Ex-Mate Wants Me Back (Seraphina and Mortimer) novel Chapter 159

Chapter 159

Seraphina’s POV

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He glared at me, his eyes filled with a teeth-grinding, helpless frustration. “Can you please just listen to me seriously?”

I pointed to the handful of snacks in my palm. “I literally brought snacks for storytime. How is that not taking this seriously?”

Mortimer instantly choked on his words.

He took a deep, ragged breath, forcefully shoving down his surging Alpha aura.

He glared at me again, his jaw ticking. “Seraphina, you are doing this on purpose just to piss me off, aren’t you?”

Honestly, I really was listening.

Seeing him looking like he was about to blow a gasket, I generously split my stash, holding half of the snacks out to him.

“Do you want to eat while you talk?”

“Seraphina!” Mortimer locked his jaw, grinding my name out syllable by agonizing syllable.

Honestly, I had zero interest in the messy, tragic drama between him and Vivian.

The only reason I was still sitting here listening to him was to kill time while we waited for his driver, George, to come pick him

If he didn’t want to talk, I was more than happy not to listen. 1

Mortimer clearly read my absolute indifference.

But ultimately, he swallowed his temper and kept his voice low as he started to explain. “When I was sixteen, my mom was driving me out. On the road crossing the pack borders toward the Shadow Forest, our car got hit by an out-of-control semi- truck and was knocked into a deep ravine. It was an isolated area. The crash knocked us both completely unconscious. By the time I woke up, the paramedics were just loading my mom and me into the ambulance.”

“I found out later that Vivian had risked her life to drag us out of the crushed car. Moments after she got us out, the car exploded.

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“Because she inhaled a massive amount of toxic smoke during the rescue, her lungs were permanently damaged-she can never do any strenuous activity. Worse, the trauma severely crippled her wolf, leaving her with incurable syndrome for the rest of her life.”

Mortimer cautiously glanced at me, trying to gauge my reaction.

Seeing that I was still casually crunching on my snacks with absolutely zero intention of offering an opinion, he continued.

“Because of that, I always felt like I owed her two lives. My mom’s injuries were too severe-the Moon Goddess didn’t spare her in the end. But if Vivian hadn’t dragged her out of the driver’s seat, I wouldn’t have even had a complete body to bury.”

“All I could think about was that I owed her a debt. I felt like I had to use the full power of the pack to repay her ten times over.”

Mortimer kept talking, his voice heavy. “I was so completely focused on repaying Vivian that I totally neglected my actual mate. I never realized my actions were giving you the wrong idea…”

He finished his confession, locking his intense gaze onto me, and delivered a heavy, raw apology. “I’m sorry, Sera.”

I clapped the crumbs off my hands and tossed the remaining snacks back onto the tray.

From start to finish, I maintained the absolute calm of a total bystander.

Seeing him deliver such a heavy, sincere apology, I just waved it off nonchalantly. “You don’t need to apologize.”

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“Sera-

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I held up a hand, cleanly cutting him off. “Listen to me.”

Mortimer frowned, visibly resisting my detached reaction.

He knew by now that whenever I put on this specific face, it meant I had absolutely zero interest in whatever he was saying or doing.

“Your behavior would definitely be out of line for a normal married couple. But you keep forgetting, Mortimer: we are not a normal mated couple.”

Mortimer’s face instantly shifted into a panic. “Sera-”

I raised my hand again, ruthlessly shutting down whatever he was about to say.

“We are literally just business mates. It’s a contract with a clear price tag. I don’t have the authority to restrict who you treat well, and I certainly don’t have the right to dictate which she-wolf you decide to protect.”

This was exactly why I never marched up to him, pointed a finger in his face, and screamed at him that if he hadn’t run off to be with Vivian, I wouldn’t have been buried alive alone under a massive blizzard.

Because Mortimer never had an obligation to go on that trip with me in the first place.

The fact that he initially agreed was probably just a fleeting moment of pity.

I had no right to demand more.

And that SOS message I sent him before the avalanche? It wasn’t really a cry for help. It was just me putting a permanent, final bullet into my own years of delusional obsession.

“But we held a ceremony under the witness of the Moon Goddess! I don’t care what we signed in private-publicly, we are the recognized Alpha and Luna of this pack!” Mortimer couldn’t control his escalating agitation. 1

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