Page 16 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.

I would have known his scent anywhere.

My pulse roared in my ears as my eyes darted to the doors, scanning frantically. And there, just stepping onto the car at the far end, was Flynn.

His tote bag slung over his shoulder, curls damp from the misting rain, a book clutched loosely in his hand.

He looked tired. Pale. His lips pressed into a thin line like he was trying to hold himself together.

God, I’d missed him.

The second his eyes met mine, Flynn froze.

It was subtle. Just the slightest hitch in his step, his fingers tightening on the strap of his tote, but I felt it like a shockwave.

For one fragile moment, he didn’t move. I let myself hope—stupid, reckless hope—that he might stay. That he’d give me one chance to explain, to beg, to tell him all the things I’d rehearsed in my head on endless sleepless nights.

But then he turned.

Quick and sharp, like he’d been burned.

And he stepped into the next car without so much as a glance back.

My stomach dropped.

“Flynn, wait!”

I shot to my feet so fast the seat rocked under me. A few nearby passengers startled, their curious eyes following me as I pushed through the aisle, but I didn’t care. My pulse thundered in my ears as I barreled into the next carriage.

He was ahead of me already, weaving between commuters, his shoulders hunched and his head ducked low.

“Flynn, please,” I said, my voice breaking on the plea. “Just talk to me. One minute. That’s all I’m asking.”

His pace didn’t falter.

“Leave me alone,” he said flatly, but I didn’t miss the tremor in his voice.

The words sliced straight through me.

God, I wanted to obey. I should have. I knew it. But my legs kept moving, driven by something deeper than reason.

“I need to explain,” I said hoarsely. “I was wrong, I know I was, but please just let me?—”

An alpha near the doors turned, knitting his brows as his eyes flicked from me to Flynn and back. He shifted his weight deliberately, stepping forward so his broad frame blocked the narrow aisle.

“He bothering you?” he asked, his voice low but edged like a warning growl.

Flynn stopped but didn’t turn. He clenched his fingers tighter around his tote.

“Yes,” he said quietly.

The word felt like a physical blow.

The other alpha’s jaw tightened. He squared his shoulders, his scent sharp and territorial as he took a step toward me.

“You heard him. Back off.”

Every muscle in my body tensed. Old instincts screamed at me to hold my ground, to snap, to fight.

But then I saw Flynn.

He wasn’t looking at me, but I didn’t need his eyes to see the fear radiating off him. His shoulders were rigid. His knuckles were white around the strap of his bag. He was pressed as far against the carriage wall as he could go, like he thought I might lunge for him.

Like he didn’t trust me not to.

It gutted me.

The fight drained out of me all at once, leaving only a hollow ache where it had burned. My hands fell limply to my sides, and I forced myself to take a step back.

The other alpha didn’t move. He stood there like a sentry, his glare hard and unrelenting. “Good choice.”

Flynn still didn’t turn. He didn’t have to.

The rejection in his posture, the fear in the stiff line of his neck—it was enough.

As the train lurched forward, the doors slid shut between us, and I stood there in the too-bright carriage, every nerve screaming with the need to run after him. To fix this. To hold him one last time.

But I didn’t move.

I couldn’t.

Instead, I stumbled back to a nearby seat and sank into it like a man twice my age.

The carriage was quiet. A few people threw cautious glances my way, but then returned to their phones, their conversations. To them, I was just some stranger, some unwanted disturbance.

They didn’t know.

They didn’t know how much of a wreck I was.

I dragged my hands down my face, rough and trembling. The bitter tang of regret burned at the back of my throat.

I’d ruined it.

Not just a good thing. Not just any relationship.

The relationship.

The only one that had ever mattered .

I’d ruined him.

My sweet, soft Flynn. My light, my tether, my home.

And this time, I didn’t know if I could ever get him back.