Page 30 of Pack Scratch Fever

AVERY

There’s a cat outside the window.

It’s perched on a bench, licking fluffy white paws and rubbing its face.

One of its ears is clipped, indicating that it's fixed and vaccinated.

My face falls.

Piper taught me that.

The creature outside my classroom has no idea that I’m close to having a breakdown because of it.

It’s been three days since my heart was torn into pieces.

Three days since Piper ended any possibility of us being together.

And it’s all because of Poe and his self-destructive tendencies.

He was so lost in his work that he didn’t realize he had basically signed a death warrant for Piper’s rescue.

It’s unforgivable, and the three of us know it.

The cat flops onto its back on the bench, happily exposing its belly.

Piper would have loved to see it.

I would love to snap a picture on my phone and send it to her, but she has all three of us blocked.

It would be easy to just text her through another number—Maddox bought himself and me new phones to do it with—but I talked him out of it.

Forcing Piper to listen to us won’t change anything.

It’ll only make her move further away from us.

The cat jumps off the bench and hurries off across the campus lawn, darting past my building.

Everything in me screams to go after Piper and convince her that we can fix this.

The ache in me is so strong, the pain so overwhelming that there are times when I have to remember to breathe.

I lost my scent match.

She doesn’t want us. She doesn’t want me.

Nausea rolls in my stomach, and I suck in a desperate breath.

Poe wasn’t lying—we can fix this. There are a thousand ways to save the rescue, but I don’t think that’s what this is about for Piper.

We would be happy to pay the new rent—but I doubt she would accept it.

She’s fiercely independent, and even though I don’t know her entire story, it’s obvious she’s been betrayed in the past.

Sweetheart, what happened?

The worst part is Poe signed the fucking papers while we were with her.

It’s a knife in Piper’s back, and by association, Maddox and I have betrayed her, too.

I try my best to focus on my student’s assignments and the photos they’ve taken, but everything goes back to Piper.

Her eyes were devoid of emotion when she looked at us in the bar, completely closed off and unwilling to trust us again.

But the memory of her scent haunts me the most.

Burnt lemons mixed with alcohol.

It was the scent of her devastation caused by our taking away what mattered the most to her.

My phone buzzes, snapping me out of my spiral. For one insane moment, I think it’s Piper, and hope washes over me in waves.

But it’s gone just as quickly once I see it’s my sister.

“Hey,” I murmur.

“Hey, just checking on you,” Maeve says, her voice gentle.

I couldn’t talk to Poe or Maddox about this. I needed a third party to vent to, and Maeve was the person I called the morning after the bar. I blurted everything to her, telling her that I had found my scent match, but that my pack had fucked up badly.

My little sister used to come to me for boy troubles. Now, I’m calling her with my own relationship issues.

“I’m hanging in there,” I say.

“Liar. C’mon, Avery. Is that really how you’re doing?”

I swallow and drum my fingers on my desk. “No,” I admit after a moment of silence. “It’s bad, Maeve. It’s really, really bad.” Embarrassingly, my voice breaks.

Maeve is an Omega herself and hasn’t found a pack yet. I’ve vetted her Alphas in the past, and none of them have lasted.

She hasn’t found a scent match either.

“Maybe you need to give her time,” Maeve says. “It’s been…a couple of days?”

“It feels like forever,” I admit.

“If you guys are scent matches, of course it would feel that way. Especially if you love her.”

“I don’t?—”

“Yes, you do, idiot.” My sister’s voice is fond. “I’ve never heard you like this before. And based on what you’ve told me; I’m sure the distance is hard for her as well. I mean, it would be hard for me if I found my scent match and I purposely stayed away from them.”

My sister’s words only make me feel worse. “I don’t know what to do,” I admit. “I don’t know what I can do. I mean, there are so many things I want to do for her, but I don’t think she’ll accept or respond to them. She wants nothing to do with me, or Maddox or Poe.”

She snorts. “Poe’s an idiot. I can’t believe he didn’t realize it was her rescue he was signing an agreement for.”

“Yeah, neither can I.”

“I’m surprised you haven’t kicked his ass.”

“I’ve thought about it,” I sigh. “Maddox almost did. Both of us are avoiding Poe as much as we can, though. He’s been spending most of his time at the firm.”

“This is Poe’s fault, not yours,” my sister insists. “I think you should go to the rescue and see if she’s there.”

“W-What?” I stammer. “What happened to giving her time?”

Maeve is many things. She’s sweet, smart, a thoughtful listener, but also excitable and a bit impulsive.

“Nah, I changed my mind. She’s your scent match. You should go see her, at least to check on her. And if she’s not there, at least do something to help the cats.”

“Piper doesn’t want me to check on her, Maeve. That’s the problem.”

Every impulse tells me to go to her , but I know that’s not what she wants.

“Then help the rescue, the place that matters the most to her. You can’t change what happened, but you can show her through your actions that you want to support what she cares about.”

It’s not a terrible idea. I could drop off some donations and leave them outside the door, so she doesn’t see me.

Maybe I could scent her by lurking outside the building.

“That’s creepy,” I say. “I don’t want to stalk her.”

She scoffs. “Dropping off cat food isn’t stalking, Avery. It’s being a good person after your packmate messes up royally with the girl of your dreams. Show her through your actions how sorry you are.”

“Even if she’s not there, her friends don’t want to see me,” I try weakly.

My Alpha instincts are telling me to go, though.

Fuck propriety. Fuck being polite.

I need my Omega.

“Nonsense. You’re amazing,” Maeve says cheerily.

“I can name at least one other person who likely hates me right now,” I mutter.

I remember the resignation on Blair’s face at Scents as she sadly told us to leave Piper alone.

“I doubt it.”

I twitch in my chair. Actions do speak louder than words. I could say “I’m sorry” a million times over for what happened, but that doesn’t change anything.

I can at least be of some help to the rescue.

“I’ll think about it,” I acquiesce. “It would be nice to be productive.”

“Also, I don’t want to be that person,” Maeve says tentatively, “but isn’t Poe well off? Can’t he just buy the rescue if it’s that big of a deal?”

“I haven’t talked to him since the night at the bar,” I admit.

“Aren’t packs, you know…supposed to communicate ? Isn’t that what you taught us when we were growing up? Because Mom and Dad weren’t communicating well, we had to learn to do it for ourselves?”

“Yes,” I admit.

I had told Piper about some of my past, but not all of it.

My parents aren’t the best—they were a mated Alpha and Omega that obviously weren’t right for each other.

Their fights weren’t loud, but the passive aggressiveness ran rampant in our house, and neither parent was a great example for my sisters.

“Yeah, it sounds like all of this could be solved by communication ,” Maeve says in a sing-song voice. “Oh, you should let me meet her! I could talk to her.”

“ Hell no , Maeve.”

The idea of my sister meeting Piper when she’s already pissed at us is a nonstarter. Piper doesn’t realize that Maeve is already her number one fan just because Piper liked me at one point.

“Too late. I was already planning on stopping by this week to check on you. I made a care package for you, too.”

I groan. “You didn’t have to do that. Save your money.”

But it’s useless arguing with my sister. I’m proud of her and the woman she’s become, but I don’t know where she got her stubborn streak from.

No is her least favorite word.

“Nope. Everything I bought is nonrefundable anyway. Are you really going to tell me I can’t visit you?”

I sigh, defeated. “Of course not. You know I always want to see you. I’m just not comfortable with you meeting Piper, especially if I don’t know where I stand with her.”

“That’s fair,” she says. “But you definitely need to drop off some donations. She doesn’t even have to know they’re from you yet.”

“I want to,” I say. “I want to do anything I can to help her.”

“Aww, Avery. You love her,” Maeve murmurs. “If you really do, everything will be okay.”

My throat tightens, and I swallow the lump that’s formed in it. “How do you know that?”

“Because I know your heart, and if Piper is smart at all, she knows it, too. She won’t give up on you.”

“You weren’t there. You didn’t see how she looked.”

Piper’s heartbroken face won’t leave my mind. I see it when I try to sleep at night, when I’m grading assignments, and when I’m just trying to exist .

Knowing my packmates, it haunts them, too.

“I’ll make you a deal,” my sister says. “You go drop off some donations, and I won’t pester you about meeting Piper.”

I snort. “ That’ s a lie.”

“Okay, I won’t bother you about it for a while. You can fix this; the first step is letting her see how much you care.”

I want to believe my sister, badly.

She speaks with certainty, as if there’s no other outcome but for everything to be okay.

She doesn’t know Piper like I do, though.

Maeve didn’t see the betrayal in Piper’s eyes when I last saw her.

Still, I know Maeve won’t leave it alone, and it’s better to just give my sister what she wants.

“Deal,” I mutter.

“ Yay ! Now go save the day, cat man.”

Saving the day apparently translates to walking through a pet store and spending an unreasonable amount of time in the cat aisles.