Page 110 of The CEO Alpha’s Substitute Mate

My hand goes over my mouth.

“Your sister didn’t swallow all of it, though.” He says it more slowly, and I understand he’s doing it for my benefit. “She took the healer’s number, then she vanished on both of them. She stayed hidden, and so they waited.”

“Until she called me,” I murmur, horrified. “I wish I could say I felt some closure,” I whisper hollowly. “But none of it brings her back.” I wipe my face with the heel of my hand. “But at least her name is cleared. She was not a thief.”

Callum lifts my hand and kisses my knuckles, his eyes meeting mine.

Damien straightens up and tucks the folder under his arm. “The next couple of days will be busy, so you won’t be able to spend that much time with Luca and the luna.”

I look at the two of them. “Luna? I’m just Ariela.”

“You are now the luna of this pack,” Callum answers.

Damien lets himself out, and my fingers find the crescent at the base of my neck again, tracing the whole curve of it. “Just like that, we are tied together for life.”

I go looking for the outrage, because it should be here. Nobody asked me. I said not yet on a rooftop with his arms around me, and I meant it. What I got instead was a lifetime, handed over while I bled out on a restaurant floor. Instead of the anger, I find contentment. It comes off him and goes straight through my heart, thick enough to taste, threaded through with something I have absolutely no defenses against.

He’s happy.

“I came so close to losing you, and I realized that living without you is impossible for me, Ariela.” He’s watching my hand at my throat. “The world I live in is so dark, but you are the one ray of sunshine that keeps guiding me back to the right path.” I forget to breathe for a moment. “Next time, you will not put yourself in danger again. You are my whole world, Ariela.”

Both his hands come up and take my face. “Yes. I love you. I love you more than you understand. More than you will ever comprehend.” His thumbs are moving along my cheekbones. “I want to wake up next to you every day, go to sleep next to you. When I’m not with you, I keep thinking of you.”

My whole face goes hot. Then it comes through the bond behind the words, and it isn’t a trickle. It’s every bit of it at once, huge and steady, pointed straight at me, and my eyes fill in response.

I get ahold of his wrists, my voice thick with emotion. “I love you, Callum. When I first met you, I thought you were the most difficult man in the world to love. But you are the easiest man to love. I know you came into my life like a storm, but you have given me so much. You have filled parts of my heart I didn’t know were empty.”

I kiss him. His hand slides into my hair, his hold gentle but his mouth burning. My stitches complain, so I ignore them.

“I love you,” I tell him against his mouth.

He just kisses me deeper.

❦ ❦ ❦

By the afternoon, the kitchen has gone gold at one end where the sun comes through the terrace doors, and somebody has put a bowl of fresh fruit on the island counter that I’m already eyeing. Autumn is doing its best out there. The lawn is half yellow, the gardeners have given up on the beech leaves entirely, and the weather is cool.

Reid has installed me at the table with a blanket across my knees. I’m glad he at least let me walk to the table.

Luca comes through the archway in pajamas with one sock on. He stops when he sees me. Then he crosses that whole kitchen at a stumbling run, hitting my chest hard enough to knock a noise out of me, and his arms lock around my waist. If my wound hadn’t healed as quickly as it did with the mate bond, I would be yowling in pain. He stays there. I put both arms around him with my face down in his hair, and I don’t let go for a long time.

“Hi, baby.” My lips press against the top of his head.

He doesn’t answer. He looks different, more energetic, more charged. And yet, he witnessed so much bloodshed, I can tell a part of him has changed.

“Are you okay?”

He shakes his head, just pressing his face into my chest. “I thought you would die. You were going to leave me.”

“No, Luca,” I murmur, stroking his hair. “I would never.”

Callum comes down the steps from the passage with his sleeves rolled, and I look up at him.

“Luca,” he says firmly, and my son looks up. “Come here.”

Luca walks over to him, and Callum crouches down to get to eye level with him. I see the flash of gold in his eyes, and this time I see it in Luca’s eyes as well. Satisfied, Callum pats his cheek and says, “Go. Run. And then come back.”

Luca disappears out the door, and I stare after him. “Something seems different about him.”