Page 28 of A Queen and Her Knight

“But did you?” Dr. Finch pressed.

Tim gave a tight shake of his head, then mumbled, “The pressures of leadership.”

Dr. Finch glanced to him again. “What was that?”

“The pressures of leadership,” Tim repeated stiffly. Sometimes he wished his psychiatrist had been educated in management or warfare, anything to make it so Tim didn’t have to explain so much. “You have people. You are always surrounded by people, but you aren’t ever really one of them. They look to you for strength. So, if you have fe… if you’re sca…. So you’re on your own.”

“Is that how you feel? On your own?”

“Ugh, fuck off.” Tim scowled and looked away. That ‘How do you feel?’ shit got on his nerves every time. “I have a pack. I have friends.” The churning his stomach briefly gave way to a rising warmth at getting to say that. “I have atown,” he added, because he did. “But that town includes my friends, so I can’t show themthis.” He uncrossed his arms to wave at his chest, his exposed underbelly in all its patheticness. “Obviously,” he went on a few moments later, “they already knew there are things I don’t know. How to be a proper were, for example. But it’s different when they look to me for answers on stuff, or when something happens and they look to see what I will do. I can’t turn around and ask them, can I? And there’s no one else to ask.”

There was, in fact, one very obvious person to ask. He and Dr. Finch had spent two whole sessions discussing the concept ofmate, because no way could these sessions go forward if Dr. Finch didn’t understand what mate meant.

Which meant Dr. Finch now knew the source of Tim’s mood. Tim hated everything, especially the steady look from his shrink. At least the man wasn’t making notes. The scratch of the pen grated on Tim’s senses on the really bad days.

Dr. Finch’s heart rate picked up a little, a sign he was about to say something Tim wasn’t going to like. “The very idea of mate would suggest you don’t have to be alone if you don’t want to. But most long-term couples will tell you that even in healthy relationships, it’s possible to feel lonely.”

“I’m not lonely!” Tim shouted, leaning forward in his chair. He stopped to pull in a breath. “A real wolf wouldn’t have to yell. They can convey meaning and communicate without words. Look, I failed again,” he said sourly. “Surprise.”

“Words work fine for humans.” Dr. Finch made a note.

“Do they?” Tim questioned between gritted teeth. “Do they really? Because humans seem to misunderstand each other a lot.”

That got another note. Sometimes Dr. Finch did that on purpose whenever Tim was sarcastic. Sarcasm was apparently a deflection and Tim relied on it too much. That was something Silas would have said, and Tim had told Dr. Finch that. Dr. Finch hadn’t said it again.

It didn’t make Tim stop hearing it, though. And imagining Dr. Finch making notes on it to irk him, when, really, the man wasn’t a master chess player, and was probably honestly making notes on Tim’s mental state.

Tim held onto his anger for another moment, then sighed heavily and pulled his legs up into the chair so he could wrap his arms around his knees.

“You’re communicating your defensiveness just fine, if you were curious,” Dr. Finch remarked, with a faint smile with no teeth. “Even a human can see it. You walked in like that, as I implied before. I’m merely here to help.”

Tim heard himself growling and went hot with embarrassment.

Dr. Finch wasn’t done. “You know I’ve offered for you to invite Nathaniel in here for a session or two with you—”

“No!” Tim barely kept from yelling this time.

Another faint smile, possibly meant to be kind. “You don’t want him to know, even though he’s your mate?”

There was no point in lying. Tim sighed and looked away. “He already knows.”

“He does?” Dr. Finch’s surprise seemed genuine.

Tim, who wasn’t exactly forthcoming and knew it, chewed on his bottom lip for a moment. He hid his face in hisknees. “Probably,” he amended. “But he knows everything. He’s perfect.”

“Timothy.”

“Nathaniel’s not perfect,” Tim obediently recited, then growled again—but quietly. “I know he’s not perfect. I live with him. It’s hard to find the flaws at first, but trust me” –he snorted— “they’re there. It’s….” He closed his eyes. “Being nearly perfect kind ofishis flaw. How am I…? I mean, I know what we are to each other. I know that. But sometimes people come into town, humans, weres, fairies, this troll one time, and it’s like he’s all they can see.”

Tim was a tiny, pathetic excuse for a mate.

Dr. Finch was soft. “Do you think he wants any of them?”

Tim’s voice was rough. “No.”

“Do you think he wants their attention?”

“No.” Tim huffed. “But he uses it, sometimes. He’s clever like that, and mean, when he has to be.”

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