Page 58 of In Doubt

“I don’t know. I think …” I think back over all our interactions, to the very first time we’d met. I’d come bounding over to her like a puppy dog who’d just tracked down his first bone. Here was this beautiful omega, smelling divine, top of the class, passionate about my passion. I’d turned on the full power of my alpha charm, believing she’d fall straight into my arms. Instead, she’d recoiled. Physically recoiled away and things between us had been antagonistic ever since. “I think she’s afraid.” I swallow down the uncomfortable truth and it scratches all the way down to my stomach. “I think she’s afraid of me.”

I look up from my beer bottle and meet Dylan’s sympathetic green eyes.

“And that matters to you because?”

I take a deep breath, rubbing at my temple. “I want to be with her.”

“Then what’s stopping you, Jake?”

I drop my gaze back to the bottle, spinning it between my palms. “I don’t know.”

“I think you do.”

He’s right. I do but it’s hard to admit it to myself, let alone to him. I let out half a chuckle, knowing I’m going to sound stupid. “I’m afraid falling in love will fuck me over.”

It’s bloody ridiculous. I expect him to laugh at me.

He doesn’t. Instead his tone is deadly serious.

“Why?”

I let out a long puff of air, placing the bottle down on the counter.

“Because I saw it happen to my parents. They didn’t always hate each other. Once they were madly in love. But it became something twisted, something ugly, and it made them miserable and bitter. And it broke our family apart.”

“You’re not your parents, mate.” I swallow, letting that realisation sink in. “Just because it happened to them, doesn’t mean it will happen to you. You get to choose your own story. It isn’t written in the stars.”

“You think?”

“Jake, you’re a good packmate. Loyal and caring and fiercely loving. I know it.”

It’s funny. This fear has been niggling at the back of my mind for so long, I’d no longer recognised it for what it was. But talking it through with Dylan has shown it for what it is and I feel like a weight has lifted from my shoulders.

“Thanks Dylan.”

He smiles at me gently. “You need to show Giorgie that she can trust you.”

I nod, wondering how the hell I’m going to go about doing that.

15

Dylan

Iwant to say more to Jake. To tell him that it’s been clear to me how he feels about this girl for months. To ask him if he wants to make her his alone. Or whether he wants to make her our pack omega.

But at that moment, his phone rings in his pocket. He snatches it out and looks at the screen.

“It’s the professor,” he tells me, accepting the call and walking away.

I watch him go, rubbing at my forehead. The scent of the omega weaves through the air and I can smell it even above the aromas of the cakes I’ve just baked in the oven. Fruity, juicy, sweet. It’s a good match for her. She’s all those things.

It’s always amazed me how closely a scent seems to match its alpha or omega owner, hinting at the person beneath the aroma.

That first day at try-outs, Levi’s scent had caught my attention above all the others. The smell of it was like a coming thunderstorm. I knew from the moment I smelled him that he’d be fiery and passionate and me quieter, a silent observer, had been drawn to him almost instantaneously.

He says I smell like wet grass after the rain.

He is the storm and I am the calm that follows.