I keep myself busy until Friday afternoon, and then the quiet comes crashing down around me. Campus is still locked down and while omegas are allowed outside the omega residences now, parties have been discouraged. Not that I’m in the mood to force smiles and act like I’m not one strong shove away from breaking into a million pieces.
The tears come when I flop down in my nest and switch my phone on for the first time all week.
I scroll quickly through the group chat with Alyssa, Bitsy, and Ellie, reply to a text from my brother Hawthorn, who cheekily wondered if I’d recovered from my All Saints’ Eve hangover, and then I tap Luca’s name in my notifications.
I swallow hard and tap the last voicemail message he left me.
“Juniper, you have to believe me,” he swears, his voice distant, swallowed up by the wind gusting across the quad. “It’s not what you think. Please let me—”
Someone calls his name, and the call cuts off, leaving me staring at the screen of my phone, tears streaming down my cheeks.
I shatter. For the first time since I fled from his dorm, running all the way back to my cottage, the dam of numbness breaks, and I feeleverything. Raw sobs claw free from me, tearing at my throat and racking my body as I try to curl so tightly into myself I’ll disappear.
My grief is a horrible thing, as every happy memory I made with Luca sours: our first time meeting on the bridge when he growled that helikedwhen I perfumed for him; how we studied on the bridge while it stormed, lightning flashing as rain pounded the shield he’d created; the way he swept me up into his arms on the Feast of Marmora and kissed me like I was the very air he needed to breathe; the way he touched me, veneration in his hesitant touch, the first time he took me to bed; how he purred for me that day like a mate would.
How I gave him all of myself on All Saints’ Day and how he made me yearn for a pack for the first time in years.
How I was so sure thatsomehowhe would be my future. My alpha.
He saved me from my despair, was the one to help me temper it with joy and hope. He kept me going when I thought all was lost.
And now I’ve lost him. Everything that was, everything that could have been.
Some of ithadto be true.
Please, saints save me, let some of it have been real.
* * *
I wake earlythe next morning with a dull headache and a throat scratchy from crying myself to sleep and find a text from Marcus from last night flashing on my phone.
>
Sure enough, there’s a mug of tea on the landing, now stone cold. I pick it up and drift down the stairs to pour it out. Only to find Marcus asleep on the sofa, one of his precious paperbacks on the floor beside it.
My heart squeezes and I make my way down the stairs as quietly as I can, determined not to wake him. I’m watching the kettle so I can take it off the heater before the alarm sounds when I hear a sleepy “Juniper?” behind me.
I look over my shoulder and a smile curves my lips as I take my honor guard in. He’s mussed from sleep, his hair in disarray and his eyes squinted against the gray morning light filtering into the small cottage we share. “Hey. Sorry, I didn’t mean to wake you so early.”
He glances at his phone through one cracked eye. “It’s six. That’s not early.”
I pull down another mug and hang a tea bag from its handle. “It is if you were up late last night trying to care for me. Thank you for the tea, by the way.”
“You didn’t drink it,” he guesses.
“I didn’t get your text until this morning.” I squeeze a bit of honey into my mug and then pour water into both of them. “You didn’t have to sleep on the sofa.”
“I wanted to be close in case you needed anything. I’ve been worried about you.”
My traitor heart squeezes again and, while Marcus may be immune to my perfume, I know he cares for me more than most honor guards care for their charges. Bitsy’s honor guard, Connor, just barely tolerates her antics, and Ellie’s honor guard, Jace, is as professional as can be. Neither is the type to accept a cup of tea while staring up at their omegas, their eyes crinkled in concern. Nor the type to offer to share the other half of the woolen blanket that’s normally folded on the back of the sofa because the gray November morning has left a chill in the cottage.
I take the other end of the sofa, curling up under the blanket, and wrap my hands around the hot mug. “I’m going to be okay,” I say quietly.
“I know. But that doesn’t mean I won’t worry until you are. And, fuck, Juniper, an omega was just snatched right out from under her pack’s noses.”
“It wasn’t Luca,” I whisper, my voice thick with emotion.
He blows on his tea and then nods thoughtfully. “I know. I heard what Kel said. I don’t know much about Pack Montrose, but I don’t doubt Pack Radcliffe’s reach. They could have made it happen.”
