Page 34 of Truth or Lie

He nodded, satisfied—at least for now. “We can talk more later. The doc didn’t want to give you any painkillers until you woke up and we saw how you were doing, but there’s aspirin on the table next to the water.”

Leaning down, he gave my shoulder a squeeze before turning and leaving the room... leaving me alone with my whirling thoughts.

Everyone wanted me mated to Kam and Leona. I’d been helpless during the rut—a slave to my alpha hormones. All they would have needed to do was put a neck in range of my teeth, and the deed would have been done. Instead, they’d made sure things could go back the way they were as soon as I snapped out of the rut. They’d given me the option of pretending it never happened.

I closed my eyes. More bits and pieces of the recent past were filtering into my memory, blurred by the murky pall of madness. I’d been convinced Flynn and Jax were going to kill me. I would have killedthem, given a chance.

My packmates.

My alefs.

I... I could have killed them.

My thoughts slid unpleasantly sideways, and the passage of time grew hazy. I opened my eyes, but I wasn’t seeing the room. I was seeing a memory of Kameron Patel, his brown eyes sparking with frustration as he unleashed his pent-up frustration at me.

You’ve already risked your lives! You’ve done it over and over—for us and for each other! There is literally nothing more you could sacrifice for us, simply because we were mated!

Jax or Flynn—or both—could easily be dead by my hand. I’d been a hairsbreadth from pulling the trigger on the Makarov and blowing a hole in Flynn’s skull. If that had happened, how much comfort would I have taken from the fact that we didn’t share a mate-bond through Leona?

A shudder wracked my body, and I wrapped my arms around myself as though I could hold all of my unraveling pieces together. The door opened, and I forced myself straight again. Flynn entered, bearing a plate with a sandwich and a bag of chips on it.

“Heya, alef,” Flynn said. “Brought you some food.” He set the plate down on the bedside table beside the water and the bottle of aspirin; then he flopped down in the chair Jax had vacated. “You know, you are one seriously terrifying bitch when you’re rutting. Will you please mate the omegas now so we don’t ever have to do that again?”

A choked sound wrenched free of my throat. In another life, it might have been the bastard offspring of a laugh.God, I was losing my fucking mind.

“Did you seriously strap one of your perverted sex toys into my mouth?” I asked in lieu of answering.

He shrugged. “Shit comes in handy sometimes—not that you ever really struck me as the leather-and-floggers type. Next time, leave the bondage gear for the guy who actually enjoys it.”

I reached for the sandwich, mostly in self-defense. It was tuna salad—my favorite.

Flynn watched me with his dark eyes that always saw too much. I chewed and swallowed, aware of the heavy weight of the question I hadn’t answered.

“I’ll talk to them,” I said. “Kam and Leona, I mean.” The next words caught in my chest, and I had to clear my throat before I could get them out. “I don’t want to lose this pack.” It was a hoarse rasp.

Flynn blinked at me. “You’re not going to lose this pack, alef. Who on earth made you think that?”

The stupid bitch in the mirror, I didn’t say. Instead, I looked down and took another bite of my sandwich. “I’ll talk to them,” I repeated, mumbling the words around a mouthful of food.

As if my words had summoned them, Kam and Leona appeared in the open doorway. Flynn glanced over his shoulder at them before turning back to me.

“You do that,” he said.

Leona came over and pressed a kiss to his short-cropped black hair. “Give us some privacy, Big Man,” she said.

He caught her wrist and brushed his lips to it. “You bet, Sweet Thing. Get this mess figured out for us, okay?”

Flynn rose, grasping Kam by the nape of his neck and rubbing a possessive thumb over the bite scars at the juncture of his shoulder as he passed. The door closed, and I was alone with the omegas.

I set the sandwich aside.

Leona looked tired, but Kameron looked like absolute shit. And... he wasn’t moving right. He was moving like someone in pain.

“They told me you weren’t hurt,” I said, horror and guilt snaking through me like cold water. How many times had I knotted him? Two? Three? “Kam, you look awful.”

“Told you I should have come alone,” Leona muttered.

Kam narrowed his eyes at me. “It’s impolite to comment on an omega’s appearance,especiallyafter they help you through a rut. And by the way, you look like a two-day-old corpse yourself.”

---