“What the hell is wrong with me?” Carter murmured, drawing her attention back to him as he tipped his head back to gaze up at her, his eyes brighter blue in his frustration. It hurt her like crazy to see him in so much pain, his control teetering on the edge.
“There’s nothing wrong with you,” she said earnestly, still caressing his hair, realizing that the blue glow in his eyes seemed to ebb and flow with the tension in his body. “You’ve been angry for a long time. Between the role it had in your decision to go into the Marines and the way it resulted in you becoming an omega, it wouldn’t be an understatement to say that anger has been the defining factor in your life. If that wasn’t enough to deal with, now you’ve reached the age your father never did.”
“So, you’re saying my loss of control started because of my birthday?” Carter asked, his eyes not glowing quite as much now, but still rimmed with that hint of electric blue. “But I don’t even think about my birthday.”
“Maybe not consciously, but I can guarantee that the collective unconscious part of your mind was fully aware of the significance of the event and reacted accordingly.”
“Accordingly?” Carter repeated, his tone incredulous. “I’ve been a werewolf for almost ten years, telling myself the entire time that if I kept it all under control, if I fought hard enough and never let anything slip, that I would truly be an alpha. I even started believing that part of my life was behind me, but now I guess that wasn’t true at all.”
“I don’t think it was ever true,” she said. “And by constantly shoving your omega further into the background, I think you did more harm than good. You tried to treat your omega—an essential part of your personality and the embodiment of all that anger you’ve been ignoring your whole life—like it didn’t matter. You shoved everything out of sight until your omega found a weakness—your fortieth birthday—and then it rebelled.”
“So, what the hell am I supposed to do?” Carter asked. “Because I can’t keep living like this, with my omega coming out whenever it feels like. How do I get it pushed in the background where it belongs?”
Hadley wondered if she should mention that his omega had probably been present for most of this conversation but decided against it. It would only upset him even more than he already was. “What if the answer isn’t pushing your omega into the background? What if you instead try to find some middle ground with it? Maybe if you don’t fight it, it won’t fight you.”
Carter frowned. “I don’t know if I can do that. Even if I thought it might somehow work, I can’t imagine how to even attempt it. Not after I’ve spent the past ten years fighting my omega fang and claw to keep him at bay.”
She wanted to tell him that this was about more than keeping his omega at bay. That in a symbolic way, learning to accept his omega would have a soothing effect on his out-of-control anger. But how could she put something like that into words he would understand?
“It’s not about fighting,” Hadley murmured, leaning forward to kiss him gently. “It’s about finding a balance. Instead of being an adversary, your omega could be a protector in those times when you need it the most.”
Carter didn’t respond. Instead, he sat up, then pulled the blanket and sheets back so they could slip under them. “I can’t help but wonder if your brother would still be alive if he’d just been able to find peace with the other half of his personality.”
Hadley snuggled against Carter, resting her head on his chest as he pulled the blanket up to cover them. Reaching out, he flipped off the bedside lamp, covering the bedroom in darkness.
“I want to find a way to make it work with my omega,” Carter said, his voice so low she could barely hear it. “But I don’t know how.”
“I don’t know how to do it either,” Hadley whispered against his chest. “But we’ll figure it out together.”
It was in that moment that Hadley realized she’d do anything for him. The idea of love entered her mind, but she quickly pushed it aside. It was way too early in their relationship for stuff like that.
Or was it?
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
“You seriously think you can build a fake person to take on Kamden’s skinwalker essence out of that?” Carter asked, skeptically eyeing the big pile of dirt sitting in the center of Kat’s newly completed warding circle.
“I agree it’s a long shot,” Kat admitted, glancing up from where she sat on the floor beside the circle with Lydia.
The two witches were making notes as they read through several ancient tomes scattered around them, and from the looks of it, they’d been at it for a while.
Karissa was standing off to the side of the room with Kamden.
“Theory generally supports the basic concept,” Lydia explained. “Simulacrums are essentially magical constructs that follow simple instructions imbued into them with an empowered token—a charmed object buried in the middle of the matrix material. Depending on your particular definition of the term, they could be considered a supernatural creature, even if they aren’t real in the technical sense. Kat’s idea rests on the foundations of that very loose interpretation. We’re hoping it’ll work in lieu of finding another skinwalker.”
Carter glanced at Hadley to see a doubtful expression on her face. He couldn’t blame her. This latest idea of Kat’s seemed a little out there.
Hadley had spent the morning and most of the afternoon at her office seeing patients and filling out insurance paperwork while Carter hung out in the lobby, reading magazines and keeping an eye on everyone who’d stepped foot into the practice. It’d been quiet, giving Carter plenty of time to think about everything he and Hadley had talked about the night before.
First, there’d been the epiphany that all his current control problems stemmed from repressed issues with his father and a failure to define the relationship with his inner wolf. Then there was Hadley’s suggestion that he needed to find peace with his omega. The combination had Carter staring at the ceiling for most of the night even with the comfort that came with having Hadley there in his arms. He knew she’d promised to help him through this, but as of this morning, they still hadn’t come up with any ideas on how to pull off of this acceptance thing. Truthfully, he wasn’t sure if it was even possible.
“So you’re going to turn this pile of dirt into something that looks like a supernatural creature and hope that it’ll contain Kamden’s skinwalker side?” Hadley asked, pulling Carter’s attention back to the present.
“Like I said, it’s a long shot,” Kat said, not bothering to look up from the notes she was writing out in a journal. “But at the moment, it’s the only thing I’ve come up with.”
Karissa had called about an hour ago asking if Carter and Hadley wanted to come over to Kat’s shop and help keep an eye on Lydia and Kamden. Not having anything better to do for the next few hours, they’d agreed but hadn’t expected to step into the middle of what seemed to be a tense philosophical debate between the two witches.
Carter hung back with Hadley, Kamden, and Karissa as Kat and Lydia politely argued over the feasibility of this plan, with Lydia insisting it was dangerous to get Kamden’s hopes up when the simulacrum would most likely disintegrate the moment his skinwalker essence was dumped into it. The only question was what would happen after that.
