“Yeah, but I don’t even know if I need to go now since there’s no trial,” I said.
A couple of long beats of silence stretched into the night.
“Whatever you want, baby girl,” Cam said, holding me closer.
I huffed a sigh. We all knew I would go to my session tomorrow, but tonight I didn’t want to think about it. Tonight, I just wanted to be with my alphas, see the stars, and remember that we were here.
Alive.
Free.
Together.
ChapterSixty-One
Theo
“I’m never coming back,” Josie announced as she walked into the lobby of her therapist’s office.
I leapt to my feet, meeting her halfway across the room and pulling her into my arms. She was trembling and I squeezed tighter, wishing my arms were enough to protect her from every bad thing that had ever happened.
“I mean it this time,” she said, her voice muffled against my chest.
“Okay, love. You don’t have to come back.”
After every therapy session, she said she would never return. And yet, every Tuesday, she asked me to drive her to her appointment.
I knew how she felt. We were all in therapy now and it was bloody horrible. At first, I’d just gone to support Josie, but I’d been forced to admit that it was actually helpful. I had a love/hate relationship with my therapist, who was helping me learn to express my feelings and ask my pack for help. Through it all, I was slowly realizing that my worth wasn’t based solely on what I could offer my pack—it was something intrinsic inside me.
It was still fucking hard work.
Josie and Cam were both doing some weird-ass trauma therapy called EMDR, and it was intense for all of us. I knew Josie tried to block her emotions from the bond during sessions, but inevitably, they seeped out. Cam had been banned from bringing her to therapy after he barged into her session, convinced that something terrible was happening because of the intensity of her emotions.
Josie’s hand automatically went to touch her most recent scar where Angie had removed the device. It was much cleaner than her other scar, a barely visible line in her skin, but when she got stressed, she would scratch it, sometimes drawing blood without realizing it. I gently pushed her hand away, running my fingers over the scar before leaning down to kiss it. Josie’s therapist had said it would take time for her body to realize the device wasn’t there anymore.
My mate entangled her hand in my hair instead. I purred softly, knowing we should head out to the car but unwilling to let her go yet. Being separated from her for the fifty-minute session put me on edge. None of us wanted to let her out of our sight. That was another thing my therapist said I needed to work on. Bloody unlikely.
“Want to get ice cream, angel?” I asked, wanting to do something to fix how she was feeling. My therapist’s voice floated in my head: feelings don’t need to be fixed.
Fuck that.
Josie was my omega, and I was always going to do everything I could to care for and protect her.
“Umm, I don’t know,” she said in a small voice.
She had gotten better about eating regularly, but food was still challenging for her.
“Or we could go home and see what Ben’s baking?”
Ben and Josie had been talking more seriously about opening their bakery. Josie was taking online graphic design and business marketing classes. Colleges in our province hadn’t opened up classes for omegas yet, but Lilah had managed to get Josie enrolled at a university in Sol. Ben and Josie were both anxious and doubted their ability to run a business, but I knew they could do it.
A smile tugged at Josie’s lips, and the knot in my chest loosened a touch.
“That sounds good,” she said.
I tucked her into my side, and we headed towards the car.
* * *
