Alpha’s Strength(46)

“Look…it’s not your fault. You didn’t make me a latent werewolf. You didn’t even change me into one—and Lake has apologized, and I’ve forgiven her, so we don’t need to keep rehashing it—I’m sort of letting things go, that’s all.” She sniffed, and it stabbed him in the heart as if she had taken a knife and pushed it inside of him.

“Like what?” He stroked the back of her head.

“Well, I had these ridiculous dreams about what I would do when this was over with Nathan.” She pulled away from him, and he let her go. He wanted her to talk, not to clam up, and if she needed space to do so, then that was fine. For now.

“Why were they ridiculous? Were you planning on doing something so outlandish it could never happen?” Because his pack had resources, he could probably make about anything she wanted an eventuality.

“No.” She laughed, and he felt better. Betsy picked up a bit of egg on a fork and motioned toward his mouth with it. He opened and let her feed him the food. It was warm and melted on his tongue. He savored it for a second before swallowing it down. She’d put heaven in her scrambled eggs.

“Then what?” He wasn’t going to let this go. It wasn’t in his nature.

“It was ridiculous because I was never getting away from Nathan, so they were never going to happen. I think I wanted to hold onto the idea.”

“Which was what?” If she were trying to be deliberately evasive, she would quickly find that, once he started to dig out a problem, he didn’t stop until he’d fully uncovered it. His mate had been crying while she cooked scrambled eggs on their first morning together. This constituted a problem.

Not to mention he was feeling all kinds of rested and energized. No way would he let this go unfinished.

“I wanted to go to culinary school.” She looked down at the pan of eggs before she scooped them out onto a waiting plate.

“Why can’t you still do that? This is New York. We have such schools here. You can certainly go. I went to college. And got a master’s in business actually.”

Betsy raised a blonde eyebrow when she handed him his plate of eggs. He took it and went to sit at the counter. She sipped at a cup of coffee before placing one down in front of him. This whole thing seemed really domestic. If only she were happier, he’d be ready to declare it the best morning of his life.

“How old are you exactly? You took over the pack at twenty, and you look about thirty-five. Where did you find the time to go to college, business school, and then develop a very large company that does whatever it does in the last fifteen years?”

He grinned. Oh, there were things about their life that were going to blow his mate’s mind. He hoped in a good way. She might be really weirded out by the whole thing. His smile fell.

“I’m older than I look. By a considerable number of years. Werewolves have longer life spans. We look younger, longer. Given good nutrition and no one killing us, we tend to come to the end of our lives at about 150 years, give or take some.” He sipped his coffee.

Betsy’s eyes seemed to dance around in their sockets. She processed what he said quietly, but her body was absorbing every shock. He might need to get her a massage. Or give her one. His mood brightened considerably at the idea. She’d taken care of him…

“Which would make you how old exactly?” Like him, she didn’t let go of a carrot once it had been dangled in front of her.

He cleared his throat. “I will be forty-six on my next birthday, which I guess would make me about twice your age.”

She set down her mug “Holy cow. You don’t look a day over thirty-five.”

“Thanks.” He needed to lighten this up. “But most people would say thirty. Maybe the stress of the last twenty-four hours has aged me all of a sudden. Thirty-five? I should be insulted.”

She threw her napkin at him, and he caught it. There was some humor back in her eyes. “I had no idea I’d mated such an elderly gentleman…”

“Elderly?” He lunged for her and pulled her up against him. “I’ll show you elderly.”

He kissed her, and she melted against him. This was how they should start every morning. After a moment, he withdrew, wishing he could stand there and kiss her forever. If only the outside world didn’t wait for them.

“My company handles privacy issues for business in terms of telecommunication. We identify potential spy issues, breaches in security. Basically, we’re a private company that helps public companies keep their business secrets safer.”

She sighed. “You say the most romantic things. Kiss a girl, talk about breaches in secrecy.”