Page 100 of Psycho Alphas: Part Two

She stayed tense, her eyes darting from me to the balcony doors, like she feared I was going to leave. Afraid, or… maybe something a little more daring.

“This is my pack,” she hissed at last. “You are in it, and you aren’t goinganywhere.” I could feel what she felt as she glared up at me, that storm of energy and power.

Of fury, pain, and… fear.

I’d never felt it like this.

It wasn’t fear like I expected—the weak kind that made people flee.

It was powerful; a fear of her own feelings, of how overwhelming they were—of what I might do—as if they’d snap at any word or sound I made.

Had it always been like this for her?

It wasn’t for me.

But not, I realised now, because it couldn’t be, but because I’d always been the one in control.

Now I wasn’t so sure, and her allure, the need I felt for her… fear wasn’t so far-fetched anymore.

I swallowed back that train of thought, focusing instead on something else that had nagged me the last few days. “Why didn’t you tell me you wanted to draw?”

She frowned as if the question caught her off guard.“I knew you’d think it was stupid.”

Was that true?

Sometimes I was still swallowed whole by the monster of madness I’d been trapped in so long. Of the person I’d been before, only fragments remained.

I’d been jealous…

I knew that.

I’d wanted her. I’d put a bullet in the skull of a guard I thought looked at her too long. I’d hated when she visited my balcony as much as I’d been addicted to it, needing to know I consumed her while never reaching out in return.

“I don’t think I would have cared,” I said. Her jaw clenched, and I felt a groundswell of sorrow, an ancient, lonely thing cracking open. A regret for pain that needn’t have been.

“But if you’d asked, I would have said no,” I added, cutting it off before it became too much. Before it got to me, too.

“Oh.” The hope died, and she chewed on her lip. “Why?”

“I was more comfortable when you thought I didn’t care.”

It had been the only wedge left. Otherwise, she would have been relentless. Sneaking in, ruining me when I least expected it. Nothing I did to punish her got in the way. And I had hated, more than anything, that I dreaded it ever would.

I feared her obsession while needing it like I needed breath.

Those glittering violet eyes reflected that back at me as they met mine. The dam broke, and a tear spilled down her cheek, one that wrenched at me like it never had before.

I stepped forward as if she had commanded it: my need to respond a noose around my neck.

She had me utterly entrapped.

“W-why?” Her voice was choked. “Why was I never enough?”

THISTLE

I was shaking, the words from a million dreams spilling out at last. “I gave you everything, and you left me.” That truth burned. “I tried to be everything you said I had to be.”

I’d had sex with his stupid pack mates when I was in heat. I’d tried so hard to play the part—to be the kind of Omega he needed.