Page 137 of All Packed Up

Heat flooded her cheeks, and she wished she could take back the last ten seconds. Why did she say that out loud?

Flustered, she stuttered to respond, removing her hand from Tate’s hair and Nic’s hold to wring her hands together. “I don’t feel sad, I just—” She paused, realizing she was so stuck because she didn’t know what to say, didn’t know how to express how she felt.

She couldn’t remember the last time she’d been asked to. She couldn’t remember the last time someone had cared enough to ask.

Heat swelled behind her eyes, and she squinted them closed, lifted her hands to cover the evidence. Her lips trembled, betraying her, and she squeezed out a frustrated breath. “I feel a lot of things. I don’t know what they are. My chest hurts,” she whined, and the alphas before her took action, even though she didn’t ask. She didn’t have to.

They tugged her gently down onto the mattress with them. Arlo pulled her into his side, sliding his arm around her shoulders and along the seat of the couch. Tate bunched up the covers between her and Arlo’s legs and ended up with his head on her thigh. Their scents surrounded her, and she tucked her head into Arlo’s shoulder, sliding her hands back through Tate’s hair. His blond locks were stupidly soft, and she liked feeling it slip through her fingers. So she scratched his head, tried to focus on the way the strands caught and separated between her fingers, but it all blurred under her tears.

Nic slid down to her right, and they absorbed him into the cuddle pile like he was meant to be there.

“What is it?”

Wendy shook her head. She was happy—no—grateful they were here. Trying to comfort her and offering support in a way she’d never realized was…

“Is this normal?” she asked, and she felt her question make them all tense. “The way you guys are…” She moved her hands in a circle to encompass them all. “Here for me. Is this how a pack’s supposed to be?” Her words were watery and sloppy, and they hurt passing her lips, and she didn’t know if she wanted the answer—

“I…” Nic began but stopped, and through wet blinks she watched him look to Tate and Arlo for help.

“I don’t know if it’s normal, per se, but it feels natural this way. I’m upset that you’re upset. We want to make you feel better.”

“And if you can’t?” Wendy asked. They couldn’t go back in time and make those alphas treat her better.

“Then we do what a pack does,” Arlo said, and she waited for his answer. “We be here for you however we can.”

“Ugh!” Wendy groaned and lifted her hands to wipe at her face. “I’m crying over shit that’s already happened. There’s no changing it now. What’s the point of crying about it now? It won’t fix anything.” But oh, how she wished it could.

This was all so strange, having them around her like this. Comforting her and holding her close and asking about her feelings and not making her feel ashamed of any of it.

“It doesn’t have to fix anything. You’re allowed to feel what you feel.”

She laughed through a sob. “That’s such a Tate thing to say,” she told the alpha.

Even though it hurt, this was good. It felt… She felt cared for.

Which only twisted the knife deeper, because whatever she’d had with those alphas, it hadn’t been a pack. Not if this was how a pack was supposed to be. They hadn’t been a family. The Sterling Pack hadn’t loved her or cared about her, at least not like this.

Those alphas had taken so much from her, had robbed her of so many years with a pack—any other pack—who would have loved her. She was only just realizing the enormity of what they’d done.

“I feel cheated. If this is what it’s supposed to be, if something like this is what I should have had all this time…” Wendy’s voice cracked, and the alphas and Nic curled tighter around her.

In all this time, there was one voice she hadn’t heard, and she blinked her tears away to search for the last person. Was Griffith horrified she was getting tears all over his nice bamboo sheets?

But instead of ridicule or anger or annoyance or anything she would have expected, she found… understanding. It was in the depths of his gaze as he stared at her from in front of the fireplace. When had he even moved?

As she met his gaze, she half expected him to tell her to suck it up. Part of her wished he would, because then the comfortable burn of annoyance could distract her from the looming sorrow.

But in that split second, she got lost in the tides of his eyes. Dark waves that chewed her up and spit her out. A similar, kindred anger. But what was Griffith agonizing over?

The light she saw shining through the darkness was shaped like Nic, and it was then she knew. Nic was who Griffith had been waiting for, whom he’d always been waiting for.

But that didn’t mean he didn’t care about her. It didn’t mean he didn’t think she deserved better.

“You’re allowed to mourn the pack you should have had,” the alpha backlit by fire said.

And mourn she did.

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