9. Chapter Nine
Chapter Nine
Dominic
Idon’t want to be here.
I would prefer to be anywhere else but this fucking boardroom. I’ve put on a good front of being okay. Of having my shit together since my Omega left us. Left me.
But I don’t.
Not a single part of me is okay.
I am a fucking mess. Held together by weak threads that even now are frayed.
Threads that bite into my skin every time I pretend I’m fine.
Every forced smile. Interview. Practice.
Every fucking breath feels like it’s one inconvenience away from snapping completely.
It’s the least that I deserve. I should be suffering more than I am.
I destroyed my Omega with my own hands and I get to be here and she doesn’t.
I get to walk these halls. Watch the ice she earned every right to own and coach on.
I gave in to my baser desires. The darkness inside of me took over and tore her from me.
I wanted her closer. I wanted her mine. But all my actions achieved was having her ripped from me in a matter of moments.
And all for what? A spectacle? A point proven that we are untouchable?
Untouchable.
What a fucking joke.
That is hardly the case considering the predicament I find myself in.
Sometimes I still think I can smell her even though it has been months.
Her scent is embedded into my brain. The pair of panties I stole from her the night I carved my name into her flesh have long lost their scent.
Months of being hidden beneath my pillow have stripped away every trace of her midnight rain, jasmine, sweet honey, and moonlit roses.
A scent so uniquely hers that nothing compares to it.
That doesn’t mean I don’t hold them to my face every single night to the memory of the way her body felt against mine.
The way she had clung to me as I sent her over the edge.
Nothing will ever feel as good as her skin against my body.
Her touch on my flesh like she was trying to carve herself into me with nothing but touch alone.
I remember every sound she made. Every laugh.
Every stifled sigh or sharp intake of breath because there was no way she could hide her reaction to me.
What terrifies me most is that one day I’ll wake up and I won’t remember her scent.
A nudge in my side has me blinking back to attention, the sound of the crowded boardroom filtering back in.
“Any idea what the announcement is meant to be?” Burke questions.
I shake my head. “None at all. The board has been quiet these past few weeks. None of us have been given anything more than a few reassuring words to placate us.”
Burke hums thoughtfully as he watches Clive Roberts, the assistant manager of the team, give a few final words to the board, who are also here today.
Clive clears his throat, drawing the attention of the room.
“Thank you all for coming here today. I know things have been all up in the air these past few months. Due to discrepancies in Patrick Gilmore’s will, our hand was forced to remove Lennon Gilmore as the head coach and in turn, majority owner. We had no choice but to put the team up for sale.”
There are murmurings around the room, quiet whispers.
They must have sold the team then. I can’t even pretend to be surprised.
The Cardinals have been bleeding for months.
Sponsors pulling back. Rumors circling every sports network.
The board scrambled to clean up a mess I played a part in.
This was always where it was going to end.
Truth be told, I shouldn’t even be here.
My head hasn’t been in it these days. Sasha and Holden have offers sitting unanswered on our kitchen bench, and they just keep piling up.
Better contracts. Better cities. A fresh start with our names written all over it.
Only, none of us can bring ourselves to take the leap.
One, it doesn’t seem fair. We played a part in the team’s downfall which is the fucking opposite of what me or their captain and star forward should have done.
We all should have put the team first. While Sasha’s intentions when he was first signed to the Cardinals were to always take Patrick, the fuckhead he was, down, we had all developed a brotherhood with the players I certainly hadn’t anticipated.
And we cost them their futures. The safety of their careers was blurred because we couldn’t get our shit together.
It was a domino effect. Maybe we should take the hit and run.
Maybe it’s time to accept that the Cardinals died the moment Lennon walked out on them. On us.
She isn’t coming back.
And despite knowing this, leaving feels like we’d be betraying her all over again. This place was her home, regardless of what went down and I guess we’re all hanging onto the ghost of her, even still, all these months later.
“In the past few weeks, the Cardinals have found themselves a new owner.”
Something burns in my chest, the pain of knowing that that person won’t be Lennon.
That her job has been given to someone else.
Someone unworthy of the title because no one—not one single fucking soul—can hold a candle to her.
Sasha and Holden would never admit it, but they were better players with her here as their coach, and the reality of that happening again with everything hanging over their heads is that it won’t ever be the case again.
At least not while we’re still here. The place that made them.
Made us.
The place where we met our scent match. Our Omega. The woman fate reminds us of constantly, and punishes us because she’s not here. Where she should be. Can’t blame her though. No one deserves what we or this fucking club put her through. She’s better than any of us by fucking miles.
Clive smiles slightly, the corners of his lips upturning. “We are very pleased to welcome back the new owner and head coach, Lennon Welsh.”
The words don’t register. They bounce around inside my skull without meaning, swallowed by the sudden roar of blood rushing through my ears.
I feel my face completely drain of color.
My head begins to spin, reality distorting around the edges until the only thing left in focus is the woman stepping through the doorway.
Every conversation dies. Every chair scraping against the floor by curious staff disappears.
Every heartbeat in the room is drowned out by my own.
Her.
She’s here.
Fuck.
She looks good. No. Good isn’t the right word.
She looks untouchable. Confident. Composed.
Powerful as ever. An angel sent from the pits of hell to wreak havoc on my life.
And fuck if I wouldn’t let her. The woman walking toward us isn’t the broken Omega who walked out of our lives months ago.
She walks with her shoulders back, chin held high, her expensive heels striking the polished timber with a measured confidence that’s fuck-hot. She doesn’t falter once.
She’s walking into the Garden of Eden like Lilith herself, ready to make the devil fall to his knees and beg at her feet.
She owns the room like she always has, only this time, it’s different. I can sense it.
Fuck, I’d get on my knees right now if she wanted me to. I would do anything for her. Crawl to the edges of the earth if it would please her. Crawl across broken glass if she asked me to. I’d spend the rest of my life making up for what we’d done. If she’d let me.
No amount of forgiveness she could give us would ever be enough.
The time for that is long gone. I know that the only thing that would be even remotely accepted is if I was to grovel for her.
Which is what I will do. That's all I can do. That’s if she will even hear me out.
Which I don’t think she will. My girl is far too proud.
We beat her down. She won’t let us come back up for air easily.
Nor should she.
Her smile is wide across her face and so fucking breathtaking it physically hurts to look at, as she glances around the room. People smile back without thinking. A few even laugh. It’s effortless. She’s always had that effect on people. Like the sun deciding to break through after weeks of rain.
That is, until she finds me.
I feel something fracture in my heart as I watch the way her face drops.
Her smile doesn’t fade slowly. It disappears completely.
I see the raw pain in her eyes that she masks as quickly as I’d noticed.
I see the wounds that haven’t yet had time to heal.
The hurt etched into every rigid line of her expression even though she does a good fucking job of trying to hide it.
For half a heartbeat, I swear I see the woman who used to smile at me like I hung the fucking moon, however brief that time may have been.
I put that look there.
I did that.
I pushed her to the limits. Fuck, I went straight over that motherfucking line without a single care for the consequences. Now, I am paying for it. My pack is paying for it.
Her gaze only remains on mine for a moment before it moves on, finding the next of her tormentors.
Holden.
Sitting on the complete opposite side of the room to me, only proving the distance between our pack and the way it has shattered.
He looks just as hollow as I feel.
There is a different kind of pain in her eyes as she looks at him. One that alludes to the small amount of trust they’d begun building together.
Hope.
She’d started believing in him.
Then we destroyed that too.
But like me, she doesn’t look at him for long. Instead, she moves on, going back to the room as a whole. Like none of us deserve more than a heartbeat of her attention anymore.
I sit forward in my seat, not wanting to miss a single moment of anything that she says.
“Thank you everyone for the warm welcome home.”
I flinch slightly, not having heard any celebration that had transpired around the room. It was like I had tunnel vision. Everything had begun and ended with her. Like it always has.
“I know things have been unsettling these past few months but I am really looking forward to settling back in and picking up from where I left off.”
I hear murmurs of agreement, echoing my own.
“I know things ended disappointingly last season with the start of this one looking very much the same.”
That is an understatement.
The team has been playing like shit. Their hearts haven’t been in the game.
Truth be told, no one’s has. But now Lennon is back, I can feel the energy in the room shift into something a hell of a lot brighter than the doom and gloom that’s hovered over everyone’s heads.
Just like that, she’s lifted the spirits of a depleted team by doing nothing more than entering the room.
She is enigmatic.
A true goddess who walks among mere mortals.
She is everything.
And somehow, despite everything we stole from her, the lies we told. The damage we caused. She still found a way to rise higher than all of us. And like the true leader the Omega was always meant to be, she bought the whole fucking team.
How? I have no idea. I don’t even care how.
But damn. If anyone was going to do it, it would have been her.
Lennon finds a way. It’s just who she is.
She doesn’t crumble beneath impossible odds.
She stares at them dead in the eye until they move out of her fucking way.
It’s one of the things I love about her.
One of the things we all took for granted.
What we did to her has only seemed to light that fire inside of her.
We thought we’d break her. Instead, we forged her.
Now we get to witness what happens when the woman we underestimated finally stops holding herself back.
I can’t wait to watch her make us burn.