Page 101 of The Gamma's Second Chance

She launches herself towards the door, but I jump off the bed after her, my arms circling her waist faster than she can get her footing under herself with her injuries. She winces, and I spin, lifting her onto the bed again, holding her down by her hips with my body leaning over hers.

“Not so fast, Daisy,” I say, narrowing my eyes on her. “You’re still healing.”

“I can handle her,” she snarls, fighting against me. “I can take her down.”

“I know you can,” I say, nodding and agreeing with her. “But we don’t know for sure that it’s the same Kimberly.”

Her chest heaves, and she glares at me but stops her struggling, crossing her arms to show me her displeasure.

“My instincts tell me it is.” Sebastian pulls a tablet out from beneath his arm and hands to me. “She’s in the conference room with Levi, Mason, and Mateo.”

The security camera feed streams on the tablet screen, and there, sitting at the conference room table, tapping her nails against the tabletop, is a platinum blonde female with dark brown eyes.

Kimberly.

My hand tightens on the tablet. It’s her. She’s here.

The question is—why?

“What does she want?” I ask through my teeth as Cassandra takes the tablet from me and glares at my former mate as if she could injure her through the screen. “And how did she know what pack I’m in?”

Sebastian shrugs. “Don’t know. She won’t tell us. She said she’ll only speak to the alpha, luna, and gamma.”

I roll my eyes, and Cassandra mirrors the action as she gives the tablet back to Seb. “Of course she did,” I say, laughing humorlessly.

My phone vibrates in my pocket, and I pull it out to see Rachel’s name flashing across the screen. I silence it and send her to voicemail. Whatever she needs can wait.

But when I silence the phone, I see I have dozens of missed calls from her, and instead of leaving me a message, she calls me again immediately.

“What is it?” I ask, skipping the formalities.

“Oh, thank the Goddess!” Rachel exclaims. “I’ve been trying to get ahold of you for hours!”

“Things are a mess here right now, Rachel,” I explain, rubbing the back of my neck.

Cassandra growls, a tiny, adorable glint of jealousy flashing in her eyes. My wolf practically smiles in my mind at her possessiveness. I rest my hand on her thigh reassuringly, leaning in closer so she can hear the phone call, too. She gives me a grateful smile, and I stroke her skin, reaching my fingers up towards where my name is written on her upper leg.

“Because Kimberly showed up there?”

“I—what?” My body tenses, and I frown, glancing at Sebastian. “How did you know that?”

She groans. “That’s what we were afraid of.”

“We? Who is we?”

“Alpha Jeremy Calloway of Hyannis Ponds,” she says. “He’s Kimberly’s chosen mate, and he’s my second chance mate.”

I freeze, and Cassandra’s jaw drops open. Lowering the phone from my ear and putting it on speaker, I gesture at the others to listen. “I’m going to need you to start from the beginning.”

Rachel sighs. “It’s complicated, but basically, Kimberly’s been lying to her chosen mate for years. He had no idea she rejected you or that you even existed. He didn’t find out about any of it until I showed up to remodel the interior of their packhouse, and we felt the mate bond.”

“Their chosen bond obviously wasn’t very strong then,” Wesley says, shaking his head, “since it didn’t override your fated bond.”

“You can say that again,” Rachel’s mate—Alpha Jeremy—mutters. “Kimberly was gone spending the week at a spa, and I told Rachel I had a chosen mate and needed some time to… figure things out with Kimberly. Later, when Rachel learned her name, she pieced it all together and told me about you, and we confronted Kimberly about it when she returned. She denied it all, of course, but I alpha commanded the truth from her.”

“They’re supposed to break their bond during the full moon tomorrow night,” Rachel says, “but Kimberly disappeared. She was supposed to return to her former pack and stay with her mom, but she never made it there. And somehow, I just knew she’d gone to Crescent Lake. To you.”

I bark out a derisive laugh. “Then she’s in for a rude awakening. I want nothing to do with her,” I say, lifting my eyes to meet Cassandra’s intense gaze. “I found my second chance mate, too.” My wolf puffs his chest out in my mind, preening at our claim, forcing me to flick my eyes down to my mark on her neck. She may not be a fated second chance mate, but she is still my second chance mate in every other way. “I have everything I could ever want or need right here,” I add, nodding at her.

---