Page 40 of In Control

I scoff. We both know it hasn’t.

You can’t study physics, Soph? Watch me.

You can’t live on your own? I’ve already signed the lease.

You can’t sleep around and enjoy it? Sorry to disappoint, but yes I can.

“What are you getting at, Rosie?”

She glances up at her alpha and then back at me.

“I think you want them both, Soph.” I stare at her. “I’ve been there. I know what that feels like.”

I close my eyes and search my feelings. She’s right. Of course she is. Maybe that’s why I’d stormed out of the kitchen. Because in an ideal world, I’d have wanted them both to sweep me up in their arms and take me to the nearest bedroom together.

As I sit with that fantasy, it takes root, and I realise I want it badly. I’m just not sure this is the pack to make it happen.

9

Esra

I’m so angry.So fucking angry.

I can barely look at my packmate, barely stand to be in this room with him.

Gabriel is here, standing between the two of us and right now he is the only thing preventing me from ripping my packmate’s throat out.

She’s mine. That woman is mine. He doesn’t get to touch her. He doesn’t even get to breathe the same air as her.

The logical part of my brain tries to intervene, attempts to make me see reason. She’s not mine. She wanted to be and I cast her aside. I made it damn clear that couldn’t happen.

Plus we’re a pack. Everything we have we share. There’s no room for selfishness in a pack.

I don’t give a shit about logic and reason right now though. I’m simply a flaming ball of fucked-up rage.

“Can someone please tell me what the hell is going on here?” Gabriel asks, gaze flicking between Liam and me. Liam looks exactly like I’m feeling. His eyes burn with anger and he’s pacing back and forth, itching for a way to get at me.

We’ve had our cross words over the years, our disagreements. But nothing like this. Nothing that has me swinging to wipe the smug look off his face.

“He’s fucking with me,” I spit, eyes not leaving Liam.

“Bullshit,” he snaps back.

“Playing with you? How?” Gabriel’s gaze flicks further around the room. “Where’s the sexy piece of ass gone?”

I growl so loud, Gabriel flinches and for a moment hurt seems to flicker in his eyes, hurt that has shame swimming alongside my rage.

I shouldn’t be riled up like this. Not for a beta. A girl outside our pack. I have my bonded mates. I have my omega.

But do I? Because most of the time we feel like a loosely connected bunch of men who happen to share the same house. What the fuck has happened to us?

“She left because your alpha here went full-on bloody psycho on her. And on me.”

Gabriel examines me, then cautiously approaches. When I don’t push him aside or growl again, he rests his palms gently on my chest. “Alpha,” he says, drawing my eyes away from Liam’s and to his. The hurt’s still there and concern too. “You know this girl?”

Despite Liam’s words several days ago, I never confessed this infatuation to my omega. Maybe I didn’t want to make him jealous. Maybe I was concerned it might hurt his feelings. Maybe I convinced myself it was nothing really, nothing worth disclosing anyway.

My fucking reaction has blown that assumption well and truly out of the water.

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