Alpha Mate at the Gas Station

Chapter 15: sad eyes

Dominic POV

For reasons I couldn’t fully name, the moment I truly saw her eyes—how bruised her soul was, they looked destroyed, how tired—they made my chest ache in a way no wound ever had.

That pain didn’t belong to today alone. It was layered. Old. The kind that came from surviving things she never should have had to endure, things she never chose. And the realization that my attempts to help—however well-intended—might have added to that weight made my stomach twist with regret.

I hadn’t meant to corner her.

I had meant to show her she wasn’t alone.

But there is a difference between support and pressure, and I was starting to understand how easily one can masquerade as the other.

I had read what women gravitated toward these days. Romance novels. Stories soaked in fantasy—men who always knew what to say, what to do, how to fix everything with a single grand gesture. They were many comforting lies. Beautiful ones, sure, but many lies nonetheless.

Real women weren’t problems to solve.

And Thumper wasn’t something broken that needed fixing.

Balance is everything in a pack. Power without restraint destroys. Protection without listening becomes control. I had led wolves long enough to know that truth—but knowing it didn’t mean I always applied it well when it mattered most.

The balance I needed in my own life couldn’t exist without her. Not because she completed me, but because she challenged me to be better.

She is my fated mate.

And yet she couldn’t feel the bond. Not the way I did. She couldn’t feel the electricity that surged through my skin when she was near, the pull that made my wolf restless beneath my ribs. She wouldn’t feel it until I marked her.

And marking must never be taken.

It must be chosen.

Right now, she didn’t need claims or promises. She didn’t need a future laid out before her like a trap disguised as safety.

She needed to feel seen.

If she were a werewolf, I would have taken her to the forest. Let us shift, let the run burn the fear from her limbs, let the earth remind her she was alive and strong and free.

But she is human.

And humans don’t release pain through instinct. They carry it. They drown in it. They survive it without a choice given.

There was something I wondered about her—something I had never asked, never dared to assume.

Music.

Not because she had told me she liked it, but because of the way silence seemed to weigh on her. The way the quiet pressed in until it felt too full, too loud in its own way. I noticed how she went still when nothing filled the space, as if she were bracing for something unseen.

I didn’t know if music would help or hurt.

Sound can be a refuge, but it can also drag memories to the surface when someone is already struggling to stay afloat. The last thing I wanted was to make her feel worse, or to take control of a moment that wasn’t mine to claim.

Still, silence felt wrong too—like leaving her alone with thoughts she didn’t deserve to battle by herself.

If I couldn’t find the right words—

if speaking risked saying the wrong thing—

maybe offering sound, quietly and without expectation, would be kinder.

Only if she allowed it.

Taking my phone from my pocket, I asked her quietly, careful not to make it sound like a request she couldn’t refuse.

“Would you put some music on?” I said. “Something that helps me understand how you’re feeling. I hate that I don’t know what’s hurting you. I hate that all I can do right now is guess.”

The moment the words left me, I extended my hand and offered her my phone.

I didn’t hesitate.

There was nothing on it I needed to hide from her. The device itself was meaningless compared to what lived in my head—in my wolf—where my pack, my commands, my responsibilities truly existed. That connection was instinct, not technology. The phone only held a handful of numbers: my parents, my top warriors, my commanders, my human work. Nothing personal. Nothing secret.

Even if there was, I choose to be real with her, and refuse to have her live with me in lies.

The day she accepts me as her boyfriend, I will introduce her to my world. She will become apart of my werewolf life.

She took my phone.

That alone felt like a small victory.

It didn’t take her long to open Spotify, her fingers moving with certainty, like she already knew what she needed. When the first notes filled the car, I started the car, left the parking to focuse on the road, giving her space—but the lyrics reached me anyway.

Thought I found a way out, but you never go away…

My grip tightened on the steering wheel.

The song wasn’t loud. It wasn’t dramatic. It was honest in a way that hurt. Each line felt like a confession whispered by someone who had run out of strength but refused to stop trying.

A heart made of glass. A mind of stone.

I swallowed hard.

This wasn’t just sadness. This was endurance. This was someone learning how to survive loneliness, learning how to exist while feeling unseen, unprotected, unfinished.

She wasn’t asking to be saved.

She was asking for a place to rest.

For the first time since meeting her, I understood something clearly—not through instinct, not through the pull of fate, but through choice.

She wasn’t fragile.

She was tired.

And every word of that song was her standing in the wreckage of her life, still hoping—quietly, stubbornly—that one day she’d make it out.

Even if it took a hundred years.

I didn’t speak.

I didn’t turn the volume up or down.

I just drove, steady and careful, letting the music say what she couldn’t yet trust herself to put into words—while silently promising myself that as long as she sat beside me, she wouldn’t have to carry it alone.

Not anymore.♥️

The song ended, but the silence didn’t return.

Another track began almost immediately, and I realized she hadn’t just picked a song—she’d opened something personal. A playlist. Her own.

I glanced at my phone at the next red light, just long enough to see the title.

Thumper.

My chest tightened.

She wasn’t hiding anymore. ♥️

Not completely. This was her speaking in a way that felt safer than words, and I understood the weight of that offering more than she knew.

“Please don’t delete it,” I said quietly. “I want you to keep that. I want you to have your voice—even if it’s carried by other people’s words.”

She turned toward me, and I saw the tears before she could wipe them away. They slid down her cheeks without drama, without sound. The kind of tears that come from holding too much in for too long.

I reached out without thinking, my thumb brushing gently beneath her eye, careful—always careful—not to cross a line she hadn’t invited me to cross.

Something dark twisted in my chest as the next song played.

Not anger at her.

Rage at what had been done to her.

At the men who had taught her love was something to survive instead of something to rest in.

At the way she still carried their damage as if it were her responsibility.

The lyrics weren’t subtle. They didn’t need to be. The devil doesn’t bargain.

They spoke of lies dressed as promises. Of wanting to believe someone could change. Of knowing, deep down, that staying meant breaking yourself piece by piece.

I didn’t comment. I didn’t interrupt.

I listened.

Not just to the music—but to what she was showing me about her past, about the choices she’d been forced to make, about the parts of herself she was still trying to reclaim.

By the time we reached our destination, I didn’t hand my keys to the valet. I drove past, found a quiet place to park, and turned the engine off.

I let the song finish.

Then another began—one about words spoken under the influence, about one last night, about breakups that never quite end, about loving someone even when you know you shouldn’t.

I stayed still.

I stayed present.

Because in that moment, she wasn’t asking to be rescued or promised anything. She was letting me see her. And that was something sacred.

Whatever came next—whatever future she chose—I knew one thing with certainty.

I would never be the devil in her story.

And I would never rush her healing for my own desire.

Not now.

Not ever.