That couldn’t be a coincidence.
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
“Are you expecting a call?” Mike asked as Carter again glanced at his cell phone where it sat on the table beside his plate. “You didn’t have to meet me for breakfast if you had something else going on. My feelings wouldn’t have been hurt.”
Carter looked at the screen one more time before turning his attention to his squad leader. “I can’t stop worrying about Hadley, even though I know she’s fine with Karissa, Kat, and Hale at the magic shop.”
“If you want to go over there, that’s cool,” Mike said, sipping his coffee.
Carter shook his head. “No. Hadley’s fine. Besides, I need to talk to you.”
Their server came by then to take their order before he could say more, giving Carter time to think and get everything straight in his head. Thankfully, ordering his usual bacon, eggs, toast, and pancakes at the Pack’s favorite diner didn’t take away from his focus.
Mike had called this morning, wanting to talk about what had happened at Hale’s apartment last night. Which was a nice way of saying that Hale had mentioned the fact that Carter had lost control again and Mike wanted to grill him about the details. Carter couldn’t blame his pack mate for wanting to talk. As his squad leader, Mike needed to know if Carter was getting better—or worse. And while he was hopeful that Hadley was right about the relationship between him and his omega trending in the right direction because of the soul mate bond, the reality was that he’d still lost it. He’d slashed up that guy’s chest on the roof and even if the guy had killed himself, it was still something that could come back to haunt the whole Pack.
“I guess you told Gage about my episode on the roof last night?” he said after the server left, deciding to go ahead and pull the band-aid off all at once. “Is he pissed?”
“Yeah, I told him,” Mike snorted. “He is our boss. But no, he’s not mad. He’s worried about you like he would be worried about any of us.”
Carter sighed, knowing what Mike was trying to say. Gage was the alpha of their pack, but more than that, he truly cared about them.
“I know most of the important parts about what happened last night but tell me about what specifically triggered your loss of control,” Mike said.
Sipping his coffee, Carter told his pack mate about the scene that he’d discovered when he got to the roof, of Hadley being chased and hounded by Strickland and the other guy.
“I couldn’t let her get hurt,” he finished, feeling his heart pound harder at the thought. “I charged, and before I was halfway across the roof, my omega was driving the train, and I was a passenger along for the ride.”
He stopped talking when the server showed up, a big tray laden with plates of food, coffee, and a few small pitchers of warm maple syrup.
“Did your omega throw the guy off the roof?” Mike asked.
Carter shook his head. “No. I maintained enough awareness of my surroundings to know I didn’t do that. I slammed into him to get him away from Hadley, but I didn’t do anything else. A couple seconds later, Karissa knocked out his partner. After that, Strickland apparently did the math and decided he didn’t like the odds, so he jumped off the roof. That’s when the other guy decided to bail, too.”
“Do you think he forgot how high up they were or just assume he’d survive the fall from the roof because Strickland could?”
“No idea,” Carter admitted with a shrug as he poured syrup on his pancakes. “But before you and the chief got there, we were trying to figure out if Strickland has enough sway over these men that they’d kill themselves rather than risk being captured.”
“Wow,” Mike said, picking up his fork and digging into his scrambled eggs. “Well, it sounds like your omega did what was necessary to save Hadley. It also sounds like you might have taken steps toward getting your omega under control.”
Carter sighed, using his fork to cut a big wedge into his stack of fluffy pancakes. “I’m not so sure that’s the case. While I was more aware of what was going on around me last night, I still wasn’t the one in control. If it hadn’t been for Hadley, I would have followed that guy right off the roof. As it is, I almost took her with me. She’s my soul mate and I almost killed her.”
Across from him, Mike scooped up a forkful of eggs, then chased it with a piece of bacon. “But you didn’t.”
Carter frowned down at his plate, the memory of what happened last night on that roof playing through his head.
“I don’t trust myself to not screw this up, Mike,” he finally said. “And I’m not just talking about hurting her. What if I do something—say something—to make it all blow up in my face? What if I’m so messed up that I chase her away? After this thing with Strickland is over and Hadley’s safe, maybe I should put a little distance between us until we’re sure I’m not a ticking time bomb.”
Mike paused with his mug of coffee halfway to his mouth to gaze at him with an expression Carter couldn’t read. After a moment, he set the cup on the table, untouched.
“I had a soul mate once,” Mike said quietly. “Before I was even a werewolf. We were supposed to get married.”
Carter did a double take. How had he not known that? “What happened?”
“She died, along with our baby,” Mike said, dark eyes filled with pain. “It was while I was undercover. I won’t go into the details, but suffice to say, they died because I was more worried about what I was doing at the moment, assuming I’d have all the time in the world with them. I was wrong and I lost everything.”
Carter sat there in stunned silence, a hundred questions going through his head and no idea which one to ask first. Or if he should ask any of them at all.
“I’m sorry,” he finally mumbled.
