Page 51 of Impossible

Risk is gasping for breath, but Joshua next to him and Leon’s arms around him seem to be keeping the worst at bay. Logically, I know thatmyarms would be best. Pack Alpha and all that. But how can I reward him for this? For falling apart and fucking things up? Again?

It’s a cruel thought. But he’s twenty-one now. He’s not the eleven-year-old that needed me,reallyneeded me. No matter how similar his anguished eyes might seem.

“Does somebody want to tell me what the hell is going on?” I raise my voice, my confusion giving way to anger.

Leon and Risk freeze before turning to face me, but it’s Joshua who’s the first to speak: “Risk met our omega.”

Our omega.

“She isn’t ours,” I correct him.

“You knew. You knew and you didn’t tell us,” he accuses.

“I didn’t want to get your hopes up.”

“You didn’t think that maybe ourfated fucking matewould help give me some purpose?”

“I had hoped that yourbonded fucking packwould have done that,” I retort.

The instant the words leave my mouth, I know they’re a mistake. Risk growls, a feral sound ripping from his chest that’s more animal than man. Joshua’s eyes flash with anger and Leon stiffens, his massive body suddenly a hulking threat.

But it’s too late now.

Six weeks of rage are bubbling up inside me. Six weeks of my blood, sweat, and tears at the Coalition office, shuffling papers and groveling at bureaucrats’ feet and calling in every favor I have. Striving to get back an ounce of the respect Midas Pack once commanded, while the rest of them go off the rails. Leon, turning into a domestic fucking nobody, punching his timecard at the school when he used to be the best fucking mission leader the Coalition had ever seen. Risk wandering about the woods, drinking himself into oblivion and fucking his brain up with god knows what rather than facing his demons and fighting like he used to do in the field. And Joshua, lying here, useless, when heknowshe holds the key to us actually being able to move forward. Like he’s flipped the off switch on his brain, opting out of the burden of his intellect.

The absurdity of the situation strikes me then—my three packmates in bed together, two of them battered and bruised after apparently wrecking each other over an omega, and the other emaciated from weeks of bedridden, slovenly depression. Them vs. me.

“Not a bonded pack without a bond,” Risk sasses.

I grit my teeth. “It’s what’s best. For everybody.”

“Are you fucking stupid?” Risk asks.

“Risk,” Leon sighs.

“Me? Stupid? Says the elite soldier who is somehow suddenly content to blow his days treading circles in the woods and pickling his liver?” I growl. “I bust my ass for this pack, day in and day out, and not a single damn one of you can be bothered to get off your ass and help me, but the second an omega comes along with a semi-pleasing scent, you’re all about it? Like nothing happened, like our lives haven’t been shredded by an attack you all refuse to evenacknowledge?”

“Easy for you to talk when you weren’t eventhere.” Joshua’s voice is deadly cold.

The room falls silent.

Something inside me breaks.

The shame I had squashed down so effectively comes surging back. The emptiness where all of them are so wounded fills with it, then overflows, and I’m suddenly drowning. I don’t know what to do, not when I’ve failed so colossally.

My mind latches on to the first emotion available. The one that comes so easily to an alpha under threat. Anger.

I roar. The sound is inhuman, making all three of them flinch. “Likeyou’vebeen around? Any of you? How can I lead when you hide from me? From yourselves? When you refuse to speak about it? To work? We areMidasPack for fuck’s sake! We are stronger than this!”

I’m practically screaming, but I can’t help it—I need them to know that I feel just as strongly as they do. They think because I was unconscious, I’m somehow exempt from the pain. But I’ve felt it every day since as I watch my pack fall to pieces, powerless to put them back together.

“Hollis,” Leon rumbles low in warning.

I feel drunk—the room is spinning, and if I look at any one thing for too long I risk falling towards it, my center of gravity demolished by my rage.

“I don’t want to hear shit from you,” I say, suddenly cold. “You think you’re some big man now because she trusts you, right? Does bossing all those students around make you feel better, Leon?”

I feel like shit for saying it. I don’t recognize these words coming out of my mouth—they’re not the words of a pack leader. Hell, they’re not the words of a decent man. And I used to think I was so much more.

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