Page 48 of Brandy Snap: Part One

I groaned, smacking my head right there in the fucking hallway to calm down the guilt pulsing in my chest.

It had fucking devoured me every day since the accident years ago, but it wasn’t as bad as when Sin and I scent-matched with Kai and I had to admit that I’d fallen in love with another omega.

As the eldest of us, Lily presented first. My older sister still lorded that one over us. Then Sin presented as an alpha at nineteen, his soft vanilla a total fucking contrast to his stuck-up dickhead personality.

Camille presented a year later, and she became so ill that she had to stay in seclusion. I could only see her once a week, and even that was too much for her.

But scenting Camille and Sin together was like a pure shot of serotonin.

And the whole family—no, even the fucking press had waited for me to present with bated breath.

Fuck, did it drag on, though. Months and months of waiting. Even though I was the same age as Camille, it still took another year. We were worn out with expectation by the time it finally hit me.

Every time I could, I’d go to Camille’s room, we’d lean down, scent each other, and I got to watch her disappointment that I hadn’t become the alpha she needed me to be.

And now I sat, stuck on the stairs, my eyes fluttering closed at the memory. Because, back then, I couldn’t admit to her that something was different after Sin presented.

That there were glances between us when she wasn’t looking, and an awareness I’d tried so fucking hard to ignore.

He was such an asshole back then, as well. A strait-laced alpha to everyone on the outside and a horny fucking bastard behind closed doors.

He’d even hit on me once. Straight after my nineteenth birthday, pulled me into a dining room and kissed me until I was so fucking hard that I had to shove him off of me or we would have ended up fucking.

I didn’t talk to him for a month after that.

I refused to even be in the same room as him.

Until I presented.

I mean, we all knew I was going to be an alpha. I was bigger than most of my dads by the time I was seventeen.

But as soon as my scent appeared, I knew. I fucking knew what was going to happen the moment I stepped into their house.

It was a week before Camille came to find me. Mum had ratted me out, and both Camille and Sin turned up for afternoon tea, and that’s where it happened.

Where I scent-matched with Sin.

That was what had been hounding me for years since the match. I’d promised Camille I would be hers, and I couldn’t keep it.

Because Camille and I weren’t a match. We were never a match. We were never meant to be mates.

Because her haughty-as-fuck older brother’s vanilla scent went so fucking perfectly with my salted caramel that it was obvious we were made for each other.

We could have rejected each other. We’d pissed each off so much that it was the obvious answer. And it would have been fine if we hadn’t both gotten drunk one night and exchanged bites like absolute morons.

And I couldn’t even bring Camille into the pack, because I never wanted to put them both through the hell of her being in heat while Sin was in rut, and both of them absorbing each other’s emotions and sensations.

I promised her she was still one of the most important people in my life, that I’d always be hers—as well as Sin’s.

And I had meant it. I still meant it even as I sat on the stairs, too afraid to tell her we’d found someone who nearly broke us in the space of a day.

Even when I’d sent Flint from my security team to guard her and they scent-matched, it was still different. Because there was no one like Camille in my life.

No female omega was ever going to fill her spot.

Until now.

None of us had been okay after Mel left.

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