Ex-Mate Wants Me Back (Seraphina and Mortimer) novel Chapter 277

Chapter 277

Third Person’s POV

Seraphina snapped her mouth shut. She looked up, totally caught off guard.

“What?”

“Now that you’ve broken the mating bond with Mortimer. Would you be happy if I said I liked you?”

Caldwell watched her dead-on, a sudden, sharp intensity flaring in his wolfish eyes.

The unexpected question left her completely speechless.

After a long, heavy pause, she finally found her voice. “Are you trying to comfort me, too?”

Before he could answer, she let out a quick laugh. “You’re just like my mom. It’s only a broken bond, Caldwell. It’s not the end of the world.”

She met his gaze earnestly. “Seriously, don’t play the mom card. I honestly don’t care about Mortimer anymore, and I’m not sad about breaking the bond.”

Caldwell stayed silent. He just stood there, quietly watching her try so hard to prove she was perfectly fine. His gaze grew a little distant, and a dull, physical ache settled deep in his chest.

After a long moment, he gave a small smile and nodded. “Okay. As long as you aren’t sad.”

Seraphina felt a wave of quiet relief wash over her, just glad he was letting the whole awkward subject go.

They found a spot on a bench out on the lawn. Beside her, Caldwell broke the quiet. “My mom’s coming back in a couple of days.

Seraphina looked at him, surprised.

“She might be rejoining the Blade pack,” he added.

“That’s good,” Seraphina said. “If there’s any bad blood, she can sit down and talk things out with Edwin.”

She didn’t feel it was her place to weigh in heavily on his history with the Blade pack, so she kept her answer neutral.

Caldwell turned to face her. “Do you really believe my dad’s death had nothing to do with the Blade pack?”

“L… well.”

How was she supposed to answer that?

As an outsider, she didn’t know the first thing about the twenty-year conflict between his mother and the pack.

Without the facts, it just wasn’t her place to judge.

Caldwell seemed to read her hesitation. “It’s fine. Just tell me what you think.”

Seraphina thought about it for a second. “I’ve only known Edwin and the rest of them for three years, and we haven’t even spent that much time together. But from what I’ve seen, they aren’t ruthless. Even Mor-”

She caught herself, pivoting mid-sentence. “I just don’t think Edwin is capable of doing something so brutal to your dad.”

Torturing someone and dumping them in the ocean took a deep, dark kind of hatred.

Unless Edwin was hiding his true nature incredibly well, she just couldn’t picture him doing something like that.

Caldwell watched her quietly. He obviously knew she’d been about to say, “Even Mortimer.”

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And it was true. Even though Mortimer had left her alone in the snow without bothering to check on her, she still didn’t think he was malicious at his core.

“You have a point,” Caldwell said, “Edwin told me he had nothing to do with my dad’s death. I was too angry to listen to him back then. But after I went home and really thought about it, I realized there might be more to what happened to my dad than I know.”

His tone was casual, but he looked away, his expression distant and unreadable.

Seraphina completely missed his reaction.

In the days that followed, Mortimer stopped coming around.

Right around the same time, Seraphina heard that Caldwell’s mom, Abigail, had actually made it back from Alaska to rejoin the Blade pack.

Caldwell never brought the subject up again, and Seraphina didn’t push him for details.

Meanwhile, Garfield spent some time recovering at the Healing Center before finally getting discharged to go home.

Before long, Christmas and New Year’s Eve rolled around.

Because of his recent car crash, Garfield and Thomasina had scrapped their vacation plans, so the three of them spent New Year’s Eve together at home.

After a huge dinner, they sank into the couch to watch TV.

Outside, a steady stream of fireworks went off, the bright sparks lighting up the freezing night sky while laughter leaked from

the television screen.

Seraphina curled up on the cushions with Dash lying right beside her, lazily thumping his tail.

Her phone buzzed with a new text.

“Happy New Year.”

Just those three words, nothing else.

The sender showed up as an unsaved string of numbers, but she recognized it as Mortimer’s.

She had deleted his contact the exact moment they officially severed their mating bond, but after knowing the number for three years, it was permanently burned into her memory.

One glance was all it took to know who sent it.

She stared at the glowing screen in silence for a long time. She thought about shooting back a quick holiday greeting of her own, but ultimately decided to let it be.

Putting her phone away, she pulled Dash a little closer and turned her eyes back to the television.

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