Page 35 of Thrown into the Mob

Madd was chewing his bottom lip, and I’d been with my mate long enough to recognize when he was pondering and wrestling with something.

“Out with it.”

“You don’t suppose Evander knows I’m not really his mate and is doing this as revenge because you upset his carefully planned existence.”

It was a possibility, one I wouldn’t have considered before he killed Father.

“Maybe.” That was the only answer I could give.

Madd got up after we’d been sitting there a while and searched the kitchen cupboards, finding instant coffee that had expired two years ago. He made it anyway and brought me a cup, and our fingers touched.

It was terrible coffee. We drank it, and he talked about how his alpha dad and his uncle didn’t want to be part of a mafia pack and moved away.

“Treyton doesn’t want to live that life, but I had to earn my place in La Luna Noir, even though I’m family.”

We had that in common. Neither of us had been handed what we wanted, but the difference with Madd was no one had expected or wanted him to fail. He’d been loved, supported, and surrounded by family.

It was an obvious parallel, and I hadn't seen it before, but I'd been too busy fighting the bond to notice what it had actually paired me with. Madd wasn’t my opposite. He was my mirror.

“How are you dealing with your father’s murder?”

I turned the cup in my hands. “I don't know how to answer that. He didn't love me, but he was omnipresent. Every decision I've ever made was either for him or against him. Without him there, I’m floundering.”

“I’m here while you figure it out."

Those words curled around my heart and helped fill that empty space inside me. We didn’t know one another well, but I was open to the possibility that we would.

Madd got up and his hand rested on my shoulder as he passed. His fingers touched the place where his wolf's teeth had broken my skin, and both my dragon and I welcomed the connection.

Dawn arrived, and we sat but side by side and our shoulders touched. It was enough for now.

EIGHTEEN

MADD

We slept most of the day.

I insisted that Conrad took the bedroom. Though I rarely exhibited that overbearing, accepting-no-arguments alpha trait that was predominant in centuries past, I was adamant about the sleeping arrangements..

I passed out with my face on the sofa, but the voice in my head that was my wolf wouldn’t be quiet.

Why don’t you sleep on the bedroom floor?

I sighed and shoved a cushion over my face, trying to block him out.

I’m in your head. You can’t do that.

Conrad and I had marked one another. That was the closest we’d come to being intimate. Not that I expected us to toss our clothes off and jump into bed. We had more to worry about than when we’d have sex.

I did want to be close to my mate, though. Putting my lips on his and my arms around him was the first step. Breathing in his unique scent that told me he was mine should have happened if we weren’t in this predicament.

But Conrad had experienced isolation from the time he was born, and now he’d witnessed the horror of watching his father’s murder. Sex was far from his mind, and that was okay. I could wait.

When I woke it was past five and water was running in the bathroom. Conrad was tiptoeing around because my shifter hearing picked up a distinct sound of someone padding on the tiles and peeling their feet off them to take another step.

My wolf was awake, and I knew I’d be in for another day of “get closer to him,” or “this is taking too long.”

My neck ached from the couch, and I was hungry. I needed to brush my teeth, but my mate was in the bathroom and I didn’t want to disturb him. If we were truly mated and had grown close, I’d yell and ask if he was finished. Instead, I stayed where I was and thought back to last night when he’d told me things he’d only just realized.