Page 120 of How to Lose a Pack in 10 Dates

Fear.

“She’s not okay,” Cam adds, his voice shaking now. “Zara said she wasn’t eating, that she was barely making sense, that she looked like hell. What if… what if she’s been falling apart?”

Wes doesn’t say anything for a long time, and then, quiet—almost like it takes everything in him to admit it—he whispers, “She loved us.”

He says it like it hurts.

I meet his eyes, my throat closing. “She still does,” I rasp. “That article—it went up today.”

We’re all silent for a beat. All of us just… staring at nothing.

Then Cam shoots upright.

“Then what the hell are we still doing here?” he asks. “We need to move. We need to go to her. Now.”

“She might not want to see us,” I say, even as I reach for my jacket. “She’s probably blocked our numbers, and changed the locks, and—”

“Then we knock,” Cam snaps. “We knock until she lets us in.”

Wes doesn’t argue. He’s already moving; already out of the house.

And this time, none of us hesitate.

Chapter Thirty-Three

Wes

We hit the steps two at a time.

Jace is ahead, and Cam’s right behind me. No one’s spoken since the car. No one’sneededto. Even Cam’s quiet for once, which is how I know he’s barely holding it together.

And the silence says everything:

We fucked this up. So badly we might not come back from it.

The article—the real one—said it all. So did Zara, with that cracked voice and those wide, tired eyes.

She’s not eating. Her messages don’t make sense. She loved you.

That’s what she was afraid of.

I didn’t listen. I never fuckinglistened.

We reach her floor, and I wouldn’t even have to check the door number—I’d know which is hers from the scent alone. It punches through the air; too sweet, too sharp, toowrong.It’s instinct gone rotten—soured with stress and fractured with panic.

Jace sways slightly, catching himself on the wall. Cam exhales a broken, “Shit,” behind me, and I feel his hand clench the back of my shirt.

My fists tighten. It’s her heat, but it’s notjusther heat—it’s completely erratic. She’s not riding it out with a bonded alpha or a stocked nest. She’s surviving it, barely; and she’s doing italone.

A white-hot bolt of something rips through my chest. Guilt. Rage. Grief. All of it.

I’m the one that told her to leave. I’m the one who looked her in the eye and called her a mistake.

And I’m the one who didn’t believe her when she begged me to.

Now she’s behind this door, delirious and wrecked, scenting so hard I can barely stay upright—and it’s my fucking fault.

“Aimee?” Cam moves first, knocking hard against the wood. “It’s us. We—we read the article. We know now. We know we were wrong. We… we came to talk.”

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