Ex-Mate Wants Me Back (Seraphina and Mortimer) novel Chapter 68

Chapter 68

Seraphina’s POV

I was scrolling through the photos on my phone when I smelled the shift in the air.

Mortimer’s pheromones, which had been leveling out, suddenly went jagged and acrid. It was the scent of a predator grinding its teeth in the dark.

My heart did a nervous skip-I thought his hand had started bleeding again, so I snapped my head toward him.

He looked like a thunderstorm. He was radiating a massive, toxic low-pressure zone, like he was holding back a riot.

I almost asked him if the pain was back, but then I caught myself. “Not my problem.” I bit my tongue and started to look back down at the screen.

But Mortimer couldn’t hold it in. The room was thick with the smell of gunpowder and ego. “Where were you?” he barked. “How long does it take to get a cup of water?”

I looked up, meeting his eyes with a face as flat as a dial tone. “I ran into a friend. We talked for a minute.”

“So you just dumped me here?” His voice was muffled, sounding dangerously close to a pout.

I stared at him. He’d clearly seen me talking to Dr. Smith, so I had no idea why he was playing the victim.

I closed the album of Dash’s photos and looked him dead in the eye. “You’re not a kid, Mortimer. You don’t need a babysitter every second of the day. If you needed something, you could’ve called me. Or, you know, asked a nurse.”

I let the subtext hang in the air. “I have a life. I’m not your shadow anymore.”

Mortimer got the message. His expression turned even more frustrated, like he was choking on a bone. “You didn’t used to be like this,” he muttered.

My hand tightened on the phone for a split second.

I ignored it. I went back to my screen and acted like he hadn’t said a word.

For the next hour, we lived in a dead zone. Zero communication.

Mortimer sat there in a brooding silence.

I kept my eyes on my phone, but the healer in me was tracking him in my peripheral vision-checking the drip rate, watching his pallor.

The second the IV bag hit bottom, I snapped my phone shut and stood up.

“You’re done.”

I carefully peeled back the medical tape, my movements fast and clinical, and slid the needle out. “Let’s go.”

“Yeah,” he grunted. He surged to his feet and marched out of the injection suite ahead of me, radiating pure, unadulterated moodiness.

“Seraphina! Seraphina!” I stopped at the nurse’s station. It was the same assistant from earlier, the gossip-hound.

I frowned. “What now?”

She jerked her chin toward Mortimer’s retreating, broad-shouldered silhouette. She leaned in, her voice a low stage-whisper. ” Did you guys have a fight?”

I blinked, then let out a tired, dry laugh. “No.”

Chapter op-

+15 Bonus

“Oh, so he’s just sulking.”

She gave me a playful wink “You have no idea. The second you walked out, he didn’t take his eyes off that door. He was like an Alpha guarding a den entrance. I can’t believe you’ve been mated for three years and you’re still this ‘sweet’ with each other. Why’d you keep him such a secret?”

Sweet?

I froze. A weird, hollow sense of confusion washed over me.

In three years, that was the first time anyone had used that word to describe us.

If she’d said it a year ago, I would’ve lived on that high for months. Now? It just tasted like irony.

I gave her a weak, forced smile. I didn’t have the energy to explain a contract mating to a stranger. “Don’t start with me. I’m out of here.” 1

“See ya tomorrow!”

I walked out to the ER lobby and found Mortimer standing by the glass doors like a statue.

The snow had turned into a full-blown blizzard, white flakes slamming against the glass, already piling up on the asphalt.

“Wait here,” I said, popping my umbrella. “I’ll bring the car around.”

I started to step out into the white-out, but a large, calloused hand slammed down over mine, gripping the umbrella handle.

His palm was scorching-the fever was still fighting him-and the heat of it made my pulse skip.

I looked up and hit a wall of eyes that were dark, bottomless pits.

“No,” he rasped. “I’m going with you.”

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