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I think I see her everywhere.

The scent of cookies fills our house at random times.

I could swear there’s a flash of blonde hair turning the corner to our bedroom, but the room is empty when I step inside.

I force Ace and myself to eat, but food doesn’t have a taste.

“I need her,” Ace whispers, sitting back and kneeling on the tile floor. “Ineedher, Connor.”

“I know.” All I can do is rub his back in soothing circles. “Wecannotpush her, no matter how much we want to.”

We’re only three blocks away from her, yet the mating bond is still making both of us sick. Ace has a fever, and chills wrack his body.

It’s been like that since she kicked us out after her Heat, which ended abruptly the next day after the mating bites.

I don’t know who I’m mad at more—myself, or Ace.

Ace, who bit her in the parking lot of the garage, then got into a fistfight with Ben.

Yet I’m no better than Ace. Devyn begged me to bite her while we were in her nest, and I did without a second thought.

I should have thought about her instead of my selfish inner Alpha that was desperate for her.

I fucked up badly, and so did Ace.

Apparently, Ben did too, because for the past week Devyn’s been staying at her best friend April’s mother’s house.

We’ve all been miserable—so miserable that even being less than a mile away from her is still torturous.

Ace trembles as he lies on our new bathroom floor, pressing his head into the cool tile. “I’m sorry,” he grumbles.

I continue to rub soothing circles on his back. “It’s fine.”

He huffs. “It’snotfucking fine. I can feel how pissed off you are. This mating bond won’t let you hide your shit from me anymore.”

I shake my head. “What do you want me to say?” I mutter. “Do you want me to get into a fight with you? Would that make you feel better?”

He doubles over the toilet bowl and retches again. “Yeah,” he chokes out, after he’s done expelling whatever is left of the contents of his stomach. “It would.”

“I’m not going to do that, Ace.”

“But you want to,” he croaks.

“Yeah. I do.”

We stayed with Devyn all through her Heat, but once her pheromones wore off and she was back to herself, she saw the bruising on both Ace and Ben.

When she found out what had happened, she kicked Ace and me out with tears in her eyes.

We promised her there would never be violence, and we managed to break that promise in less than a month.

Later that day, I received a message from Ben that she was gone, and that’s when I went house hunting.

“I split my knuckles on that fucker,” Ace continues. “He blocked me from getting out of his kitchen.”

I thin my lips into a line. “I love you,” I say. “And I’ll always defend you, but that was one of your less rational moments.”

Ace chuckles humorlessly. “Right. Rational.” He hauls himself off the floor and stumbles to the sink, looking at his reflection in the mirror. “Fuck me. I look like shit.”