“You just…?”
Sammy shook his head. “Nothing.”
“It’s not nothing, but hiding in your room and avoiding everyone isn’t going to change anything.”
Sammy tensed. “I’m not hiding.”
“But?”
“This is their home.”
Their sanctuary. The one place the pack should feel at ease. Sammy didn’t want to be the reason that changed.
“True,” Dominic allowed. His fingers slid under Sammy’s chin, warm and steady, coaxing his head up until their eyes met. He hesitated briefly before continuing, his voice softer than before. “But it’s your home too.”
He said it with such unwavering certainty that Sammy almost agreed on instinct, but doubt still clouded the acceptance. La Madriguera wasn’t his home, not yet. For now—and for the foreseeable future—he was merely a guest.
Unless something changed soon, in a few days, he would be nothing more than a memory, a stranger who had once passed through.
“You don’t believe me?” Dominic studied him in the silence that followed, his tone carrying a sharpness to it now.
“I believe you think that’s true,” he answered, each word careful and measured.
“But you don’t.”
He really wished his mate would stop putting words in his mouth. Instead of arguing with him, though, he asked a question of his own—one he couldn’t seem to reconcile.
“What do you like about me?”
Dominic dropped his hand and leaned back, his expression one of genuine confusion. “Why are you asking?”
“Just answer me.”
“I like you.”
Sammy gritted his teeth and choked down a sigh. “I know, but I mean, if we weren’t mated—”
“But we are.”
“I’m aware. I’m saying, if we weren’t—”
“But weare.”
The goddess save him, it was like talking to a damn brick wall. Taking a deep breath, he released it slowly and let go of the tension in his shoulders. He didn’t know exactly what he hoped to gain from the line of questioning, only that it mattered.
“I’m not denying that we’re mated.” He wanted that to be very clear. “I’m asking you if you’d still want me if fate hadn’t thrown us together.”
A low, quiet growl was his only warning before long fingers wrapped around his throat. His mate’s palm radiated warmth against his skin, a solid weight that felt like ownership rather than dominance.
“You aremine.”
His head spun, and his heart crashed violently against his ribs as his stomach rolled over in a slow somersault. With a shaky breath, he wetted his dry lips and leaned into the pressure at his throat.
“Because fate said so?”
Dominic’s eyes flashed with a feral light. “BecauseIsaid so.”
A quiet voice in the back of his mind told him to drop it, to stop pushing, but he couldn’t. He needed to understand, to find a way through the uncertainty that haunted him.