Ex-Mate Wants Me Back (Seraphina and Mortimer) novel Chapter 40

Chapter 40-

+15 Bonus

Chapter 40

Third Person’s POV

The dim yellow light of the streetlamp spilled over the empty sidewalk. A cold wind swept past, dragging a few dead leaves across the concrete.

She was already gone.

The trench coat he had just draped over her shoulders was hanging on the coat rack by the restaurant door, looking like a silent, invisible slap in the face.

A sudden, ungraspable panic gripped Mortimer’s chest.

“Where is she?!” he roared at his wolf deep within his consciousness, practically losing his mind.

But his usually arrogant beast just hid in the dark shadows of his mind, letting out a low, mocking scoff.

Mortimer’s eyes snapped up.

His beast-like pupils constricted in the dark. Piercing through the heavy rain, he caught the exact moment Seraphina’s silhouette disappeared as she pulled the door of an Uber shut.

His heart squeezed tight. Pure instinct told his long legs to sprint after her.

“Morty!! Please, you have to come! Vivian passed out!!”

The voice on the phone suddenly switched to Vivian’s mother’s desperate, hysterical screaming, violently shattering the dead silence. “Is she going to die? Just for the sake of her saving your life back then, you can’t just abandon her!” 3

Mortimer stopped dead in his tracks.

A heavy, dark layer of pure hostility rapidly gathered between his brows. The unfiltered disgust and repulsion in his eyes were impossible to hide.

This again.

He pinched the bridge of his nose hard, rubbing the bulging vein as his voice dropped into a rough, exhausted rasp. “I get it. I’m

on my way.”

The taxi had barely pulled away from the restaurant when Seraphina’s phone buzzed.

Mortimer’s name flashed on the screen.

She hesitated for a second before hitting accept. “Hello?”

A dead silence greeted her.

୮

The only thing coming through the speaker was the sound of his heavy, suppressed, and chaotic breathing.

On the other end of the line, Mortimer was white-knuckling the steering wheel of his Cullinan.

He wanted to explain.

He wanted to tell her that he didn’t want to go at all!

But he had no idea how to even force the words out.

Just as Seraphina ran out of patience and was about to hang up, Mortimer’s hoarse voice finally came through: “Why didn’t you wait for me? I thought we agreed I was driving you.”

The second the words left his mouth, he froze. Why the hell did he sound so incredibly bitter?

1

3

Chapter 40

+15 Bonus

Seraphina actually found it funny. “Miss Davis’s situation sounds a lot more urgent. There’s no need to waste your time on me. It’s way easter for me to just grab a cab.”

Another suffocating silence fell over the line.

Mortimer stared blankly at the road ahead. The windshield wipers of the Cullinan slashed back and forth, mechanically clearing the heavy sheets of rain.

But the caged beast inside his chest was teetering on the edge of a total meltdown.

Seraphina’s calm detachment felt like a fistful of salt rubbed directly into his open, bleeding wounds.

“If there’s nothing else, I’m going to hang-”

“Seraphina.” Mortimer ground her name out, every single syllable pushed through his clenched back teeth.

He let out a cold, self-deprecating laugh. “Are you really this generous? Are you seriously in that much of a hurry to shove your own mate toward another she-wolf?”

Seraphina frowned, completely failing to understand why he was throwing a tantrum.

She was pushing him? What, if she acted jealous and unwilling, was he actually going to stay and ignore Vivian?

In the end, he would just accuse her of having zero empathy and throwing a hysterical fit.

The more Seraphina thought about his logic, the more completely ridiculous it felt.

Finally, she actually let out a light, breathless laugh into the phone. “Alpha Mortimer, stop it. It’s really not amusing anymore.”

Mortimer heard the blatant sarcasm in her tone.

He knew damn well he had absolutely no right to interrogate her like this.

But even knowing the truth, he couldn’t stop the crushing sadness pooling in his gut.

It was as if acting like a toxic jerk and forcing a reaction out of her was the only way to prove she still cared-the only way to temporarily quiet the terrifying panic that he was about to lose something vital.

“I…” Mortimer opened his mouth, his hoarse voice cracking with a strange, pathetic vulnerability he didn’t even recognize. “I wanted you… to come with me.”

Seraphina shot it down instantly, “I’ll pass.”

す

If Vivian saw her and Mortimer walk in together as a couple, her so-called ‘weak wolf syndrome’ would probably go into full

overdrive.

She wasn’t taking the blame for that drama, and she definitely didn’t want to step foot into that messy swamp.

“Sera-”

“If that’s it, I’m hanging up.”

Before he could say another word, Seraphina cleanly cut the line.

Listening to the monotone dial tone, Mortimer felt like his entire chest had just been violently scooped out.

It felt like the freezing rain outside was somehow bypassing the bulletproof glass, howling straight through the gaping hole in his heart.

Seraphina had no idea what kind of mental breakdown Mortimer was having.

VERIFYCAPTCHA_LABELVerify