Page 95 of The CEO Alpha’s Substitute Mate

The roof is cold enough that her breath shows. She goes straight to the new rail and puts both hands on it, looking out at the tree line with the sky a beautiful indigo behind it.

“I’m starting Luca’s training tomorrow,” I inform her.

She turns her head. “Training.”

“He’ll be running and climbing and learning how to fall.” I stop a pace behind her. “The wolf in him is awake years too early, and his body has to be ready to hold it. I didn’t want to begin this early.”

Ariela lets a breath out through her nose and looks back at the trees. “All right. I understand.”

Her easy acceptance takes me aback.

“You’re remarkably poised,” I observe. “I thought you would fight back more.”

“So did I, honestly.” She shrugs one shoulder. “But there are parts of Luca’s life that I will never truly understand, and you are the best person to guide him through those parts. So I have to trust you with him, and I have to trust your decisions.”

I close the distance and put my hands on the rail on either side of her, which brings my chest against her back and her hair under my jaw. She doesn’t move away. She settles her weight back into me.

“No,” she continues quietly. “I want Luca to thrive in your world, Callum, and I understand that I have to step back at times. Isabella said she’d teach him how to navigate the politics.” She bites down on her lower lip. “I feel so useless. I don’t know how to even begin helping him in this new world.”

My arms tighten around her in response to the frustration in her voice. “Not everything you do has to help him in some monetary or physical way,” I tell her gently. “You provide him with stability, with a warmth that keeps him grounded. You are his protection, his home.”

“That’s a nice thing to say.”

“It’s true.” I hesitate, then say the rest of it. “Lately that’s what you’ve become for me as well.”

Her heartbeat picks up under my forearm, and I hear it change before it shows on her face. My wolf lifts his head at the sound of it.

I turn her around inside my arms so that her back is against the rail and she has to look up at me. Her hair has come loose down one side. There’s color rising along her throat that has nothing to do with the cold.

“There’s something you should know,” I begin, mesmerized by how beautiful she looks, how stunning her eyes are when they meet mine.

“What?”

Her voice drags me back to reality, and I look down at her.

“Elena was my first mate. She and I were never close.” I keep my voice steady. “I never felt the things with her that I feel with you.”

Ariela’s lips part. Nothing comes out of them.

I lean in until there’s very little air left between us. “My wolf has been obsessed with you from the very first day it saw you.”

“What are you trying to say?” Her voice is shaking, and her pulse is going hard enough that I can see it move in her neck.

“Wolves get one fated mate.” I watch her face. “I seem to have two.”

She frowns up at me as if my words haven’t fully registered with her yet. Then I run my fingers down her cheek slowly from the cheekbone to the corner of her jaw, and her eyes go enormous.

“Surely you’re not saying what I think you’re saying.”

“It’s undeniable. You are mine.”

She’s out from under my arm before I’ve finished, three steps back across the concrete with both arms wrapped around herself, putting the width of the roof between us.

“How is this possible?” Her voice is wobbly. “What does it mean for us?”

“You are my mate. What do you think it means?”

“I don’t know.” She looks at the ledge, at the rail, at anything except my face.