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It was too late, though. She’d already done interviews, posing as my scorned “ex.” The media circus that followed was chaos. Our pack bonds frayed into thin threads. I was so distracted by it all that I blew the biggest game of my career.
Because—of course—it all went down two weeks before the National Championship.
“I saw the pictures,” Meg whispers, her voice cracking. “When I looked all of you up, there were some photos and her name on articles, but it was years ago, so I didn’t read any of them. I just never imagined?—”
She just never imagined that her mate would be such a piece of shit.
I dip my head low, taking the words she doesn’t say. I don’t have any other choice. And now I have to say the thing I should have explained the day she turned up.
“Do you understand now?” I rasp. “I’m the problem here. I can’t love you because I can’t love anyone. I won’t trust you because I can’t even trust myself. I’m a broken, fucked-up mess. The only thing I can do for you is win some stupid football games and leave you the hell alone.”
A full minute ticks by and I don’t care. Just like I don’t care that I’m standing here naked, baring my neck in submission.
She can have my submission.
Because she’ll never have me.
God knows, if I had anything to give her, I would. Right now, I would give her whatever fragments of me she wanted.
But she’s too good for that.
She waits for me to lift my chin and meet her eyes. They’re dry, now. Still red; but dry and steady. She’s strong, this girl. I have so much respect for that.
Especially when she straightens her spine and turns to go.
“Then leave me the hell alone, Declan.”
chapter
fifty-one
I wake up with Ronan’s alarm, reaching over the omega sleeping between us to punch his arm. He grunts and rolls. I hear him fumble for his phone. Whatever he sees on it gets him up and off the mattress, sweeping out of the room.
It’s gameday, my mind supplies.
Usually, I get up the second I’m awake, but I have no motivation to move. Not with Meg looking like an angel in the golden morning light bleeding through her sheer curtains.
Theo sleeps at my back, his quiet snores hitching slightly when Ronan closes the bedroom door behind him. Meg’s eyelashes flutter, just a little. Barely enough for me to see that her eyelids are an angry, irritated red. Alarm jumps in my chest. Leaning back slightly, I take a closer look at her.
That’s when I realize—she smells… wrong. Or right actually. More right than she ever has before. The peachy scent of her perfume isn’t just entwined with my spice, Theo’s citrus, and Ronan’s smoke. There’s also?—
Vanilla.
For a second, I’m elated. Concern quickly replaces the feeling when I see that she’s bundled up in a mishmash of our discarded clothes. Plus, her skin is pale, her face slightly swollen.
I brush my lips over her forehead, checking for a fever she doesn’t have. Meg leans up into the contact, moaning quietly and shimmying closer. Even in her sleep, she hesitates, as if she wants to be near me, but isn’t sure she would be accepted.
Or maybe it’s not me she’s thinking of at all, based on the new scent on her skin. Perhaps she wandered off to find Declan in the night and got a fresh serving of rejection.
His scent seems a little too strong for that theory. It’s more likely they both gave into the pull between them, and he freaked out afterward. That tracks with everything I know about Declan, in light of the story Theo shared with us last night.
I’m going to insist he sees a therapist. His mental and emotional well-being are every bit as important to this pack as his physical health. He needs to realize that we need him whole in every way. Not just his throwing arm.
But there’s nothing I can do about it right now except comforting our omega. I ease her into my arms, cuddling her as close as I can. She burrows her face into my neck, inhaling with a soft smile. “Mmm, Archer.”
I grin at the ceiling. “Hi, sweetheart. How did you sleep?”
Her smile cracks into a grimace. “Not so good.”
