Page 34 of Impossible

It’s all I can think. I know I should have better words, a plan, some coherent vision, but all I can feel is the desperate need in my chest to have her near. To soak myself in that scent.

Leon shakes his head and fury grips me. My god, I’m like a fucking baby alpha right now, my emotions raging through me, barely held in check by my usually ironclad self-control.

“It’s all a mess,” Leon rushes when he sees my anger. “She spiked on Friday, she was still up at Adams, and I had my combat class out on the field. They scented her at four hundred yards and took off, scared the living shit out of her. I barely got to her first, and her scent was just… unbelievable, Hollis.”

“You knew about her onFridayand waited until now to tell me?” I see red. Her scent is dripping off of him, mixing with his cloves and cedar, a freshness that is new, so new, and so sweet. It barely keeps me clinging to my sanity.

“I didn’t know if there was any hope. I didn’t… I didn’t want to hurt Risk and Joshua. I didn’t want them to scent her on me and get their hopes up only for it all to be ripped away if the Coalition makes other plans for her.”

“You kept this from me. All weekend.” My fury is cooling now, red-hot to ice-cold.

Leon gives me a strange look. “You weren’t evenhereHollis. Did you go into the office?”

“I have a phone!”

“Is that how you’d like to find out about your fated mate? Really? By text?”

I fight the urge to leap the island and tackle him to the ground. I take a deep breath instead. Then another. It wouldn’t do for a Pack Alpha to lose control. “What are the plans?” I ask, a thin veneer of calm covering my rage.

“She’s in treatment for the anorexia,” Leon starts slowly, not trusting my sudden change of heart. “Supervised meals and therapy. Wilder isn’t keeping me away from her, though I think he can tell something is up. She’ll be eating lunch with me tomorrow.”

“I’m coming.”

“No.”

I’m over the island before he can react. I slam into him with a snarl. His body snaps backwards, crushed against the fridge. He doesn’t fight me, letting me pin him. I’m breathing hard from the exertion, and it only takes a moment for the hot coil of shame to snake its way up my spine. In nearly a decade of being a Pack Alpha, I have never, not a single time, grown physically violent with my pack. All it takes is one whiff of this omega, and what have I been reduced to? Still, I don’t release him. Something carnal pulses in my chest, seized by sweet pea and black tea and spicy citrus.

“You don’t keep me from my omega,” I seethe. This close to him, I can smell where she brushed against him, the spots in his shirt that are stronger than the others. He hugged her. She gripped his arm at one point. I’m bloodying his shirt with my hands, the crescent-shaped cuts leaving smears of red on the white cotton. He just looks at me. After a second, I can’t meet his gaze. I let him go, stepping back to lean against the island. He relaxes, but doesn’t move. Her scent swirls between us, intoxicating.

“She’s fragile,” he murmurs softly. “Very fragile. You need to meet her, definitely, but not at a mealtime. It’s going to be fraught as it is without meeting another of her fated mates. I think she trusts me, but barely. And me being a trainer is confusing her even more—she’s used to beta schools; she doesn’t understand how things work for us. I can’t talk to her about the fated mates thing, not in her current state, though I think she can feel it.”

I glare at him. He has a point. I can’t meet his eye now, not after losing my temper.

I’m the oldest of Midas pack at twenty-eight. Leon and Joshua are twenty-four, and Risk is the baby at twenty-one. She is young, very young, and we would normally never consider her, but if she’s our fated mate…

Leon looks down. His right hand rubs circles around his left wrist, above the stump. He always keeps his sleeve tucked in, I have no idea if he’s been keeping up with the ointment and exercises the doctor gave him. Yet another area in which I have failed to be the alpha I should. He keeps rubbing anxiously.

“What aren’t you telling me?” I ask. There’s something—that rubbing has become his new tell.

Leon sighs. “On Friday…. God, Hollis, I fucked up so bad.”

Panic grips me. “How? What happened?”

“I had a flashback.”

“Fuck,” I whisper.

“It wasn’t one of my worst, but she… she listened to her instincts, Hollis. She hugged me. Held me. Brought me back.”

My stomach twists with envy. I can’t tell if it’s for her or him. My Pack Alpha instincts want me to go to him, to comfort him like she did. That’smyjob. At the same time, I want to brutalize him, punish him for earning the physical affections of our omega before me. I eye the red smears on his shirt. Some fucking Pack Alpha I am. I shake the thought away. “What happened then?” I ask.

“She wanted to know what happened, and I couldn’t pretend it was nothing, so I told her that I lost my hand recently. Nothing else. I tried to answer some of her other questions. She’s so afraid. And she’s so weak, Hollis, she can barely open doors. She’s dizzy just from standing and walking.”

I wait. I can tell he has more, he’s still choking his bad wrist.

“Something spooked her and she passed out,” he blurts. “I caught her and then she was in my arms just crying and…. I purred for her.”

I close my eyes, trying to breathe slowly and deeply instead of lurching forward and choking the life out of him.

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