Page 9 of Impossible

The ache of my hand almost fades on days like today, when it’s just class after class after class. Alphas repeating the exercises they already know, gossiping about forthcoming mission assignments or class finals or omegas that have caught their eye.

The ache where the bond should be never fades. Teaching helps distract me. I am more alive experiencing my students’ lives vicariously than with my own pack. The anger at Hollis simmers constantly in the back of my mind, concentrating into something denser every day.

He wants to satisfy the Coalition. He’s doing damage control. Like we’re the problem. Like if we could just pull our shit together and see things his way, everything would be better. Funny how he wants us to think like him, but has closed the literal window into his brain that would make it possible.

Then I scent her that first time, and it’s game-over. There’s no politics in it, no redemption arc, no sense to the feelings she invokes in me. Just her, bergamot and black tea and springtime blooms. Fate.

She’s light as a feather, a bag of bones in my arms, and she smells better than the best sex I’ve ever had.

Which is saying something, because I’ve had a lot of sex. All of it in the beforetimes, of course.

I was considered quite the catch back then. We all were. Midas Pack used to clean up. We could have had our choice of omegas on rotation, but we never indulged. We wanted our own, despite what the Coalition might think was best. We batted off their demands that we engage in the politics they’d created out of our base instincts.

It was easier to just go out to clubs in the city, pick up unsuspecting betas who didn’t know what we were. Sometimes alone, but often as a group. Girls wondered how they’d gotten so lucky, to have four dudes doting on them for a night.

It never quite scratched the itch, but we all agreed on the omega front—not until we were ready to settle down.

Just wait till I tell Hollis I’ve met our fated mate. A teenager. A sick one, from the looks of her. He’ll have an aneurysm.

Until he scents her.

I spare quick glances down at her, not letting my eyes linger too long. I don’t want to make her spike worse. I don’t want to pop a boner in the middle of campus, unable to hide it with both my arms occupied holding her.

She’s skinny. Terrifyingly so, every bone visible under her skin, the cords of her wasted muscles stretched to fit her frame, visible where her baggy clothes gape away. Her eyes are liquid brown and massive, hiding beneath a sheaf of dark brown hair draped across her forehead. She doesn’t reach to move it. She is pale, her lips chapped, her lashes long, and she has big purple circles under those perfect cocoa eyes.

Her scent changes me. There’s no other way to describe it.

I’ve become accustomed to our forest. Hollis’s pine, my cloves and cedar, Risk’s woodsmoke and Joshua’s petrichor always blend to feel like a cozy, rainy evening in. We mix in a way not many other packs do, and it definitely helped inflate our influence in the beforetimes. A pack is stronger when they blend like that, and stronger packs go further when they have big ambitions. Hollis was always pleased by that.

Most omegas are sweet or fruity, and we’ve been tempted in the past by the appeal of peppermint or the toothache-inducing sugar rush of marshmallow. This one is different. She’s bergamot, black tea, sweet pea and springtime blooms. Embracing the forest that we are, with a quiet promise that spring is coming. It always does, and we’ll be around to see it, just like any other.Hope.The sun will rise, the night will pass, the storm will end.

It’s an intoxicating feeling as I carry her to Wilder’s office. I do my best to hold my breath, not wanting to get swept away by the hormone carnival going on in my body right now. I need to focus, if I’m going to face Wilder without further embarrassing myself.

My stump aches, and I inadvertently attempt to stretch my fingers before the signal fizzles out at the useless bundle of scar tissue capping my left arm, still pink and fresh and raw. I swallow, knowing I must look terrifying to the little one in my arms.

She’s scented me by now, I can tell. And she’s terrified out of her mind, not knowing what the fuck her body is doing, reacting to me like it is. I want to tell her,don’t worry, little bird. It’s just me that makes you feel like that, other alphas won’t be so bad.

But what I mostly want to do is scream at Wilder.What the fuck is a spiking omega doing at Adams? With no supervision, outside for every alpha and their Uncle in the vicinity to start rutting?

My eyes are scanning the tree line as I make my way towards the admin offices. I know the Complex is safe. I know, I know, I know. I know Risk is out there, along with dozens of other alphas, as well as the electric fence and ground sensors. I don’t need to worry.

Still, my heart thuds in my chest. A combination of PTSD and the dawning awareness of the precious little creature cradled in my arms. Shame twists in me as her scent washes over me again.

My mind flashes back to the smell of burnt sugar, the raw wet copper of blood, the whited-out terror, muted only by the screams of alphas dying. Of my pack, suffering. An inferno of pain where my hand used to be.

I shake my head and it jostles her. She lets out a little, “oh!” and I slow down, fighting to keep my arms from shaking. It’s not because she’s heavy—by god, she’s anything but.

“Sorry,” I mutter.

Going inside is a blur. Bare hallways and lockers and the musty scent of paper and batteries and school. I march straight past Bertha at the desk in the office, shouldering open Wilder’s door and kicking it shut behind me. It slams, rattling the sconces on the wall and decorative bric-a-brac bullshit on his built-in bookshelves.

“Leon, what—“ his voice breaks off as he catches sight of what I’m carrying. I watch his nostrils flare as he scents her, and if I didn’t have her safely locked in my arms, I’d be over the desk, pinning him to the ground and baring my teeth and growling my claim out over his throat. He quickly schools his features into something more acceptable.

I set her down and she lands unsteady on her feet, her hand shooting out to grab my arm, clinging to me for stability. I keep one arm around her waist, waiting until she lets go. I can tell she doesn’t want to, and I don’t want her to. She has no idea what her instincts are doing right now.

As she steps back, she catches sight of the sleeve tucked in on my left side, no hand in sight. Her eyes widen and she swallows, her little Adam’s apple bobbing in her throat. Jesus Christ, I can see every fucking vertebra in her neck. My brow furrows and I have to avert my gaze, my right hand circling gently around the puckered scar tissue through the cotton tucked in at the end of my useless left arm.

“What is this?” Wilder has his headmaster voice on now, academic and arching and superior. I clench my remaining fist, irritation flashing.

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