The last thing I wanted to do on our first day mated was to spend time with my parents, even if it meant having access to my own things, especially on what I was sure was going to be a rare day off for Parker. Parker was right, though, that I would be more comfortable in clothes of my own, and I really didn’t want Parker wasting his money on brand new stuff. But with every passing moment, the idea that my parents were either donating my things or putting them into an expensive storage unit seemed more probable.

They would mean for it to teach me a lesson. All it would manage to do was to push me further away. As much as they had been awful to me in recently, I still held onto the happy memories that were my childhood, as sick as that was, and I wanted us to get back to those times. After discovering what I did the night before, I hesitated to even imagine it possible. I’m sure in their mind they had their reasons, but nothing could justify what they’d done to me, to both of us.

We pulled up to the curb and a small moving truck pulled behind us.

“Did you really need to do that? It’s not like I have a ton of things.” I failed to mention that I had sold all my furniture before coming back home with my tail between my legs. It would only rile him up further, and he was already far too close to the edge.

“I did,” he said. I had been taught that alphas were hormonally driven to protect and take care of their mates in school during sex ed, but I had thought it was more of a give the alphas an excuse to be asshats than anything else until now.

I reached for my door handle just as the front door of the house swung open. How had neither of us seen my dad?

“Out,” he commanded, and I scampered to do so like I was twelve years old again. To my surprise, Parker was already at my side by the time my door closed. He must have run around the car, but the composure on his face hid it well.

“Mr. Schofield, nice to see you again.” Parker was such a liar, but his hand extended, and my dad reached out as well, both of them with their game face on.

“I take it this truck means you are moving out.” Dad barely glanced at me, but I had to look away from his disappointed stance. I didn’t need his approval anymore.

The curtain moved in the center window. Why didn’t Mother just come out and see me, too? Not that I wanted to see her, but her avoidance was cowardly. She couldn’t know that I had uncovered her secret since she didn’t know that it was Parker I’d been with back then. Part of me wanted to face her, to confront her with what I knew, while the other part of me wanted to just grab my stuff and run.

“I’m pushing thirty, it is about time.” I left out all of the things we needed to talk about—someday. That someday was in the distant future, as far as I was concerned.

“If you had been responsible, you wouldn’t be in this predicament.”

Parker stiffened beside me, but to his credit, he stayed still, his mouth shut. Just as promised, he was letting me handle this, which bolstered my strength. What I really wanted to do was to yell back how it actually happened, again, then storm off. Instead, I pulled on my big boy briefs and adulted.

“Dad, this is not the time for anything other than moving.” It was all I could do to keep my true thoughts glued inside my brain. Now was not the time for that confrontation, although it’s time would come soon enough.

“Then why did you bring him here?” Dad seethed, pointing a finger right at Parker’s chest.

“He’s my mate. Where else would he be?” I feigned ambivalence. It wasn’t worth it, I reminded myself. I had Parker and he was mine in the very best of ways, and that was all that mattered.

“If he were a good alpha, he would be working to provide for you right now. From what I’ve heard, his company isn’t in a very good position.” Before I had a second to ask Dad what he meant, he leaned in, inhaled deeply, and stomped off with a wrinkled nose. He must’ve assumed I was saying mate figuratively, but scents don’t lie.

Parker waved the movers to us and told them to move anything I told them to, and to ignore the habitants of the house. Habitants—my mother’s actions had lowered them to habitant status in Parker’s eyes. A not insignificant part of me had hoped that in the future, things between all of us would be sunshine and roses, but chances of that seemed increasing slim given what I now knew.

My things were just as I had left them, most of them still in boxes. We made quick work of clearing them out of my childhood home. My mother still didn’t show her face. It saddened me that it came to this.

“I told you a moving truck was ridiculous,” I teased Parker as the mostly empty truck was closed.

“It made me happy, so worth every penny. Though it would have been fun staring at your ass as you bent over to pick up those boxes.” He leaned in, kissing my cheek gently. “I’m proud of you. Your dad was doing all he could to set you off.

“I could and should say the same to you.”

Parker opened the driver’s door to my car, kissing me again before helping me in, like a gentleman.

“It wasn’t easy,” he confessed. My mind was so kiss drunk that it took me a moment to remember what it was that challenged him. “My need to protect you is stronger now than ever before. I pretty much wanted to punch him square in the nose.”

I pulled him into the car, and he braced himself on the seat beside me while I gave him a searing kiss.

“That would’ve pissed me off,” I said when the sound of the moving truck roaring to life ended our kiss. “I get dibs. He’s my father.”

Parker chuckled as he closed my door and walked around to his side. That was when I saw it, on the dash. A letter, addressed to me. It had to be my mother. She and I had shared my car a couple of weeks earlier when hers was on the fritz, and I had never thought to get the spare key back. I grabbed it, mushing it into my pocket. Now was not the time. I would read it later, when I was emotionally ready. Or at least when I was far enough away that I wouldn’t run back in and have yet another fight.