Page 85 of Want It All
‘Because I’ve seen all that, and you’re still mine,’ I answered softly. ‘You’re my alpha. But if you don’t want to be –’ I swallowed, feeling as if I’d suddenly swallowed my own tongue ‘– you’re my friend regardless, and I care about you. I want to be here for whatever you need.’
He glanced at me, his expression unreadable. ‘For whatever I need,’ he repeated.
I held his gaze, trying to let him see the truth of it. I wanted to let him know that I cared, and I reallywoulddo whatever he needed – even if what he needed was more space. Even if he needed spaceindefinitely.
He looked away. ‘What happened … It’s not a nice story.’
‘It doesn’t matter if it’s nice.’ I cautiously settled on the blanket, crossing my legs. ‘I’m here if you want to share it. That’s whatfriendsmeans. And I think –’ my tongue felt leaden once more ‘– I think that might be whatpackmeans, too.’
His throat worked as he swallowed. ‘Pack.’ He said the word reverently, tasting it, then looked down at his monitors. ‘I’d never forgive myself if I hurt you,’ he said, his voice rough and quiet. ‘You or Sebastian. I don’t know what I’d do. You’re precious beyond belief. And I’d rather deny myself than risk that.’ He shook his head. ‘I’ve realised over the last few days that it doesn’t matter how much I want it. It doesn’t matter how good it would feel, howright. Packisn’t for me. It can’t be.’
I shifted closer. ‘We’ve never felt anything but safe with you, Byron.’
He closed his eyes.
‘It’s more than just safety,’ I continued softly. ‘You feel like … You feel like lazy weekend mornings and talking about our days. You feel like trips away and watching films and buying furniture. You feel like conversations about everything and nothing and cups of tea when it gets cold. You feel like life outside Banksia.’ I paused. ‘It’s terrifying, but you feel like forever.’
He took a shuddering breath. ‘You feel like forever, too,’ he whispered. ‘You feel like everything I’ve ever wanted.’
My omega preened at that, demanding we be closer to our alpha, but I knew he wasn’t done. I shifted again, feeling his warmth on my skin, but still not close enough to touch.
He sighed and opened his eyes to gaze back out at the fiery sky and endless sea. ‘My sister, Tina, was an omega.’
My fingers twitched.
‘We were always close, always best friends. She was a year older than me, exactly to the day. Our parents used to joke that we were late twins. We even looked that way – both tall, with the same dark hair, the same grey eyes. We did everything together. Tina never minded that I was her shadow; we had the same friends, the same interests. The only way we differed was that Tina loved building things, loved using her hands, while I loved reading and getting lost in other worlds. Our parents would say that I’d dream a world, and Tina would build it.
‘She revealed as an omega when she was fourteen.’ My breath caught;so young, I thought. ‘A few months later, I emerged as an alpha. It was way too early – for both of us – but I had to, I think. Can you imagine what a fourteen-year-old omega goes through?’ My chest constricted; Icouldimagine it, all too well. ‘The staff at our school were on blockers and cancellers – it had just been made law – but the students weren’t. They couldn’tbe, and neither could Tina. They were way too young. But it meant that Tina was never left alone. She was harassed from the moment she stepped onto school grounds by the older students. Even a teacher –’ He cut himself off. ‘Dr. Ford thinks my alpha emerged in response to that. That my instincts knew my sister needed someone to watch her back. And so I did.’
My heart ached; I rubbed it with the palm of my hand.
‘My parents wanted to homeschool her. Tina refused. She said it wasn’t her problem that other people wouldn’t control themselves. She said they needed to be given the opportunity to try, that things were changing, and they needed to get used to being around omegas. Mum and dad weren’t happy, so I went to the principal and demanded to take the assessments from Tina’s year. I passed them, and the principal agreed to move me up and place me in Tina’s classes. He was relieved, I think. It took the burden of care off his teachers and put it on me.’
For a moment, I was furious beyond belief at an adult I’d never met placing that weight on a child’s shoulders. OnByron’sshoulders.
‘Nothing had changed, not really. Tina and I still did everything together, only now I used my height and my weight and, when I needed to, my fists, to make sure she was safe. That became my life – making sure Tina was safe.’
‘You were so young,’ I whispered.
I didn’t think he’d hear me over the breeze, but he did. ‘I won’t say it was easy,’ he answered. ‘Tina was headstrong and sometimes she didn’t think things through. But the world should have been safe enough for her to make the same mistakes alphas and betas can make, and it wasn’t. It isn’t. Everything was against her, and it’s only human to err.
‘When she finished school, she got an apprenticeship with an all-female company of electricians. It was great for her, though I think …’ He inhaled. ‘I think she would have moved ontosomething different, if she hadn’t –’ He cut himself off again, as though he wasn’t ready to say the word. ‘She had this amazing creativity. I think she would have ended up in design, or engineering, maybe. She could look at an empty space and see what it could be, you know? She’d take a box of blocks and build a castle, a palace, a dreamscape. She could have … She could have …’
He shook himself. ‘It was just after her twenty-first birthday, just after my twentieth. Her friends were going out. Usually, I would have gone, too. But we’d had a fight.’ He was silent for a long moment. ‘It was stupid. So fucking stupid. She’d worn one of my favourite shirts to work and had to plaster and paint a wall. It wouldn’t come out of my shirt and the band didn’t sell them anymore, and I got cross about it. I stuffed my nose in a book and told her to have a nice night.’
A tear ran down my cheek. The sky was a mess of pink and orange now, with the dark blue blur of night spreading slowly up from where it met the sea.
‘He wasn’t even her scent match.’ There was a tremor in his voice. ‘He was a complementary scent. But Tina’s heat was close. She slicked in the bar.’ His tone steadied and became detached; I watched his profile fall back into expressionlessness. ‘He convinced her to go home with him. She got into his car, and he went into a rut.
‘They were two blocks away from the bar when he lost control. He was doing twice the speed limit, the police said, and he’d been drinking. He drove into a shop window.
‘Then he left – he left her there.’ I swallowed a keen at the way his voice halted and thickened, pressing myself against his side. ‘He was injured, but not enough that he couldn’t stagger away from the car. He left Tina there. She wasn’t dead, not at that point. She was still alive when the ambulances arrived. Shedied on the way to hospital. She’d bled out from a wound that he could have compressed, if he’d bothered. If he’d stayed.’
I pressed my face into his arm.
‘My parents … I can’t even describe what they were like, when the police showed up on our doorstep. It broke them, and that’s the sum of it. And it wasn’t just them.’
For a few moments, we listened to the crash of the waves beneath us.
