Total pages in book: 73
Estimated words: 70338 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 352(@200wpm)___ 281(@250wpm)___ 234(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 70338 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 352(@200wpm)___ 281(@250wpm)___ 234(@300wpm)
I touch his chest, running my nails through the soft golden curls there. Another ripple runs through him at my touch, and his eyes glow in the darkness.
“My dad…” He clears his throat. “It’s important to my dad that I maintain alpha status.”
“Why?”
Abe gives an impatient shake of his head. “It’s a family thing. He’s unrelenting about it. He has been ever since the Change when I became my wolf. Before then, I felt like I had my whole life ahead of me, like my future was open and expansive. And now…now it’s like I’m locked into a mold I don’t even fit. Nothing is fun anymore. Even my interactions with my best friends feel fake.”
I stare at Abe, shocked by his admission. It doesn’t make sense to me, but I’m not a wolf. Maybe it’s some cultural thing I don’t get.
“What would happen if you didn’t play the part?”
“I don’t know. I’d lose my status. Someone else would take Alpha–probably Asher. Markley’s stronger, but Asher’s got a desperate streak. His dad got kicked out of the pack.”
“I mean with your dad.”
Abe scrubs a hand across his face. “I don’t want to disappoint him. He wants what’s best for me and our family line. My brother did everything my dad wanted him to. He’s the pre-med golden boy, following in Dad’s footsteps, and I’m a fuck-up.”
I scoff. “Is that what you think? You’re the captain of the football team. The alpha wolf of the whole school. How can you possibly think of yourself as a fuck-up?” And then I remember his struggle to perform in the lab. “Is this about schoolwork?”
Abe doesn’t answer.
“Abe…” I hesitate because my question is going to poke at his high alphaness. “Has anyone ever tested you for neurodivergence? Or have you had your eyesight tested? Sometimes it seems like you have trouble seeing or reading. I wondered if you could be dyslexic or something.”
I realize Abe isn’t breathing at all. “I can’t believe—” he chokes. “How did you figure that out?”
“What is it? Neurodivergence?”
He sits up in the bed. “You can’t tell anyone, Lauren. This is the whole reason I have to maintain alpha status.”
I sit up, too, stroking my palm over his bulging biceps. My heart thuds with the magnitude of the moment. Abe’s walls coming down. His secrets revealed. “I won’t tell anyone. But what is it, Abe?” I ask softly.
“It’s a genetic defect–shifter related. My brain sometimes glitches on whether I’m seeing with my wolf eyes or my human eyes. It gives me headaches and makes it hard to read. The fluorescent lights make it worse.”
“Oh, wow.”
“I was managing it, totally hiding the condition until this year.”
“What happened this year?”
When Abe turns to look at me, something makes the hairs on my arms stand up. The air turns electric.
Abe’s eyes glow ice blue.
“You happened, princess.”
Chapter Sixteen
Abe
Lauren reaches over and turns on a bedside lamp. It’s not even a fluorescent light, but still, my eyes react. Pain shoots diagonally through my visual field, and the muscles contract the base of my skull.
“Is it happening now?“ Lauren is so attuned to me, she somehow knows.
My instinct is to lie, to go on the offensive to distract attention from myself, as I’ve been doing with everyone else, but something won’t let me. “Yeah,” I croak.
My visual field has constricted so tightly that I can’t see anything, but Lauren slides her hands over my bare shoulders.
My cock gets semi-hard again.
“I make it worse?”
“Yeah,” I admit. My secret’s already out. “Your scent triggers it.”
“That’s why you’ve been such a dick to me.” She doesn’t sound upset about it, more thoughtful.
There’s so much more beneath Lauren Sterling’s exterior. She’s smart, perceptive, and actually caring. For some reason, knowing that makes my chest constrict.
This thing between us is going beyond lust. Beyond her scent sparking a physical attraction. There’s an unexpected emotional connection–a genuine one.
I may actually be falling for this girl. She’s becoming more than just a pheromone-directed crush. She could be a true mate–like in the human sense of the word.
A soul mate.
I lift her, my hands spanning her slender waist, and settle her on my lap, straddling my legs. “I’m sorry I was a dick.”
She’s still studying me. “It wasn’t real.” It’s not a question. She’s decided it for herself.
I give a weary shrug. “I don’t even know what’s real, Lauren. Who I am or who I’m supposed to be. I’m just trying to get by each day without losing control.”
She cups my face between her hands, and my belly shudders in at the tenderness of it. The pain behind my eyes ceases. The episode is past.
When she slants her mouth over mine, I suddenly believe I could be made whole again.
Not that I’d even been aware of how broken I was before this moment.
I don’t take over, I allow her soft, exploratory kiss. Her healing kiss.