I started giving her as much space as I could, thinking that she might settle down and then we could take the time to get to know each other properly, and she would see that I wasn’t a threat to her.
I thought things were getting better. She started to talk to me more, offer more casual touching and even some affection.
But then she saw Ace and I together one day, laughing as he pinned me to a tree in the garden and kissed me, breathlessly unbuckling my jeans. I caught her watching us. And I just knew from the look in her eyes that shehatedthe idea of us. Absolutely despised it.
* * *
I break off for a minute to collect my thoughts. The strain of our conversation is leaking into the pack bond, and I push away the questioning tugs from the others. I’m glad they’re not here today.
“What did she do?” Harper whispers. She’s curled into me like a cat, still holding tightly to my hand. She hasn’t moved, didn’t flinch even when I confessed the details of mine and Ace’s relationship. Her warm eyes watch me, but I don’t feel like I’m on show. I feel like she’s waiting for me to fall so she can catch me.
“It was a few weeks later. Elinor asked if we could work together on a special dinner. It seemed like such a huge step forward. We spent an hour talking about it, and for the first time I felt like things were starting to fit together, that we were all finding our places in the new dynamic. She was coming to the end of her probation period, and the pack were talking about bringing her in permanently.
“So, I took the list she gave me, and I drove to the store she wanted a certain dessert from. She told me their apple pie was the best in the state and I had to try it.
“It was getting dark, and they caught me as I went to my car. The lighting was bad, and I was distracted. I didn’t even hear them come up behind me.”
A squeeze on my hand lets me know that Harper’s still here with me. I glance over and see the tell-tale sheen of tears glistening in her eyes. “It’s okay,” she says when I pause. “Take your time.”
“There were five of them. Her brothers, and a few friends. They had baseball bats and the first hit broke my hipbone. They kept joking about how I wouldn’t be such a pretty alpha anymore by the time they were done. I was pretty sure I was dying. And then one of them leaned down with something in his hand. A knife.”
I’ll never forget the way it glinted in the dark. The searing burn as they carved a line down my face.
Harper cries quietly next to me, her head pressing into my shoulder and her leg lined up against mine.
“I woke up in the hospital. And I didn’t have any sight left in my left eye.”
I leave out the details of the therapy, the adjustment of learning to move and balance again without my sight. The pain the first time I tried to run through a Judo exercise and landed on my ass like a five-year-old.
“I want to kill that bitch. Where is she now?” Harper’s fury takes me aback. She’s… growling?
I pull her closer to me and lift her into my lap, wrapping my arms around her tightly. Closing my eyes, I breathe in her cinnamon scent, letting it ground me.
“She was gone, love,” I breathe. “She didn’t come to the hospital. When the pack came back home, she’d packed her shit and left. Nobody’s seen her since.”
Gone, but not forgotten. A rip down the very soul of our pack. The heartbreak of Devlin and Rogue that they hadn’t picked up on it…
“And Ace?” Harper asks gently. It’s clear that she understands.
Shaking my head, I press my lips together. “Ace nearly tore himself apart when he found out what had been happening. He went looking for the group on his own, came back covered in blood. He kept trying to talk to me, but I just… closed myself off. Locked myself into a cage inside my head and told myself that maybe this is what happens when alphas stray out of their lane.”
“That’sbullshit,” Harper says, outraged. “Gabe. You can’t think like that!”
She jumps up, escaping my arms and paces in front of me. I can’t take my eyes off her, fierce and furious on my behalf. She’s glorious. Her red hair flies out behind her as she stalks up and down, fists clenched.
She reels back to me. “Have you ever spoken to Ace properly about this?”
I shake my head, softly. “Love, the first time Ace and I have spent any kind of quality time in the same room since then has been in the last few days. Since you arrived.”
She bites her lip, surprise flashing over her expression. “What difference have I made?”
Her question holds a tinge of self-disgust, and I sigh. What a pair we are.
“You didn’t need to do anything but be yourself. Since you’ve arrived, I’ve seen more of my pack than I have in months. You make it so much easier to forget everything that’s happened.”
She sits back next to me and tugs my fingers away from my scar, replacing it with her palm. I watch her face as she gently strokes down the line, thirsty like a man seeking water in the desert. My mouth is parched for just a sip of Harper.
“This scar,” she whispers, “is beautiful, Gabe.”
