Page 6 of Delivered to My Mate’s Best Friend

“You’re thinking too loud, baby,” Cypress cooed in my ear. “Tomorrow can wait.”

I nodded and snuggled closer to his heated body. He wrapped his arms tighter around my stomach and kissed the back of my neck.

Even as I closed my eyes, the ad stayed in my mind.

Cypress was right. Tomorrow could wait. And I couldn’t let something as silly as a randomly placed ad fuck with my sanity.

Chapter Six

Cypress

After Zephyr finally fell asleep, I lay awake, thinking. I stayed very still, not wanting to disturb her, but my mind was anything but quiet. I had no business mating Zephyr without telling her more about what it meant to be a shifter, at least in the pack I grew up in. But I never thought that it would come up. We’d moved away when I was so young and I had never been back.

And in all the time we’d been together, nothing had occurred to change my belief that Zephyr and I were destined to be together with no others involved. My parents, as she knew them, were a couple because my other father had passed away before we met, and apparently they hadn’t mentioned him either.

Why didn’t I? It wasn’t as if I was ashamed of my past or my people. Certainly not my family. Lying there with my eyes closed, I pictured my mate the first time I saw her. I’d never encountered anyone as beautiful, and my wolf was on full alert and chanting mate. I would have done anything to be with her, apparently up to and including lies by omission.

“If you’re going to thrash around, we might as well talk about whatever is bothering you.” Zephyr sat up and plumped the pillows behind her. “I thought you were asleep.”

“I thought you were.”

She snorted. “I was until your restlessness woke me.”

“I’m sorry. After your long day, too. Really, just go back to sleep.”

“Not with something bothering you so much. You’re going to have to talk to me, or nobody is sleeping tonight.”

My mate was one of the sweetest people I’d ever met and often, she was content to let me make our plans. She worked so hard at the coffeehouse that I tried to take other burdens from her shoulders. She was also one of the stubbornest females ever born, but I didn’t hate that about her. As an alpha, I had a tendency to be pushy, and Zephyr could hold her own and remind me that she wanted a mate and not a boss.

And she always put my needs first.

“It’s very late to take up a big issue,” Can you say excuse? “How about at breakfast tomorrow.”

“Cypress, please?” Her jaw set in that stubborn mode that told me she had not been lying. Talk or stay awake and talk about talking. Not much of a choice there.

“All right. But try not to hate me.” I wouldn’t have blamed her.

“Sit next to me.” She fluffed my pillow just like hers. “And whatever is worrying you, we’ll solve it together. It’s not your parents, is it? They’re okay?” Trust my mate to always think of others. “And you feel okay?”

“I feel like shit.” I held up a hand to stop her from assuming I was sick. “But it’s not physical. I’ve kept some things from you. I thought they didn’t matter, that they’d never come into play, but I see now how wrong I was.”

“I think you might need to rest your head in my lap for this one.” She patted her blanket-covered thighs. Sometimes it was hard to look someone in the eye revealing difficult truths, and she’d always understood that.

So, I did as she suggested, her scent and softness easing my fears and doubts a little. She might leave me if she considered this a big enough betrayal. A human should be able to survive without their mate better than a shifter. Small comfort.

“Now, comfortable?” She stroked my hair, smoothing it back from my forehead. “Talk to me, mate of mine. What can be so big and terrible that you are afraid to tell me about it? Haven’t we dealt with a lot so far?”

“Yes.”

“We’ve survived in the past and we will do it now.”

Please let her be right.

“When you got those ads, it made me think about something I’d tried to suppress a long time ago.” Grateful I couldn’t see her expression because it might have shut me down, I plowed on. “When I was a little boy, we lived in a pack where reverse harems were the norm. Most families consisted of one mom and two or more dads.”

“But you only have one mom and dad, right?”

“No…well, I do now. My other dad passed away before we met.”