I made the choice. I shifted the dial. Our pack had always been rock-fucking-solid. Nothing could change that. When Tessa arrived, I just hadto have faith that she’d fit in like the missing piece of our puzzle. She’d finally finish our family.
“I get it," I said, acting like Tray and Dixon hadn’t derailed the original conversation. "Two years of searching, and she just falls into our laps through a scent-matching service. It does seem too good to be true."
“What if she doesn't remember me?” The vulnerability in Ryder’s voice was raw, unguarded. "What if that night didn't mean anything to her? Fuck, I could be clinging to a delusion.” His damp eyes were still locked on Tessa’s gown, as if the promise of it would disappear once he blinked.
Dixon snorted, but not unkindly. When he didn’t speak to sooth Ryder’s fears, I took the helm.
“Ryder, you have known Tessa was our soulmate for a long fucking time. Looking back, we should have supported you. It just was… too hard to see past our own pain and growing primal needs. You can’t predict how ferality will hit you. It’s brutal. But, still, we should have found a way to see past the haze. We should have trusted what that kiss meant to you.”
“Yeah,” Dixon grumbled, his happiness faded at the edges now. “If we’d believed you, man, we could have been looking for her all this time. We’d have found her too. I’m fucking sure of it.”
"You're both being too hard on yourselves," Ryder said, finally looking directly at us instead of staring at the only evidence we truly had of Tessa’s existence. A promise in an email meant nothing. A photo of her was pale proof. But the scent of her… was solid and undeniable.
"The ferality...” Ryder tried to speak again, but his voice cracked. Ryder closed his eyes for a heartbeat, inhaled through his nose, exhaled through his mouth, then parted his lashes. A hot tear slipped from his bloated, battered eye. He couldn’t seem to continue, so I spoke for him.
“Even at the beginning, even at stage one it changes everything. Then stage two hits and you’d do anything to feel better, to feel like yourself again. If you’re like me," I offered a wry, self-effacing smile, “you sign up for brutal scent-stripping treatments and suffer in silence. And it helps, but it’s killing you. You don’t want to tell anyone. Youdon’t want to be seen as weak when you’ve always had your shit together.”
“What are you talking about,” Dixon raised an eyebrow. “What fucking treatments?”
“My piano lessons were probably a little different than you imagined,” I shrugged.
“Dammit, Mac. Why would you keep that to yourself?” Ryder asked the million-dollar question.
“Pride, maybe?” I didn’t know what else to say. Did I lie to protect them? Or did I lie to protect their opinions of me?
“Pride,” Ryder murmured. “I know pride better than anyone. I pushed our pack to the goddamn brink because of my pride. I just knew Tessa had to be out there. She had to want me as badly as I wanted her. There were nights I couldn't even remember her face clearly, just the feeling of her lips against my mouth. The way her body molded against mine as if we’d been carved from the same piece of stone. For those few seconds, she’d completed me. She had to have felt it too, right? Then she was gone. She vanished, like smoke when a fire’s gone cold and not a single fucking ember is still warm.” His fists clenched. His face was drawn with pain.
“You both had it as bad as me,” Dixon murmured, his expression softening in a way that erased all memory of the rage-fueled guy we’d dealt with over the last year or longer. "I thought I was losing my mind half the time. Couldn’t remember my goddamn name when everything went red. Every time I lost it, the aftermath was like I had fucking amnesia. All I saw was the damage I’d caused. I didn’t remember doing it half the time. But the evidence was there. I couldn’t deny that the bull in the China shop was me.” He shoved his thumb hard into his chest. Still though, Dixon was in control of himself right now, not riding the cliff’s edge.
He gazed at me, and then Ryder. I saw how lonely he’d been while fighting his primal Alpha. That fact was burned into his tired, sad eyes. When he continued, his words hit like arrows through my heart.
“You guys should have been honest. I was losing my shit, letting all the darkness bleed into our pack, and you guys were suffering in fuckingsilence. We could have helped each other. We didn’t have to feel alone.” He dropped both hands into his lap, knitting fingers together tightly.
I watched Ryder wrestle with something internal before he responded to Dixon’s confession. “I was drowning, Dix. The only thing keeping me slightly sane was the memory of her.”
“And for my part,” I started to blame my past, the way I was raised, but I stopped myself. I was a grown man. It was time I stopped letting my parents’ cruel teachings define me. “I should have told you guys. You’re right, Dixon.”
That seemed to be what he needed to hear. He nodded, chin jutting out for a heartbeat. He blinked back moisture that was building in his eyes. And then he gave himself a shake and flipped the switch back to embracing happiness. He smiled. Beamed really. And it was sunshine. Dixon brand sunshine.
“We really have an Omega,” he breathed out.
“We really have Tessa,” Ryder agreed.
The bathroom door slammed, and Tray's footsteps echoed back toward us. When he plodded down the steps into the living room, his face had lost some of its forced lightness.
“So, I really look like a pile of shit.” He touched his face gingerly and grimaced. “When are the face fixing magicians supposed to be here?”
As if we were all acting out a pre-written script and his question was her cue, Catalina pushed through the garage door seconds later. She was in a hurry.
“The beauticians are running early. Let’s set up in the garage. We’ll open the overhead doors for natural light and,” she looked around the living room, “that way they don’t have to enter the house. If I saw this, I’d leave as soon as I arrived.”
By the time we’d moved into the garage, organized the tool chests and shop stools to create a makeshift salon, raised two of the overhead doors, and flipped on the mounted television to pass the time with aScentless in the Cityrerun, a blacked-out sedan sporting a sleek logo pulled into the drive. I hoped they were better than their slogan—If you’re bruised and feeling blue, Beta call the best.Beauty Mark Beta beauticiansseemed to flood from every part of the sedan a few moments after the engine died.
I’d seen stage makeup, and I’d seenstage makeup. These Beta guys and gals were confidently donning the latter.
“These guys are going to make us look good again?” Ryder asked incredulously.
“They’re the best in LA,” Catalina said sharply. “They’re also the only ones available on short notice, so you better cross your damn fingers and hope they’re as good as their website claimed.”
