2. Chapter Two
Chapter Two
Holden
No one ever tells you that grief feels this way.
That eventually it settles beneath your skin until it becomes part of you.
A constant ache. A permanent reminder that somewhere along the way, you lost the one person who made the world feel like it was spinning in the right direction.
I never imagined I could miss someone the way I miss Lennon.
That every ordinary moment could feel so painfully empty simply because she no longer exists inside it.
If I could turn back time, I would. I’d go right back to the beginning.
To the exact moment she walked into that locker room with her shoulders squared and her chin held high, determined to prove herself to a room full of Alphas already waiting for her to fail.
To the moment her scent wrapped around me and quietly rewired every part of who I thought I was. Who I thought I was comfortable being.
I would have dropped to my knees before her then, consequences be damned.
I would have ignored every single taunt and demand Sasha threw my way because none of them should have mattered more than she did.
I would have given her loyalty from the very beginning.
The one thing she had always deserved from me. From us.
Honesty.
I should have told her the truth the moment I found out about her parents. I should have helped her navigate a world that had been built on lies instead of placing obstacle after obstacle in her path until every direction she turned ended in betrayal.
But I didn’t.
I chose Sasha. I chose revenge. I chose silence.
Every decision I made after that became another stone in the road she was forced to walk alone.
I am a Beta for fuck’s sake. I don’t hold any of the characteristics Sash or Dom do.
I’m supposed to be the steady one. The rational one.
The Beta who sees the bigger picture when everyone else is too consumed by emotion to think straight.
I should have been the voice of reason. The one to remind them that our future, our Omega, was never supposed to come at the cost of someone else’s destruction.
That love was always going to be a stronger foundation than revenge or hatred could ever hope to be.
Instead, I stood by and watched the two people I love the most in this world destroy the woman we were supposed to protect.
The woman fate chose for us. Hell, I was just as much a part of it.
I’m just as much to blame because I did it too.
And now, we’re forced to live with the consequences of defying fate and betraying our girl.
Something that was never meant to fucking happen, yet we did it anyway.
Once fate decides who you’re destined to be with, or who will join you on this wild, chaotic ride we call life, those feelings, those instinctual cravings don’t disappear just because they did.
They’re there for life. And now? We’re burdened by the everlasting ache of grief because she left us.
Things were just about to get good. We were going to tell her.
We were going to show her what it would have been like to be with us.
We were going to throw all previous fucking notions to the wayside and stand up and be the pack she needed us to be.
The pack she deserved from the very start.
We built her a nest.
A place she had never seen before everything went to hell in a handbasket because we were too busy destroying the only home she’d ever known first.
And none of that comes even remotely close to deserving her. Because I know we don’t. But I want her anyway. I don’t think that will ever change. Fate doesn’t work that way. And knowing Lennon? Simply being in her presence? It wouldn’t have mattered if fate had intervened because she is everything.
She’s everything.
And now we’re left with the ghost version of her, and it probably won’t be any other way.
We’re left to mourn someone who’s still alive.
The woman we broke may still be breathing somewhere on the other side of the country, but the version of Lennon who saw something in us, despite all our bullshit…
she’s gone. I can feel it. I don’t know how.
I just do. Now we’re left lying in the fucking mess we made.
Three fractured pieces. A pack that has been broken in a way I don’t know how to fix.
It’s been months since I have seen my Omega.
The one person destined for me, gone in a single night.
I don’t even recognize Sasha anymore. All of that hate that he held in his heart has eaten him from the inside out.
He has become a shadow of himself. Gaunt.
Hollow. Unrecognizable. I can’t remember the last time I saw him eat a meal.
Which is kind of hard to do considering I have hardly seen him in the months since our lives blew to pieces.
Since she left us.
Dominic, on the other hand, is wearing the absence of her differently. From the outside, you wouldn’t notice that anything is wrong. He still smiles, cracks the occasional joke, and goes to work like any other day.
But I know him better than that. I know his scars.
I have traced them. Memorized them like they are my own.
He is just as torn up as Sasha and I. He’s just learned to wear it better.
Or maybe I have him all wrong. Maybe he is unfeeling.
Maybe there is nothing left in him anymore, and he’s just running on backup energy.
To be honest, I don’t know if I know much of anything anymore.
It’s all become a repetitive notion of agony.
I used to see the world in bright colors. Now, it is nothing more than blacks and grays.
She took all of the light with her.
I hate myself for the role I played in her downfall. I hate the fact that even though I knew what we were doing was wrong, I did nothing to stop it.
I allowed my Omega to be broken. I allowed our pack to destroy her like she was nothing.
When in reality, she is everything. And those regrets have been on repeat in my fucking head ever since she walked out the door.
Will they ever go away? Probably not. Do I want them to?
Do I even deserve to be off the hook for everything that happened?
Either way, she made her choice. And it’s fucking killing me.
I skate off the ice, handing my stick to a waiting Dominic.
I don’t meet his eyes. I don’t even look to see if he’s looking at me.
I don’t care. I don’t think either of us has anything left to say that hasn’t already been screamed in silence.
Because no matter what either of us says, it won’t change anything, and I don’t have it in me to try. Not tonight.
Another game lost.
It’s no surprise, really. Because it wasn’t just the Ars Mortis pack that broke the day we watched Lennon walk out of the building with her belongings boxed up and a shimmer of tears in her eyes even though she held her head high.
The entire organization fractured with her.
Half of the team walked out that day. Young recruits with nothing more than a shitty college education and minimal ice time were given starting roles.
Coaches with no idea of NHL rules or regulations were thrown into the deep end with no notice, days before one of the biggest games of the year. The Stanley Cup.
I know if Lennon were still the coach, we would have won. It’s no question. She understood us, more so than her lying sack of shit father did.
I’m not too proud to say that she is the best coach we have ever had.
In fact, I feel honored that it is my Omega who stood in a man’s world and led a team of her own accord.
She was a success, and not because she was Patrick Gilmore’s daughter, but because she knew hockey.
More so than any of these assholes fluttering around like a bunch of glorified figure skaters.
But none of that matters now, because she is gone. Back to the corporate world on the other side of the country, or so we’ve been informed. Forced to carry out our days like she was never here. Like she was never ours.
It makes my skin itch.
No, that’s not right. It makes me absolutely feral.
Out of everything that has transpired, I still haven’t given up on her.
I couldn’t. Not when she has lost everything.
I may have had my hand in that process, but I know I need to do better.
To be better. I need to prove that I am worthy of her.
To show her that she not only deserves to be loved the way fate intended, but that she deserves every single thing we stole from her.
Her trust. The future as she knew it to be… Her team.
Because the Cardinals were never supposed to lose her.
We were.
After everything, we had decided that she was it for us. But we fucked it all up instead. She wasn’t supposed to walk away. But she did. She had good reason.
The million-dollar question, though, is this…
How the fuck do I fix a future I helped destroy when she’s made it painfully clear she never wants to see my face again? Any of our faces.
Maybe some things aren’t meant to be fixed. Fuck, if the tables were turned and the roles were reversed? I’d hate me too.
One thing’s for certain. I’m done asking fate to clean up the mess I made. If spending the rest of my life proving she was worth choosing from the very beginning is the price I have to pay…I’ll pay it.
Whatever it takes, I’ll earn the chance to stand in front of her again. Whether she forgives me or tells me to go to hell…that choice will be hers to make. But I’m choosing her. In every fucking lifetime, I’m choosing her.
No more lies. No more revenge. No more excuses.
She’ll never have to question whose side I’m on. Even if it takes the rest of my fucking life.