Page 180 of Sweetheart: Part One

Our scent match.

But she was gone. In her room was only Drake, clutching a shirt in his fist and a note in the other.

I crossed toward him, realising her scent was coming from the black fabric he was holding. That scent wove soul deep, dragging me back to it.

Myomega.

That thought sent goosebumps head to toe. In those whispered, forbidden dreams. That she was someone to cherish.

Someone to protect.

I’d failed, I realised. I’d failed before I’d even learned what she was.

I took the note from him and stared at the words written in red fading to a murky brown…

Was that… blood?

I didn’t…

I didn’t understand.

The letters were shaky, written in slender lines as if drawn with something thin and sharp. The paper was crinkled with drying tears.

The words didn’t stick, so I read it again. Then I read it again, and again, and again, the letters blurring and jumbling and refusing to process. I rejected them over and over until I couldn’t any more, my heart like a rock in my chest.

Name three things you can leave with the Crimson Fury pack for weeks, and still be sure they’ll be too stupid to notice:

A scent match.

A gold pack.

A dark bond.

For an age, I just stared, and then there was a loud ping from the phone that had been left on the bed. I jumped, my eyes snapping to it.

But my mind was still reeling.

“A dark bond?” That was Love, echoing the shock in my brain.

My mate was dark bonded by another pack…

Every hair on my body stood on end.

Beside me, Ebony’s aura splintered the air once more as he read the note.

And I thought it was, perhaps, the first time I’d felt our pack exist as one. Without competition, or resentment, without differences or healing wounds, I felt my truth as theirs in one unified moment: a rejection of the words scrawled in blood upon the paper before me.

Almost nothing in the universe could have been enough, in that moment, to rip me from the creeping madness in my soul from the words I’d just read.

Nothing but for the image on the screen as Drake tapped the phone on.

It was Vex, and even the preview of the video was enough to turn my blood to ice.

FORTY-SEVEN

VEX

The moon was bright and high in the summer sky.

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