Page 1 of Two For the Show
Chapter 1
I’ve never been a coward.I’m not afraid of what I’m going to find inside Dr. Alex Shields’s trailer.
But that doesn’t make me eager to use my master key to enter the darkened, quiet living space.
I know what I’m going to find. The signs are all there.
Part of me thrums with a stupid, naive optimism that I didn’t think I still possessed.
I thought I was prepared to find it, but it still makes my heart sink when I do.
My Omega is gone.
Quinton, whom I have barely held back until now, pushes past me into her space, and I step aside, unable to form the words that my team needs to hear from me.
They’re not only my team anymore. They’re my pack.
Because even without our Omega here to center us, we’re a pack now. There’s no rolling back a development like that.
Never thought I would have a pack. I’m nearly forty, and I have never once felt the draw to a pack or an Omegabefore. But here I am, with a crew of circus performers, my employees, linked to me by an Omega that has left us.
“She wouldn’t leave us,” Quinton says desperately, looking around the trailer like maybe she’s hiding from him. “She wouldn’t. She wouldn’t do that to Matteo. To us.”
“Looks like she did.” My voice is subdued, and my chest aches.
She left us.
She’s fucking gone. And there’s nothing I can do to protect myself or my pack from the devastation she will leave in her wake.
“No, I mean it, Jude. Come look. She took her nest.” He grabs my arm and drags me into her bedroom. Alex’s black forest cake scent is thick here, so dense that it makes my head spin. It takes a minute for me to swallow down my trepidation and look at her bed.
He’s right.
She took her nest with her.
The nest we argued over, that all of us contributed to after the one she built with Quinton and Matteo was destroyed.
Not only the linens and pillows, but the clothing we gave her and Dexter’s eyemask. All that is left is a bare mattress and a couple of tea lights.
“She left behind clothes,” Quinton says quietly from behind me. I turn to see him pulling open the cabinets that are mounted on the wall and gesturing inside. “She chose to bring her nest and leave behind clothing. When she came to us, she brought clothing but not a nest. This time, she took her nest and left her clothing behind. That means something, boss. I’m sure of it.”
Maybe it does.
Or maybe it was instinctual to bring it with her nowthat she’s scent matched to us. Like her Omega wouldn’t let her leave without it.
Does it matter what her motivation was? She’s gone.
And I’m left with a hollow feeling of guilt for the way I questioned her motivations that last time we spoke.
Self-fulfilling prophecy. I accused her of wanting to leave us, and so she did.
Would she have stuck around if she felt safe with us? With me?
Is this all my fault?
The doctor called me the Prime Alpha when she was sick. I don’t deserve that title.
This is my fault.
