“That’s not your fault,” Tanya, his mate, said from the doorway of his office. He’d felt her coming to him. She was his rock, his best friend, and more than he ever deserved.
“I should have known something was wrong,” Dillon said. It was the same thing he always said when they had this conversation. “He was my second.”
“You may be an alpha, Dillon, but you are not all knowing. That gift belongs to the Great Luna alone.”
Dillon turned to look at her. She was as beautiful as the first day he saw her. She had long, blonde hair, which she said was dirty blonde, not true blonde, as if it was some sort of failing. She gazed at him with large brown eyes set above a cute nose and high cheekbones. She was petite, which he liked because he wasn’t as large as most wolves. Standing at five eleven nine inches, Dillon wasn’t tall, though he could hold his own against the larger wolves just fine.
“It’s okay to be worried about her,” Tanya said as she walked toward him.
“Jacque’s going to be fine, and she’s got Fane. He’s—”
“She isn’t who I was talking about, and you know it.”
Dillon immediately felt shame. It was a conflicting emotion for him and had been since the day he’d met the eyes of his true mate over twenty years ago, at a gas station of all places. The connection had been instant. He’d heard her thoughts in his mind, and when the wind had blown her scent in his direction, he’d been done for.
Dillon had never been so crushed, or elated, in all his long life, at least not until he’d found out he’d had a child. Then he’d been crushed and elated all over again, and the guilt and shame flooded him on an entirely different level.
“How many times will we go through this?” Tanya pressed her hand to his cheek, pulling his head down so he had to look at her. “I’ve never held it against you, and that’s not going to change.”
“Why not?” Dillon asked, his voice rough with his wolf, who was just as conflicted as the man.
“How can I?” She blew out a breath and then dropped her hand. “Dillon, we have true mates, but we also have free will. There is nothing in any of the writings about our kind that say we can’t love someone else. In fact, our existence is a bit cruel because we can love, but that love won’t ever compare to the love we will have with our true mate. But our ability to love others is also a blessing. What if our true mate dies before we ever meet them? We would be left to a life of loneliness. At least if you fall in love with someone, you get the gift of a healthy relationship. And, if you fall in love with another Canis lupus, at least the darkness will be slowed to some extent, though not as much as by your true mate. I wouldn’t want you denied that if I had never come along.”
“I wouldn’t have felt the same,” he growled.
She laughed. “That’s because you’re a male Canis lupus and a dominant to boot.”
“If you’d been with another male before me, I probably would have killed him,” Dillon told her. It wasn’t a lie. Regardless of the fact that he knew it was a double standard, and a very crappy one at that, he couldn’t stand the idea of someone else touching his mate. And yet…
“Don’t,” Tanya said firmly. “Male and female. We were made different in many ways. One of them just happens to be, not always but a great deal of the time, the ability for a female to give grace that a male Canis lupus cannot.
“Lilly gave you love when you were alone. You’d gone rogue from your pack. You were lost. Rogue wolves don’t often make it on their own for long, Dillon. They’re either killed by another pack or go feral. Lilly kept that from happening to you. In a strange way, I am thankful to her. She also gave you something I can never give you.”
Dillon dropped to his knees and wrapped his arms around her torso, pressing his face against her stomach and kissing her there. Tanya had told him almost immediately that she was barren. She would never have children. She’d known Dillon had been with a human previously as she’d seen it in his mind when they bonded, and she’d even given him the option to stay with the human at the chance of having pups. With Lilly, there had been the possibility. With Tanya, there wasn’t. Of course, he’d refused. Having pups was the last thing on his mind at that point. He’d just found his true mate. The darkness would now be kept at bay. In a very real sense, he’d been given a new lease on life.
He kissed her stomach again. “I love you, every part of you, just as you are. If I could, I would move heaven and earth to give you a child.”
She wrapped her hands around his head and held him to her. Her nails ran up and down the flesh of his neck. “I know you would. But for whatever reason, this is the Great Luna’s plan, and I trust her.”
Dillon soaked up the scent of his mate as he wrestled with his demons. He was worried about Lilly, but only as a friend and as the woman who was the mother of his daughter. He
