Chapter 10
Alfie
He’s a curious little mouse. Quiet as can be as he scuttles around the stables at dawn, and even quieter when he roams the house at night.
He’s tall for an omega, with long, lanky limbs and a body to die for.
At least, it’s a body other alphas would die for.
His clothes hang from his shoulders in a way that looks effortless.
They move when he moves, as though they’re part of him, following him around as he gets up to no good.
He’s so unusual, so different, that for me, there’s been a question mark floating above him since he arrived.
Best I can tell, he’s supremely out of touch with reality and lives in a world of his own creation.
At least, that was my impression of him until this morning.
I spoke without thinking at breakfast, and I fear I unsettled him greatly.
His mousy demeanor evaporated without warning, replaced by something altogether different.
The man who emerged was the first thing, the first person, to penetrate the dense fog that inhabits my mind in months, maybe years.
Yes, years.
It’s been years since the fog descended on me. The ceaseless gray. The heavy cloud that robs my life of color.
It’s necessary, the fog. It’s something I brought on myself.
Something that’s needed for the safety of those around me.
Still, it’s fucking awful. Day after day, night after night, I’m a shadow.
Someone I don’t recognize. Someone I don’t know.
I lag, removed from everything and everyone.
Everything that once gave me pleasure—taste, smell, the lightness of being—all gone.
As bad as the absence of those things is, the pervasive presence of the fog is worse. I feel like I’m sleeping when I’m wide awake. Like I’m standing next to myself, unable to act or feel like a person. Unable to act or feel like an alpha. Unable to be myself.
That’s the point, of course. For me not to be able to act like myself. That’s why I take this fucking horrific medication, to ensure that my nature, my pheromones, stay in check. For years, I let myself run rampant, chasing boyish dreams and foolish notions, and look how that played out.
Case in point, the doorbell rings again. Once, then twice more in quick succession.
I hurry down the stairs, hoping the little mouse stays hidden. Hoping he paid heed when I told him not to answer the door late at night.
Guilt stabs at my side as I open the door. A blade enters between rib bones, slicing through the intercostal muscle. A pain so pristine and perfect that the fog lifts for a second, and I feel emotion as I once did. Clearly and intensely.
It’s Elizabeth.
Once a vivacious omega with a free spirit and a devil-may-care attitude, now tear-drenched, quaking in her boots, and wailing my name at the moon.
I deal with her the same way I deal with everyone I’ve afflicted. I use my voice on her, though it pains me to do it.
It helps in the short term. It provides relief for a while, but like the others, Elizabeth will be back. There’s no cure for what I’ve done to them. At least not as long as I’m unmated, and finding a mate is something I’ve long since given up on.
It’s not going to happen for me. That’s the truth of it. It took me a long time, too long, to recognize it, but it’s the truth all the same.
I’m thirty-eight. Hardly ancient by most standards, but for an alpha with my affliction, I might as well be a hundred. I harbored hope for as long as I dared, longer than I should have, and many suffered in my wake as a result.
I close the door, pausing to ensure Elizabeth’s footsteps crunch all the way to her car, before locking up.
As the house falls quiet again, I hear a tiny pit-pat. A little mouse has crept out of his bed. His heart rate is elevated. He’s doing something he knows he shouldn’t be.
I pad quietly across the entrance, hitting the light in the hallway that leads to his room. He jumps at least two feet off the floor but manages to land gracefully.
“Good evening,” he says as though meeting like this is a perfectly normal occurrence for us.
“Where are you off to at this hour?” I ask.
I’m teasing, but I can’t help it. The man I used to be had a sense of humor and loved playing games with adorable people.
The little mouse is wearing a particularly adorable pair of pink-and-white striped pajamas. Pale peachy pink. Soft, loose-fitting garments designed for comfort. His top is buttoned up all the way to his neck, but his feet are bare, and that blows a cobweb or two from my brain.
He isn’t wearing his glasses, and without them, his eyes look enormous. They’re brown, his eyes. Light golden brown. Molten honey with tiny flecks of green. They stretch to impossible proportions in response to my question.
“I, er, kitchen,” he splutters, casting his gaze over my shoulder.
“Hmm.” I bite back a smile. “Hankering after a slice of cheese, are you?”
It goes over his head, obviously.
“Um, no, actually. While I love cheese, cheese doesn’t love me. Gives me the runs, you see. Terrible, isn’t it?”
Before I have time to agree or disagree, he’s off like a packet of crackers, like he was at breakfast this morning.
He talks so much, and at such a breakneck speed, that I can’t get a word in, so I end up trailing behind him to the kitchen without my consent.
I find myself sitting at the staff table while he helps himself to a handful of Mrs. Thompson’s chocolate chip cookies, two bowls of leftover pudding, and a mug of hot chocolate.
It seems like an awful lot of sugar to consume in the middle of the night, and though I can’t be completely sure, because it’s a subjective matter, I think his midnight feast might make him even more talkative than he was this morning.
It’s clear his dreadful ex-boyfriend has done a number on him, and who can blame him for being upset over that? Running off into the woods and mating with his older brother? What a thing to do.
And telling the little mouse about it on a voice call, not a video call, how utterly beastly.