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“No.” His heavy frown makes his eyebrows knit together. “You’re staying right here.”
I can’t help but laugh, feeling lighter right now than I have in a long time despite the magnitude of what just happened and the exhaustion I’m feeling all over. “I just want to get up and use the bathroom.” I can already feel where his cum is starting to leak out of me, and I’m not about to sleep in a cum puddle all night.
“Fine,” he releases me begrudgingly. “But if you’re not back in two minutes, I’m coming in after you. I haven’t forgotten the bathtub incident.”
My cheeks flush as I stand up and snatch the t-shirt I was wearing off the ground on my way to the bathroom. I can feel his eyes on my bare ass, which is surprisingly intimate even after what we just did. As a shifter, being naked becomes second-nature, but I don’t usually feel like I’m under a microscope naked. Dominic acts like he’d happily study every square inch of me naked. The mere thought makes me shiver as I accidentally slam the bathroom door shut behind me.
I can hear him chuckle from the other room.
Shaking my head to try to clear it, I walk to the mirror and study myself. I look like a wreck with my hair tangled and body trembling from overuse. But what my eyes really zero in on is the mark at the base of my neck. The imprint of Dominic’s teeth is still clear, though I know from other shifters that the marks eventually fade to a light sort of circular shape that will stay on me permanently.
A mate’s mark. A symbol to ward off any other would-be suitors.
I didn’t expect to feel so much pride looking at the mark. If anything, I worried I might feel a twinge of regret, but I have no such thing. This mark just solidified my union to one of the most powerful Alphas in North America. There’s a part of me that wants to ask Dominic if we can get in the car right now and drive back to the North Summit Pack land just so I can show it off. After all the years of being judged by my parents’accident, I could prove I’m more than just a sour note on their pack history.
I can only imagine how good it would feel to have Warner Overstreet have to defer to me as a higher ranking wolf. And Morgan, who I haven’t seen in ages, she would lose her mind. She never has understood my decision to leave—I never told her about the rejection. But now I could tell her the whole sordid tale and make up for lost time.
All the possibilities bloom in front of me.
And in every scenario, I imagine Dominic by my side. It feels almost like someone has brainwashed me, except I can still feel a healthy layer of skepticism just under the surface. I haven’t forgotten anything else that’s happened, but none of it can sour how I feel about this.
My wolf is especially content. This is the first time in years we fall into sync together—the way a shifter is supposed to be with their wolf.
Our mate brought us home.
Chapter Twenty-Nine
Tess
I wake up with a hollow feeling inside of me and a cold, empty spot next to me on the bed. My wolf whimpers before I can even wrap my head around the fact that Dominic isn't beside me. I can feel emotion lodged in my throat as I climb out of the bed, legs quivering under me as I stand. I'm also sore between my legs from last night.
"I can't believe I gave into him and now I'm waking up alone," I whisper, needing to hear myself say the words. He's not getting a free pass from me. If he thought marking me would somehow make me more compliant, more agreeable, then he has a rude awakening coming.
I stomp around the room, go to the bathroom, find an unopened toothbrush in the cabinet and force myself to calm down long enough to practice good hygiene. My entire body feels wrecked from last night, which only makes me more mad that Dominic abandoned me in bed. It's not like I need breakfast in bed or anything, but not waking up abandoned would have been nice.
I'm still stomping when I leave the bathroom, the sound reverberating around me in the old house. I know I should calm down before looking for Dominic, but I'm fighting mad this morning. I trail through the upstairs rooms, and failing to find him, make my way down the stairs to check the rest of the house.
I find him in a formal sitting room—a waste of a perfectly good room, if you ask me—a book in his hand and his back to the doorway. He looks so casual and unperturbed that I feel my anger continue to grow. I wake up alone so he can sit down here reading a book? Something he could have done perfectly well in bed so I didn't wake up second-guessing everything that happened last night. Unbelievable.
All rationality goes right out the window. I grab a decorative plant sitting on the table inside the doorway and lob it at the back of his head. It falls short, hitting the ground about a foot behind the sofa and shattering loudly enough that he jumps in his seat, startled.
"What the hell?" he says, standing to look between me and the small broken flower pot. "Did you just throw that at me?" he asks incredulously even though yes, that's clearly exactly what I just did.
"You got what you wanted and bailed!" I raise my voice at him bitterly. I'm borderline yelling, but I have too much emotion simmering inside of me to try to be calm right now. I took a leap of faith last night, and now I can't take back what was clearly the worst decision I've ever made.
I suddenly can't breathe.
I turn and blatantly sprint for what looks like a back door at the end of a little hallway. I shove through it and sink down onto the steps outside, burying my face in my hands. I really can't breathe, my whole chest closing in so that it feels like my lungs and heart can’t expand properly. I hear the door open behind me, though Dominic hesitates on the threshold.
"That was… unexpected," he says, his voice dry. I scoff. "I was fully prepared for you to wake up this morning angry with me for marking you. I certainly didn't anticipate you wanting me to still be in bed."
I lift my head from hands so I can turn and shoot him a dirty look. "I asked you to mark me," I remind him.
"Yeah, you did." He steps outside, studying me closely as he keeps a couple of feet of distance between us still, keeping his feet planted on the deck overlooking the backyard. "But if I had woken up this morning to you regretting that, it would have fucking killed me, Tess. I expect you to be my partner now; you can't take it back."
He's right. Last night, I didn't really think through the magnitude of what I was doing. I can't just leave when I'm upset now. With a mate bond, I'd be ten times as easy for him to find. Everywhere we go, our wolves will always call to each other.
"I think I'm going to be sick," I tell him. I stand, barely making it in time to lean over the railing before I lose the contents of my stomach.
