26. Jp
JP
I shouldn’t have come here. I don’t make it five steps out of that kitchen before I feel like I’m fucking suffocating.
The second I step out of Sterling’s house, I know. I know there’s no way I can be around her and not want her as a mate.
Not just want—need.
God forbid she moves into the pack house…
I can’t even wrap my head around that. Seeing her day and night? Smelling her, hearing her laugh, watching her curl up on the couch, snuggle with Blake?
It’d destroy me.
This clawing, aching want—it’s already chewing through me from the inside out.
And it’s enough to make me fucking crazy.
The cold air does nothing to shake the heat clinging to my skin, the phantom feeling of her scent still thick in my lungs. I walk fast, trying to outrun the way she’s undoing me—piece by piece, breath by breath.
Everything in me is utterly consumed by her. I know how good it would feel to be buried in her, to just be with her. I know how good swimming in her scent will make me feel. I’ve been matched before and swore to fucking God I’d never do it again.
I still can't believe she said yes. She agreed to let us court her. To let us help her through her heat. I should be ecstatic, instead of staying, instead of letting myself enjoy it, letting myself run my hands all over those sweet curves—I ran.
Like a fucking coward.
I can’t do this. I can’t sit at that table, watching Cass and Quinn fall head over heels deeper and deeper. watching how they fit so perfectly into her orbit, into the space we’ve made for ourselves. Ignoring everything, all the reasons I thought we had to send her packing.
I can’t breathe in her sweetness without losing every ounce of control I have left.
Because I want her. Goddamn it,I want her so much I can barely stand it.
But I don’t deserve it and just can’t figure out how to let myself have it. Cass and Quinn? They’ll be good to her. They’ll cherish her. They’ll be everything I can’t be. I will figure out how to be both, how to be a packmate and a friend and nothing more.
I’m the weakest fucking link. I always have been. And if I let myself let go and let her in—even just a little—I’ll never fucking stop.
I rake a hand through my hair, my pulse pounding, my skin feeling tight and wrong like it doesn’t quite fit.
My boots eat up the pavement as I move blindly forward, not thinking, not feeling—just trying to burn off this endless, suffocating angst.
I’m vaguely aware that I’m heading toward Main Street, but I don’t care.
I blow past houses in a blur, neighborhoods slowly giving way to buildings, streetlights, and signs.
But I’m still lost in my head—drowning in everything I can’t say and everything I shouldn’t want.
Cass and Quinn might be able to fall into this, into her, like it’s the easiest thing in the world. But I fucking can’t. It can’t ever be more with Sterling, I can’t do it again.
Jasmine was my scent match too. The one thing every Alpha craves. The one thing that was supposed to feel right. But from the moment we met, she was nothing but wrong.
I swore I’d never let an Omega get inside me the way Jasmine did. Never let myself believe in something that only ends in ruin.
She was fire and chaos wrapped in the soft scent of wild roses and honey. An Omega with sharp edges, restless energy, and a wicked streak that called to everything reckless and destructive inside me.
At first, she was exhilarating—untamed, a challenge. She knew exactly how to draw me in, how to make me feel invincible, untouchable, wild. She stoked the darkest parts of my soul, encouraged my worst impulses, whispered in my ear about how the world was too small for people like us.
How I only needed her. And she only needed me. And like an idiot, I believed her.
For a while.
Jasmine fed the worst parts of me, pushed me past every honest boundary I had, and made me think it was love. She turned me against Cass, convinced me that he was holding me back, that he didn’t want me to be happy. That he wanted to cage me in.
And when that wasn’t enough? It was drugs, fights, and fucked up sex. The nights stretched longer, the risks got bigger, the need for an escape became constant. She liked to play with fire, and she wanted me to burn with her.
I barely got out of it. Barely made it back to myself.
And the thing that keeps me awake at night, the thing that fucks with me the most:
I didn’t even realize how far I’d fallen until it was almost too late. Until I looked in the mirror one day and saw someone I didn’t fucking recognize. And she was the only one left by my side.
I ended it. Cut her out like a cancer, an infection I had to rip out of my bones. It felt like ripping apart my nature, my heart broke, turned to cinder and ashes. Scent matches twine themselves into your essence.
And I made a vow to myself…never again would I let myself be that vulnerable or let myself lose control.
Never again would I let myself want an Omega so bad it consumed me.
But then Sterling Hart walked into my life.
And now, I’m right back where I swore I’d never be. She’s all I can think about, and I hate it as much as I crave it.
I hate how good she smells.
How her voice lingers in my head.
How I keep picturing the way she looked this morning—bare legs, bare feet, wrapped in Cass’s scent.
And all I wanted to do was pull her into my arms and scent her, cover her in my scent until she smelled as much like me as she did of him.
I wanted my skin to reek of her—until I couldn’t tell where my scent ended and hers began.
I wanted to smell her pussy on my fingers hours later.
I can’t stop imagining what it would be like to wake up to her every morning, what she’d look like under me, with me inside her, boneless because of me.
My feet finally stop, some of the restless energy burning through me finally bleeding out. That’s when I realize I’ve walked all the way down to the pier district—and I’m standing behind Danver’s Pub.
I let out a growl and kick a trash can over in the alley behind the bar. The metal crashes against the pavement, the sound sharp and jarring in the quiet street. The thick scent of trash and food waste wafts up from the trash can.
I brace my hands on my knees, exhaling sharply. I need to get a fucking grip. Sterling is not Jasmine.
I know that. But that doesn’t mean I trust myself.
Because what if I fuck it up?
What if I let her in, and I’m not strong enough to balance the two of us?
What if I ruin her? Or the pack? Or Blake?
I exhale, shoving off the wall. I need a drink.
“Fuck it,” I mutter, walking toward the back door of Danver’s.
I don’t want to think about this anymore.
What I do want is to get stupid drunk on cheap beer and whiskey, let it burn a hole through this knot in my chest, and then crawl back to my boat and pass out until I forget what it feels like to want something I shouldn’t.
Pushing the door open, I step into Danver’s. It’s dimly lit—just the way I like it. Dark corners, scratched tables, the faint scent of fried food and stale beer soaked into the walls.
Mostly empty. Good.
I head straight for the bar, ignoring the handful of locals hunched over their drinks and the clack of pool balls in the back. I’m almost to my usual stool when I catch the tail end of something—sharp words and a clipped, polished tone that definitely doesn’t belong in this bar.
“I said no, Mason. That’s not gonna change just because you flew in wearing a tailored suit and a five-year-old apology.”
Gentry.
She’s behind the bar, hands on her hips, staring down some stiff-looking guy in business slacks and a pressed shirt like he wandered into the wrong damn universe.
His jaw ticks, his expression tight. “You’re being unreasonable.”
She leans in with a smile that’s all teeth. “No, sweetheart. I’m being clear.”
And with that, he exhales through his nose, adjusts his jacket, and walks right past me without a word, his expensive cologne almost choking me on the way out.
I slide onto a stool, drop my elbows on the bar, and rest my head in my hands.
“Jesus,” I mutter. “What was that?”
Gentry doesn’t even flinch. She tosses a rag over her shoulder and turns to grab a bottle of whiskey and a glass from behind the bar.
“Nothing you have to worry about, sugar.”
She must catch the skepticism on my face, because she looks me dead in the eye.
“Stop worrying. Besides, you look like you’ve got enough on your plate.”
A glass slides in front of me, the amber liquid catching the light.
“Looks like you need this,” she says, her voice easy, casual. “But don’t tell your sister I served it to you.”
I glance up and find Gentry smirking, one brow arched, that effortless confidence stamped all over her face.
She’s Alabama sunshine and fair skin, her once golden tan swallowed up by the Pacific Northwest.
Her long, wavy, copper-colored ponytail sways as she wipes down the counter—one of those rare Omegas who knows exactly how to handle herself…and everyone else, too. I decide that whatever that was I just walked into, Gen’s got it handled.
Gentry’s part of my sister’s best friend crew, which means she knows way too much about me,anyways, and the last thing I need is to be tangled up in more Omega business.
“Not planning on talking to my sister tonight,” I mutter, taking the glass and knocking back the first sip. It burns. Perfect.
She hums. “Didn’t think so. You only show up here looking like a thundercloud when you’re feeling anti-social.”
She’s the kind of girl who, once upon a time, would’ve been in my bed at night and out my door in the morning.
But Gentry has always been firmly in the ‘my little sister would castrate me’ camp.
So yeah—off limits.
Doesn’t stop me from admiring, though.
That is—it didn’t, not before a 5’2”, curvy thing with baby blues came along and turned my whole damn world inside out.
I nod, wrapping my fingers around the glass. “Thanks. And Gen, for fuck’s sake, don’t tell Dizzy.”