Page 39 of Tolerated By the Sigma (Mate Hunt 7)

Frustration continued to well up in me, so I finally threw in the towel when it came to fighting my wolf, and stalked into the bathroom.

“Char wanted the bathroom clean,” I growled out loud, knowing the wolf within me would hear and understand the words.

He stopped fighting the moment I grabbed the spray bottle and rag.

Relief flooded me.

Finally, I’d caught a break.

The damn wolf was going to be the death of me, even without actual death looming over me anymore.

I still wasn’t used to that, either—knowing with almost complete confidence that I would wake up the next morning. That I’d still be me. That the beast within me wouldn’t be able to take complete control.

I scrubbed the bathroom until every damn inch of the place was even more spotless than it had been before, then moved to the kitchen and did the same. The cleaning was keeping my wolf occupied, which was a relief.

My mind focused on my conversation with Charly as I grabbed the vacuum and pushed it across the carpet in the living room.

She thought she was second place, which was fucking insane considering the woman fate had attempted to pair me with the first time around.

But there had to be some kind of reasoning behind that, didn’t there? Some kind of past experience that she hadn’t told me about?

Honestly, when it came down to it, what did I really know about her past?

She had grown up in Moon Ridge after her parents died when she was young, then after she hadn’t found a mate, she’d gone to college. Came back with a degree a few years later, liked hiking alone…

Fucking hell.

I knew next to nothing about the woman; it was no damned wonder she felt like second place.

Furious with myself for not realizing that sooner, I shut off the vacuum when the carpet was clean, and then dropped to my ass next to the beast. The thing didn’t look like it had ever been cleaned, and as a kid, my dad had made me wash out our vacuums again and again after we’d renovated, so having a dirty vacuum bothered me.

I pulled the thing apart more aggressively than I would’ve so much as considered if Char had been in the house, and hauled it into the kitchen, removing the hair and cleaning the spongey filter on the damn thing with brutal efficiency.

How did people usually get to know each other?

Humans would date, which sounded like a shit show. But a shit show Char must’ve believed in, considering she’d been online dating when I met her.

So, dating it was.

I put the vacuum’s parts back together and went over the carpet again, pulling up a lot more crap the second time around. After putting that away, I followed suit with the rest of the cleaning supplies, started a load of laundry, and picked up a few pieces of dirty clothes I found in various places around the house.

With everything settled—except me and my shitty attempt at being a mate—I grabbed Char’s laptop from where I’d set it on her side table, and sat down on her bed. It smelled like her—fucking delicious—and I was selfish enough to want it to smell like me too.

Technically she had assigned me to the spare room, but I’d eventually figure out how to be less of an asshole, and then the room would beours.

Damn, I liked the sound of that.

I had no idea what kinds of things humans did for dates, so I opened her laptop and looked for the app that she would’ve used for dating. It was connected to her phone, so I figured I could pull up the same one she used, with all of the same conversations and information.

It was kind of a dick move, but I wanted to see what kinds of things she had done for dates before.

And call me an asshole, but I wanted to know if she talked to other guys differently than she talked to me.

I pulled up her most recent conversation, recognizing the guy in the picture as the asshole my wolf had nearly killed.

Speak of the devil, he reared up a bit, and I gritted my teeth as I resisted his push to take over. “I’m trying to figure out how to win her over,” I snarled at him, through my clenched jaws.

He backed down, and I let out a slow breath.

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