Page 36 of Power Shift

“Because of Landon,” Ronan snaps, eyeing the staircase that leads to the second floor.

Our bedrooms are all upstairs, including Landon’s. But I’d bet he’s not hiding away up there. When he’s home, he’s in the basement, busying his mind with another workout that pushes his already fatigued body to its breaking point.

“He made the call to leave her behind?” Jasper asks with a wince.

There’s a shift in the air the moment Ronan opens his mouth to reply. I prepare myself for his anger, knowing that I can’t blame him for his emotions.

Only the voice that appears isn’t his. And I think that might be even worse.

“Who the fuck brought an omega into our house?”

LANDON

The voices from upstairs draw me out of the gym. I’m tense, my neck stiff with tension that I can’t get stretched out. The tweaked muscle in my knee hurts like a mother right now as I try not to limp.

Last game was shit. I hit the ice more times than I think I have in the entirety of my career. The medic warned me to take it easy, but I couldn’t stop myself from heading into the gym the minute I got home from practice tonight. An ice bath will help enough to take the pain away, but I don’t know for how long.

Exhaustion has me in the worst mood. I haven’t gotten more than a handful of hours of sleep for weeks, and it’s wearing on me.

Breathing in, I stumble, the toe of my running shoe catching on the edge of the top stair. I shoot my arms out and brace myself on the walls, my chest caving in. Lust zaps through me, an invisible hand reaching between my legs to squeeze at my knot. I grit my teeth and drop my head forward, muffling a groan by burying my teeth in my tongue.

Fuck, I can’t do this anymore. These phantom whiffs of her have kept me up at all hours of the night and distracted me so badly I’m injuring myself on the ice. The omega is everywhere. Even after paying a detailing company thousands to rescrub the interior of my SUV three times, she’s still there. In the cracks of the upholstery, the air vents, and, for god’s sake, even lingering on the breeze that blows in through the open windows.

I don’t know what else to do. Even here, in the empty stairwell two weeks later, I smell her just as strongly as that first and only day. Lemons follow me everywhere, the sweet aroma of warm cookies lingering in my hair and on my skin.

My cock is raw, rubbed to death by my palm three times a day in hopes of easing the insistent fucking pull in my groin and chest that demands I go back for her.

I’ve lost track of the number of times I’ve convinced myself that even if I did, the odds of her being there are slim to none.

My desire shows no sign of calming, so I push out of the stairwell, focused on getting the fuck into my bedroom and a cold shower.

I don’t make it ten steps before my chest rumbles with a weakly contained growl. The omega’s scent is too strong to be memory. It makes my scent gland pulse in time with my knot, my vision darkening around the edges.

She’s here. The omega is here.

Unable to fight the pull, I tear into the living room, lip curled to bare my teeth. “Who the fuck brought an omega into our house?”

It’s Ronan who turns to me first. The storm in his eyes is vicious, the kind that sinks ships and destroys neighbourhoods. An irredeemable cruelty.

If I weren’t so worked up, I’d have taken a step back at his reaction. There’s no hope in doing that now. Instead, it feeds into my rage and releases the chains I keep on my dominance, encouraging it to break free.

He doesn’t heed the warning I offer him with my delayed response to his feral energy.

“How would you even know what an omega smells like anymore?”

I roll my jaw to hide my initial reaction to him catching my slip-up. “It reeks in here. I could smell whoever she is all the way in the gym.”

“Whoever she is,” he echoes lowly. “She’s our omega.”

“We don’t have an omega,” I hiss.

I’m aware of Dash and Jasper watching, lingering closer to Ronan than they are me. The pang in my stomach is shoved away just as quickly as it appeared.

Ronan doesn’t back down. “I do.”

“You don’t smell it too, Lan? Clearly, you smell something,” Jasper says.

A dark laugh from Ronan, taunting me. “Oh, he fucking does. You’re bursting at the seams, Landon. How does it feel? Your instincts are screaming at you to go find her. Come here and get a better whiff of it before you try telling us that we can’t complete our pack.”

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