Page 58 of Pack’s Pledge

I closed my eyes, taking a deep breath to calm my racing heart, and finally asked the question I’d needed the answer to for twelve years.

“Why did you leave?”

“I thought you wouldn’t—” Conall said, and stopped. “I thought that—” His fists clenched by his sides. “I didn’t want to hurt you,” he said at last, and then, “I was scared.”

“Of hurting me,” I asked.

“Yes,” he said, then shook his head. “No. Of myself. Of what I was.”

“An alpha.”

He nodded. “It’s funny, isn’t it? Alphas aren’t supposed to bescared,” he said, the bitterness legible on his handsome face. “And being an alpha was the most terrifying thing that could have happened to me.”

“Why didn’t you tell me?” My throat was so tight I could barely breathe.

“Because I knew what you would say,” he said. He blinked, looking away, over my shoulder.

“You couldn’t have,” I whispered. “You couldn’t have known, Conall, because I would have given youanythingyou asked for.Everything.”

But he just closed his eyes, nodding once. “That’s it, isn’t it?” he asked, and his voice was soft and low. Comforting, in an awful, terrible way. “You would have.And I could never ask that of you.”

I felt his words like a blow. But the look on his face wasn’t one of cruelty, or even regret.

It waspain.

“I would still give you anything you wanted, Conall,” I said.

He didn’t look my way.

“All you have to do is ask.”

“I can’t,” he said, the words dragged from his chest. “You don’t know what it was like,” he said. “Those first years, especially. I didn’t know how–” His voice pinched closed, and he swallowed. “It was violent, and vicious, and feral.I hated myself.”

“What changed?” I asked, and his lip curled.

“Nothing,” he sneered. “Nothinghaschanged, Britt, and that’s why–”

“No,” I interrupted. “You’re wrong. Because now I do know,” I said, quiet. “I was there, for Beau’s heat. I’ve seen it myself. I’ve– I’ve felt it, what you can do to me.” It was there, sometimes, when I closed my eyes–the pressure of his knot inside my body, the overwhelming, mind-numbing pain-pleasure of it, the bruising of his fingers on my skin and sharp tug of his fist in my hair. “Next time–”

“There won’t be a next time,” Conall said, and the cold finality of his statement hurt more than a hot brand.

A long, empty silence filled the room and my eyes filled with tears.

But I knew.

I knew becauseI felt it–even without the pheromones and biology that drove alphas and omegas together, Ifelt it–lodged deep in my ribcage, I knew.

These men were mine.

So I asked.

“Because you don’t want it?”

He was silent.

“Or because you’re still scared?”

I could see his chest rise and fall under the soft sweatshirt material. The muscles of an alpha. He didn’t answer. He didn’t have to. I already knew.

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