

***

It feels surreal to walk through the woods with Gwen again. We did it very often when we were younger; it was our respite from the pressures and judgment of others, and excused decently enough with our respective ability to fly under the radar. And with how Cherrygrove Pack only spent a few months with us out of the year at most, it was vital for us to make the most of the time she was around.

I stare at our feet and the path, and my mind is struck with the memory of her gently prancing along in worn out boots when she was fourteen beside me, her hand held in mine.

My hand between us itches, and I slowly shove it into my jacket pocket to keep it contained.

Paige and Quinn had been glad to look after Rowan when I’d gone to ask during Gwen’s nap. Quinn is and had always been a bit more emotionally adept than my dear sister (though I’d never tell Paige that if I could help it), and I could tell that she’d been caught up to speed from her carefully supportive tone and close looks. I felt guilty about approaching them while they were both preoccupied with the sister pack event, but they assured me that it’d be fine. Quinn emphasized that if they couldn’t spare the time for him, they could call on the young woman in ElmwoodPack, Alex, that I’ve been using as my local babysitter for the past few years.

“... It’s nostalgic, right?”

I glance over to Gwen and do my best to hide any reaction to my heart suddenly jumping in my chest. It’s not for any grand or particularly obvious reason—I think my pulse spikes just from the sheer fact that Ilookedat her. The sunlight that softly shades through the canopy moves over her in golden fragments, utterly dreamlike. Her eyes have the faintest trace of softness crinkled around them and I can’t look anywhere else butthose beautiful eyes. A craving shoots through me to see more emotion in those eyes. All of them. I want all of her.

“Yeah,” I answer in a dull, low tone. Then I force my attention forward, because the more I focus on her, the more derailed I feel. My devil’s deal with my wolf is starting to take its toll; I can feel it pacing, caged,hungryinside of me.

We walk a few more steps without saying a word, the only sounds being those of the woods settling gently around us.

“I don’t want you to think I haven’t tried.”

Tried to shift, I complete the sentence in my mind.

I look at her and raise an eyebrow, just a bit.

“Of course you have.”

She exhales in a tight, measured way that I know means that she’s trying to settle out of her anxiety. My gut tangles with another pang of shame, and I fight the clenching of my throat to try and offer more specific assurance.

“I know you. And you’re not the kind of person to give up.”

A laugh barks out of her, sharp and glassy. Gwen sighs in the wake of it and shoves her own hands into her pockets as well.

“I guess not. At least, that’s how I used to be. But eventually, it’s not that you give up. It’s that there’s just nothing left to give. You don’t choose to quit—it’s just the reality you’re forced to accept.”

That grinds away at me. How much suffering had she resigned herself to because of me and what I’d done to her?

We make it further down the main path and I guide her towards one of the thinner trails that tapers off, only really a person wide. I’ve become decently acquainted with the woods around here thanks to my routine involvement with the Elm Wood Pack. We needed some privacy for this.

I’ve been chewing over my memories of how I’d helped her in the past in hopes of just retracing our steps. If it’d worked before, maybe it could again.

“What do you hear, Gwen?”

When I speak up, it’s with a meditative clarity, guiding and certain.

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