Page 39 of Daddy's Mail Order Mate

I catch the falter in her step before she gets back in stride behind me.

“... I hear the birds,” she murmurs. “And a bit of a breeze through the trees.”

“Where are the birds?”

Gwen goes quiet, and her pace audibly slows behind me. I instinctively slow down as well, though keep at a good leading speed to keep her moving forward.

“... Around, up there. In the trees.”

“Focus.Where?”

It’s nearly ten seconds before she speaks up uncertainly.

“Mostly ahead. The… crows are on the right?”

“How far?”

Once again, my immediate pressuring reply is met with silence. I don’t look back at her—I learned that she got too self-conscious if I stared at her most of the time. There were some moments where I discovered that she benefited from the pressure, but I want to avoid spooking her off before we’ve even really begun.

“I don’t know,” she finally says with a small, dismal voice. “Maybe thirty yards now?”

I shake my head.

“They’re not that close. You just guessed. I need you to focus, Gwen.”

“Iam,” she says, and despite being thirty years old I hear the teenaged girl halfway between snapping and crying at me again.

I finally stop and turn slightly to look back at her.

Gwen’s taller than she used to be, but so am I. And while she’s grown and matured, those eyes are exactly as I remember them. And right now, they’re staring at me with frustration and misery.

“I’m not like you, Thorn. I’ve never beenlikeyou, no matter how much you tried to convince me that I could—could tap into my wolf to hone my senses.”

“You were able to before. You just needed time and support to learn the feeling. It worked before.”

“That wasbefore,” she retorts in a bitter undertone.

I feel my mouth press into a tight line.

“The gentle approach isn’t going to work. You’re too resistant. Trapped in your own head again. It’s worse than before.”

“I wonder whose—...”

She stops there, eyes turning downcast. Her hands leave her pockets to defeatedly slump at her sides.

“Sorry. I just—... It’s been painful. All of it. I—I really want this to work. I’d love more than anyone to be able to change into a wolf again. But I nearly drove myself insane trying, after you… After everything. The closer I try to be to her, the worse I feel. It’s like there’s something dead rotting away inside of me, Thorn, and I—”

I step in towards her and silently take the back of her hands in my palms, holding them between us with a delicate intensity. My skin flares with heat at the contact, but I disregard it, caught in the momentum of my own intervention. I’d moved without thinking; I heard her about to cry, and it was as though I was possessed by my deepest instincts to step in and comfort her.

Gwen blinks up at me, and a captured tear twinkles like dew in her thick eyelashes. I resist the urge to lean in and kiss it away, even though my mouth aches at the thought of tasting the salt of her tears again.

Her lips are parted, and she is struck still and breathless. I force my attention back to those eyes in the hopes that it will keep me from taking advantage of that startled pout.

“We need to force your wolf out again,” I state as tenderly as I can, even though I know it would sound rigid and grim to most people’s ears. “Remember the time we got you to shift because you wanted to keep up with me?”

She nods with a tearful dimpling of her chin, though she immediately does a clearing of her throat to try and sober back up.

“I do.”

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