Page 44 of Nursing the Alpha
SETH
I’d lost count of how many days I’d been riding this train.
Morning to night. Back and forth across the city. Different lines. Different platforms. Always scanning, always waiting.
Flynn wasn’t making it easy.
Not that I blamed him.
He’d changed his routine completely—new routes, new times. He didn’t answer his door anymore. The one time I’d worked up the nerve to knock, I’d been met with the sound of locks sliding firmly into place and nothing else. No footsteps. No voice.
And I couldn’t blame him.
Because what I’d done… God. It was despicable.
I rubbed a hand over my face, dragging my palm down rough stubble that had gone unshaven for days. I no longer slept well. Not since the day he’d found out. Every time I closed my eyes, I saw his face: the betrayal. The disgust. The way he’d looked at me like I was a stranger.
No. Not a stranger.
A monster.
And maybe I was.
He didn’t even know about the stalking.
But I couldn’t stop.
Even though it would be kinder to let him go, I kept coming back. Kept hoping for one more chance to see him. To explain. To beg, if I had to.
He’d called me a liar.
He wasn’t wrong.
But what he didn’t understand was that this wasn’t just an obsession. It wasn’t lust or curiosity or any of the shallow things it might have been once.
I loved him.
God help me, I loved that sweet, soft omega more than I loved my own skin.
I’d thought I understood devotion before, but Flynn had rewired me since the day we met on the train. I wasn’t myself without him. Everything I touched, every place I went, felt hollow if he wasn’t in my life.
And worse, he was my soulmate. I was sure of it. The way we fit together, the way he calmed something feral in me without even trying. I’d spent years building walls, and he’d dismantled them with nothing more than his laugh, his shy smiles, the warmth of his body curled into mine.
I clenched my fists in my lap, knuckles aching.
Another hour. Another stop. Another day that would probably end with me staring at an empty seat and cursing my stupidity.
The train rocked gently beneath me as I watched the streets blur past the window. Outside, people hurried along the platform, coats pulled tight against the gray drizzle.
I smelled him.
Sweet. Warm. Milk-rich.
It cut through the stale air of the train like sunlight through storm clouds.
My whole body went taut.
Flynn.
