What else am I supposed to do? I rejected her.
He snorts in disgust but doesn't say anything else to me.
I follow my father to the communal lodge in silence. I have no right to the indignation and jealousy threatening to eat me alive from the inside out. Who am I to stop her from finding a solution to her own problems? She's got a better chance at it than I do. Like the Bridger Second said, it's being offered to her on a golden platter. I don't have a right to stand in her way. I should be wishing her the same success that I need for myself.
Parker closes the distance to meet me when we approach the lodge. He's as stone faced now as he was before we got here. The weight of this situation hangs on his shoulders differently than it does mine, but it's still there. “Well?”
I slow my pace to let him fall in place beside me and he slings his arm across my shoulders. “The Bridger pack is off limits,” I tell him. “With no wiggle room. And we get our own place while we're here.”
“That's good, at least.”
I nod. “Yeah.”
“What else?”
I don't immediately answer. It's already going to be hard. “She's here.”
He lowers his voice to a whisper. “Eugenia is here?”
I nod.
“Shit.”
I nod again.
“Well.” He sighs. “It can't get much worse. At least we get our own place.”
“It can.”
“What is it?”
I take a few steps before I answer. “She's here looking for a replacement for me.”
“Oh.”
Yeah, oh.
“We'll just have to avoid her, that's all. It'll be alright, Cross.”
He's wrong. It only takes us three days to find out exactly how not alright it is. The Bridger pack females are off limits and I don't intend to test that boundary. I've exhausted the females in my pack in more ways than one and I'm not trying to test that boundary, either. The Barrett females would as soon shoot me as they would let me court them. That only leaves the Talbot pack and the Fisher pack; and those women have been persistent. I can hardly take a drink or wipe my ass without running into one of them. I have had to fend off so many different types of women that I'm dizzy with their clinging scents.
“I'm going to go for a run with my dad,” I announce when Parker steps out of the bathroom drying his hair with a towel.
“Everything alright?” he asks.
“Yeah. I just need to think and he wants me to run with him and the other alphas.”
Parker nods and yells as he goes down the hall to the bedroom where all of our clothes and things are. “I might head over to the lodge. There's supposed to be a bonfire.”
“Okay,” I call. “Be careful. I should be back in time to meet you.”
“Sounds good.”
I leave wearing just my runners and a pair of gym shorts. I'll be stripping soon anyway, so there isn't much point in putting on anything else. Alpha Bridger's cabin is a few minutes' jog away and I can manage that in a pair of shorts if I pretend no one is watching me.
Two minutes feels like two hours when every pair of unmated female eyes are glued to every step I take. Some of them are eyeing me with interest, others curiosity, and a large portion with distaste, but I make it to Alpha Bridger's back yard without being catcalled or screamed at.
“You alright, son?” Dad asks me, trying to hide the smirk taking up half his face. “Somebody chasing you?”
