Chapter 16 Corbin
Corbin
The look on Winnie’s face is utterly devastated. Her tear-rimmed eyes are too much to bear. A glance at Gage, and he’s softened too. He leans forward, placing his clasped hands in front of him on the table, watching Winnie as she clearly struggles to deal with this new information.
Scent matches can be paired to only one or two alphas. But Winnie is our scent-sensitive mate. If she’s matched to one pack member, she’s matched to us all. She’s our fated mate. She would have been mated to Nick too.
“What happened?” she asks, and the little wobble in her voice breaks me.
I look to Rafe, who already has stray tears tracking down his face. Rafe, who never left Nick’s side. They were inseparable. Totally in love.
I hang my head, unable to look at any of them. “We were at a pop-up. The guys were doing tattoos. I played a kind of security.” I trail off, and Zeke picks up the thread.
“At the time, we didn’t travel as much. We stayed close to Detroit, where Corbin worked.
” As a city police officer. I’d found my pack after my career, and they seemed like they should clash, but they actually complemented each other.
I enjoyed doing art at the time and did a few tattoos on the side.
I mostly helped with security and they… well, they became my family.
“One night we were doing this 70s disco in town. Lots of bachelorette parties,” I go on. This is my failing. I need to get it out. “One of the bridesmaids in a party was related to a man I’d put in jail. She recognized me…” I take a deep breath. “I didn’t recognize her.”
Winnie slides her chair closer to mine, and I manage to drag my eyes back up to her. Her beautiful hand slides up my arm, grounding me enough to continue.
“She came at me with a switchblade. She slashed at my face first,” I say, gesturing to the scar running along the side of my face. My Sweetheart bites her bottom lip, a crease forming between her brows.
“Nick pushed Corbin. Grabbed the woman,” Gage says. His eyes are still full of fire and anger, but directed at a woman long behind bars.
“We thought he’d be okay at first, but… he wasn’t,” I finish, scrubbing my hands over my face. Rafe has buried his face in his hands. Eli is staring out into the dark night.
“Then you left,” Gage spits.
Winnie looks from him to me, putting something together I’m not willing to face.
“You left Gage in charge? Even though he’s not a dominant alpha?” she asks. There’s no accusation in her voice, but it still cuts to the center.
“He abandoned us,” Gage says.
“I couldn’t—I—fuck, Gage! I couldn’t even protect Nick. I’m a goddamn cop and I couldn’t protect my packmate from a fucking knife. I shouldn’t be the dominant.” The confession comes out in a ragged growl I can hardly control.
All of the alphas stare at me for a long, heart-wrenching minute.
“That’s some absolute bullshit,” Eli says through his mask, still looking out at the dark lake. “It was an insane woman with a grudge.”
“And if you had said anything like this to any of us, we would have told you that,” Zeke says, picking up Eli’s thread.
“But you didn’t. You just ghosted us,” Gage finishes. The venom is still in his voice, but it’s lost some of its bite. “We just woke up a few days after the funeral and you were completely gone.”
Those months directly after Nick’s death are like a brain fog. I wandered around on my motorcycle for a while, drinking and trying to forget. “I was no good to anyone,” I reply. It’s the damn truth.
“But we could have been good for you,” Rafe rasps. “You don’t think I didn’t just want to lay down and never get up again? Nick was everything to me. I—” He chokes off on a small sob that guts me.
Winnie, the sweetheart that she is, takes my hand in hers. I don’t deserve it.
“We needed you,” Gage says, and that’s the raw meat of it. They needed me, but I could hardly keep myself from drowning.
Gage, surprisingly, goes on. “And you needed us. That’s what a pack is, fucker. You forgot that.” He takes a deep breath. “Maybe we all kind of did after.”
“You did your best, man,” Zeke offers. I’ve realized that I dumped a lot on Gage’s shoulders when I left.
“I thought the pack would split after Nick. I didn’t realize you’d try to hold it together.
I am sorry I left that with you.” Because a non-dominant alpha running a pack doesn’t just put a ton of strain on the pack.
It can emotionally break the alpha trying to do it.
No wonder Gage has acted like he’s one raw nerve since he came here.
His shoulders drop as if some of the tension, some of the weight that’s been sitting there, has eased.
Gage doesn’t say anything else. Just sits there, jaw tight, fingers twitching like he wants to hit something or hold something—maybe both.
I don’t deserve forgiveness. I don’t expect it.
But for the first time in years, I think I might be ready to stay.
Winnie squeezes my hand. I don’t look at her, but I don’t let go either.