Like a gentleman, Jerome opens the passenger door, and I slide in.
On the twenty-minute drive, we tell each other all about our packs. He’s got four Alphas, which sounds like a lot to manage to me, and they’re not scent matched. Noneof them cares. They fell in love at school and have been together since.
By the time we pull up to the address Marlie gave me, my anxiety has quieted to only the worry about what Derrick is hiding from me.
I climb out of the SUV and wave goodbye to Jerome before I notice where the address Marlie gave me led. Derrick’s rental car is in the parking lot of a health clinic.
What is he doing here?
Chapter Forty-Three
The nurseat the front desk waves at me as I exit the procedure room. “Will we see you in two days?”
“I’ll be here!”
This isn’t a pleasant experience, but I always leave in a great mood. I’m ready to get back to my Omega. I’ve been gone longer than I anticipated.
I squint against the sun, and when my vision focuses, I see Ariana standing in front of my car.
Oh, shit.
Ariana is standing in front of my car.
She looks like she’s upset but also pissed. Upset that she’s pissed? Pissed that she’s upset? Regardless, I know I’m the one who put that expression on her face.
“What are you doing here?” As I get closer, I can see that her hands are shaking, but she doesn’t reach for me for comfort. “What are you hiding from me?”
“This isn’t how I wanted you to find out.”
That wasn’t a smart thing to say. She takes a step back, betrayal painted across her features.
“I forgave you. I looked past your lies, bonded you,welcomed you into my pack and my bed. And now you’re lying to me again? How could you?” Tears trail down her cheeks. Ones that I caused, again.
“Please, let me explain.” I’m not above begging. This may not be how I wanted her to find out, but I’m not willing to let her suffer or hurt in hopes of hiding what I’ve been doing. I hold my hand out for her, praying she’ll trust me enough to take it. “I’ll show you.”
Tentatively, she slips her hand into mine and lets me pull her through the doors of the clinic. When we get inside, the nurse looks up in surprise.
“Back already?”
Ariana’s hand tightens around mine at the nurse’s familiar tone. “This is my Omega.”
They know that I’ve been keeping it a secret from her. The doctor was concerned about it at first, but when I explained that I was doing this to protect her, she stopped asking questions.
“Oh. Well. Come on, then. The procedure room hasn’t been cleaned yet. You can go over your file with her.” Her fingers dance across the keyboard. The printer beside her whirrs, and she grabs the pages. “Follow me.”
The small room still smells like my creamy pecan pie scent, and Ariana’s nostrils flare as soon as she crosses the threshold. I don’t like how sour she smells. I hate that I’ve ever given her a reason to think that I’d hurt her, but I know that my lies are still so fresh.
I shouldn’t have kept this from her.
I lift her onto the bed and step between her thighs.“When I left theExpectedhouse, I didn’t know if you’d ever want to see me again, and the last thing I wanted was for you to feel like you had to or risk getting sick.” I hand her one of the pages, but she doesn’t look down at it. “I’ve been coming here three times a week to harvest mypheromones. I’ve had them cryogenically frozen, so they won’t degrade over time. I wanted to make sure there was never any reason why you felt like you had to keep me in your life if you didn’t want to. If anything happens to me, or you decide you don’t want me around, you’ll have a stock of my pheromones to keep you healthy. They’re even working on a way to create synthetic pheromones based on a sample, so hopefully, if I don’t get enough stored up for you, they’ll be able to do that if the time comes.”
She breaks her eyes away from me and looks at the paper, not saying a word. I can barely breathe as I watch her read it. Will she be happy that I did this? Will knowing that she has another option now make her change her mind about me?
“Doesn’t it hurt?”
That’s not what I expected her to ask when she found out.
“It’s not great. There’s a machine that squeezes my knot to collect… the fluid.” She wrinkles her nose in disgust. Yeah, the whole thing sounds gross in a medical context. “And they take extractions from my armpits, too.”
