I snorted. “I guess you have a point.”
“I usually do,” she said with a smile.
I leaned in for a kiss, the softness of her lips against mine feeling like a miracle.
Josie pulled back, a question in her eyes. “You said you’ve felt non-essential?” she asked, her voice unsure.
I shifted uncomfortably in my seat. “I guess mostly from my parents,” I mumbled.
When I didn’t say anything else, she gave me a tight smile. “You don’t have to talk about it.”
I realized I was doing it again—trying to conceal my feelings. I focused on Josie’s sweet scent as I tried to find the right words. I took a deep breath. “No, I do. I want you to know. It’s just hard to talk about.” I kept going before I lost my nerve.
“My parents started out… I don’t know, normal? I had a normal life in London growing up until they started getting more wrapped up in Designation Traditionalist values. There was a radio show they listened to, and then they started hanging out with more people who shared those values. By the time we moved to North Woods, they were all in. My older sisters had already bonded their packs and stayed in England, but they moved me and my younger brothers here. Having alpha sons advances your status for some bullshit reason, and they were always pushing me to fit their image of a proper alpha—to win fights, fuck often, and be an aggressive asshole like my fathers.
“They treated me like I had to earn their love, and I was never enough. Once my brothers revealed as alphas, they dropped me. It was like I was a ghost in my own home. I never lived up to their expectations, making me useless to them.”
“Oh, Theo.” My mate’s hold tightened on me. “You don’t have to earn anything with me. Just be here.”
I nodded, trying to let her words sink deep inside me, surrounding and healing the wound I’d carried since childhood. I cupped the back of her neck and pulled her close until our foreheads touched.
“I guess talking about our feelings makes things better,” she said dryly.
“Imagine that,” I responded. “Fucking horrible.”
“Total trash,” she agreed. But she had a broad smile on her face and her scent was bright. The terrified knot in my chest eased, soothed by her presence and words.
“So, have you actually been doing any work in here the past few days or just staring at the wall?” she asked with scary accuracy. Before I could answer, her eyes caught on the stack of books I had hidden behind my desk. “Or reading,” she said.
Shit.No one was meant to see those.
I tensed, bracing for her reaction.
She was quiet for a few long moments.
“You’ve expanded your collection,” she said.
She tilted her head to see the titles better. “The Nightmare Inside: Healing from Interpersonal Violence.When Trauma Strikes: An Alpha’s Guide to EmotionalHealing.” Then she paused, and when she spoke again, it sounded like she was holding back laughter. “And the best of them all…Seven Secrets to Sexually Satisfying your Omega.”
She turned to me with a raised eyebrow. I choked, lunging to try and hide the book I hadn’t realized was in the stack with the others, but she just laughed and clung to my body.
“That’s not mine,” I blurted out. My cheeks felt like they were on fire.
“Oh? Did a rogue librarian sneak it into your pile?”
I just groaned, pressing my face into the crook of her neck. “I thought I’d hidden that far, far away.”
“Why?” she asked with a giggle, pressing small kisses to the side of my face.
“Because it’s fucking embarrassing,” I mumbled.
“Embarrassing to want to please your omega? Because I think the way you make me scream with pleasure is the opposite of embarrassing,” she said, her voice sultry as her lips brushed my ear.
I groaned. Now I was rock hard underneath her. She wiggled, brushing her ass against my erection in a move that had me tightening my grip on her waist with a growl.
“I think I need to see what’s in this book,” she said, leaning over to snag it from the floor before I could stop her. I tried to get it first, but she was already cracking it open and I didn’t have the heart to tear it out of her hands.
The book fell straight to a dog-eared chapter titled “The Power of the Tongue.” A chapter with a shit-ton of my own highlights and notes on it.
