Page 12 of Denied By the Alphas

“Tyler, why are we here?” Axel asked, breaking my reverie.

“She’s the omega I rejected years ago,” I admitted reluctantly. My pack didn’t know about my past with her.

Jaxon’s eyes widened in shock. “Why the hell would you do that? There’s nothing fucking wrong with her.”

“It was for her own protection,” I explained. “I was going to be a guard for Henry, and he would have taken any omega I claimed.”

“But that’s a risk every pack takes. That’s not good enough,” Axel said, shaking his head.

“Are you regretting it now?” Jaxon questioned, his gaze still fixated on Carmen.

“We’re going to pretend to court her,” I told them. “It’s the only way to keep her safe from Henry. We’ll officially announce it tomorrow when she goes to meet him.”

“So we’re here to tell her this? That we’re going to be her fake pack?” Axel asked. “When we could have been herrealpack?”

“It’s too late to fix the past,” I said. “But I can protect her now.”

I walked around the house toward the front door and paused before ringing the doorbell. The more time I spent around her, the more I wanted to hold her.

To kiss her. Toknother.

But it couldn’t happen.

I rang the doorbell, and after a couple of seconds, Carmen opened the door, her eyes widening at the sight of me. Before she could slam the door shut, I jammed my boot between the door and the threshold.

“What do you want, Tyler?” she snapped, clearly not happy to see me, her breasts heaving through the apron with how hard she was breathing.

“I have an idea you might want to hear,” I said slowly.

“What idea?”

“It’s an idea to keep you safe from Henry,” I said simply, and she finally relented, allowing us into her home. As the door closed behind us, Carmen rushed back into the kitchen.

“I hope I didn’t burn the onions,” she cried out as she stirred the pot furiously.

My eyes were glued to her ass, jiggling beneath her apron as she continued to stir the red sauce. Tearing my gaze away, I started taking deep breaths to calm my erection, which was waiting to burst through and knot this omega.

Leaning against the counter, I watched her, my heart pounding in my chest. As she looked up at me, her cheeks flushed pink when our eyes locked, but there was something in her gaze—like a guilty look I couldn’t shake off.

“Are you hiding something?” I asked, unable to shake the feeling that she was keeping a secret from me.

“No,” she replied, her voice defensive. “Why would you think that?”

“Just…a feeling,” I muttered, though I couldn’t help but wonder what she was hiding. I wasn’t imagining things, and I knew her even though it had been years.

“Tyler, why are you here?” Carmen asked, her voice guarded as she stirred the pot on the stove.

“Well,” I began, trying to keep my tone calm, “like I said, I have an idea to keep you safe.”

Carmen’s eyes narrowed. “What kind of idea?”

“Maybe we could pretend to court you so that Henry sees you have a pack interested in you.”

She turned her head away sharply, focusing on adding layers of cheese to the casserole-type dish she was making. There were tears in her eyes, and my chest ached, not knowing how much pain my past rejection had caused her.

“I’m not interested in your idea. It’s too painful, and I don’t like that,” she finally whispered.

I nodded, understanding the toll my rejection had taken on her. Swallowing hard, I asked, “Why haven’t you mated with a pack yet?”

---