Page 56 of The CEO Alpha’s Substitute Mate

I meet his gaze, mine serious. “Sometimes secrets are necessary.”

“Why?”

“To protect the people around us.”

He thinks about that with his bottom lip pulled in, and the silence runs long enough that I take us for finished, but I’m proven wrong a minute later.

“What are you protecting Mom from?” he asks.

I take my time to form an answer appropriate for his age. “Are you aware that you’re not like your mother?”

He nods.

“You have to make sure she never finds out how you’re different because if she finds out before she’s ready, it might cause problems for her.”

The boy’s eyes are troubled, but he seems to accept my answer. “Okay. Are you and my mom going to get married?”

“Who put that idea in your head?” I blink at him, startled.

He shrugs with one shoulder. “She lives with us. And today she smelled like you all over.”

My wolf sits up so fast that I have to look out of my own window. Six years old, and the first thing he did this morning was scent his mother.

“My friends’ parents smell like each other,” he adds. “That’s how you and Mom smell now.”

“We’re not getting married.”

“But you will.” He says it as a correction. “You can, right? Then we can be a family.”

“Do you really want a family?”

“Yes.”

“Why?”

“Because then I will have a mom and a dad.” He picks at the seam of his coat. “You’re not a lot like a dad, but you’re okay.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

He shrugs again. “All my friends’ dads play with them, and they go out. They go to places together, and you don’t do any of that.”

“We spend time at the office.” I frown.

He pulls a face at the window. “That was boring.”

Nobody has ever told me my company was boring. I look at the back of his head.

“Well, my father never did any of these things you’re telling me about.”

Luca turns around fully in his seat, his eyes horrified. “Your dad didn’t love you?”

I open my mouth, but nothing comes out of it. Rowan Vance did what was required of an alpha with an heir. I was fed, educated, and trained. Nobody in that house ever picked me up off a lawn to spin me around, and the word the boy has just used never came up once. It didn’t occur to me that it was missing because I had nothing to measure it against.

“We’re going to reach the pack house in a while.” My voice comes out slightly harsh as I change the subject. “I don’t want you to talk about your mother. You don’t have to speak unless I tell you to. It’s important that you don’t speak to anybody.”

His face pale, he nods once again.

The hall at the pack house runs the length of the west side. It holds forty around the table, and there are closer to ninety in it when we walk in. The noise dies in stages, front to back, then the whispering starts underneath it. Every one of them is looking at a small boy in a good coat, checking his eyes against mine.