Page 70 of The Alpha Experiment
I went lightheaded for a second and almost pulled over, but it passed, and the road came back into focus.
And even though I hadn’t let a single word leave my lips, I felt like shit. Fiona hadn’t done a damn thing wrong. It wasn’t her fault. It had nothing to do with her—even though yeah, it was certainly true that Colin’s council would be beside themselves with joy if she and Colin showed any interest in each other.
But Fiona had said ‘we’re his family.’ She’d backed the hell off the second I asked her to. And she loved me. I knew she loved me just as much as I loved her—more than anything. And running what she’d said back over in my mind, she’d even taken my side, without knowing anything about what had happened between Colin and me.
If I was reacting like this, then something was seriously wrong with me.
I managed to choke out an apology and some thanks for dropping it. Fiona reached over and gave my knee an affectionate rub.
And then she turned up the music again, and we didn’t talk any more until we got home. I loved her even more for it—especially since it was the last moment of peace I got until I left on Sunday, what with everyone else in my family asking about Colin, talking about Colin, and generally making noise and making me crazy. I knew it wasn’t them, it was me. It still sucked.
Colin’s impersonal ‘Happy Thanksgiving’ text message, complete with a generic, fall-colored cornucopia meme, really just added the cherry on top of the crap sundae.
By the time I’d dropped Fiona off at her dorm and gotten home, I’d come to the conclusion that damn it, I was a scientist, and I had to act like it. Science had gotten me into this situation; science could get me out.
I spent my spare time that week running a variety of tests on multiple blood samples I’d drawn at different times of day, just in case that made a bit of goddamn difference.
It didn’t.
I took more blood, and ran the tests again.
And a third time, to the point that I was glad it wasn’t warm enough for short sleeves. My arms looked like pincushions.
Which left me sitting in my office, five weeks and four days after Colin had left, with my elbows propped on my desk and my head in my hands, after reviewing the last set of results for the umpteenth time.
Nothing. My blood samples showednothing. The new RNA and new proteins I’d found when I ran the samples after the experiments? Gone. And probably gone for a while, since I couldn’t find a trace, no matter how sensitive I calibrated the testing equipment to be.
I bit my lip to hold in a little moan of despair.
All that misdirected, unfounded jealousy, nearly boiling over when I’d almost shouted at poor Fiona. All those nights, tossing and turning and feeling lost and alone andempty. Every day, missing his low, growly voice and his slow grin and the way his hair stood up all messy when he pulled his hat off. Missinghim.
He wasn’t my best friend anymore. Maybe he hadn’t been the moment he’d wrapped his hand around my throat and thrust his cock inside me. I just hadn’t known it yet.
And everything in my head, my body, my heart, all the things that’d changed…none of that had anything to do with biochemistry, werewolf or human. It was all me.
One particularly miserable night, around three A.M. when bad ideas took on a new, irresistible shine, I’d gone to the website of that adult store where I’d bought the cuffs, navigating to their dildo section. They had large ones and small ones, pink and purple and black, curved and straight, thin and thick.
And they had a small selection of dildos with knots, either permanently a part of the shaft or expandable after insertion.
I’d gotten as far as putting one in my shopping cart before I slapped the laptop closed and took another shot of bourbon.
Was that my future? Fucking myself on a knotted dildo and drinking myself to death? Going online and trolling for alpha hookups after all, only without the excuse of an experiment? Mostly getting over it eventually, like the sensible man I knew I could be, and…and what? Because that sounded impossible.
Maybe it was impossible. It wouldn’t be fair to another person to have a relationship I knew would never satisfy me.
The worst part was, it wasn’t that I’d been turned gay all of a sudden. I didn’t find other men any more attractive than I ever had, really, except that I had now become aware I could swing that way. And women were, in the abstract, as attractive as they’d ever been—except that I couldn’t imagine feeling more for one of them than faintly sensual aesthetic appreciation.
The problem, in short, wasn’t that Colin’s cock had ruined me for any other man. The problem was that Colin had ruinedmefor any other being, human, werewolf, or anything else.
It wasn’t his huge cock, and it wasn’t his knot. It wasn’t his semi-magical hormones, or mine. It wasn’t the results of the experiment.
It was Colin, whom I’d always liked and cared about more than anyone else in the world.
How could I ever fall in love with someone else—
Oh, gods.
I dropped my head all the way down to the desk, pressing my burning cheek against the cool wood, squeezing my eyes shut as if that could push that thought back into oblivion.
