“I’ll be waiting,” Steven apprised me. “Just gimme a call. Anytime.”
“For God’s sake, drive away,” Wade growled, poking me in the ribs.
His touch startled me, the uncomfortable jab stilling my fugue state, making everything slip back into focus.
“I’ll be looking forward to hearing from you,” Steven concluded, hitting me with a similar look to the one Wade had gotten from Skye.
I waved, rolled up the window, and pulled away from them, exiting the parking lot by the same route I’d entered.
“What the hell was that?” he barked at me.
“I—sorry.”
“Look at me.”
I turned slowly.
“Shit, pull over.”
I complied immediately, stopping on the street beside a mailbox.
“We need to change places; you shouldn’t be driving.”
“No, I––”
“Now.”
Following directions, I got out of the car. We passed each other in front, and then he was behind the wheel and I was in the passenger seat, both of us pulling on our seatbelts.
“I thought wolves couldn’t get stoned,” he griped at me, pulling away from the curb.
“We can’t,” I answered, realizing that I needed more water. “I must—I’m dehydrated, I think. We need to stop and get me some water.”
“You have water in the back.”
“I drank it all.”
“Okay, I’ll stop, but what’s with your eyes?”
Pulling down the visor, I flipped open the mirror, and when the light came on, I was faced with blown pupils that made my irises appear jet black. I looked lobotomized.
“Did you take something?”
“No…I—no.”
“Then what the hell?”
I had known what Graeme Davenport had wanted to hear. When we were in the laundry room and he said I knew who he was, I knew what to say to get what I wanted. He wanted to be called alpha, the wolf equivalent of “Daddy” for many members of the jarl, and for me to go all weak and willing on him. I knew how to play it, how to get an alpha believing they had all the power and that I was just a docile little lamb of an omega. They got off on that, and it was the quickest way to get laid. Because yes, I’d slept with many. It was a secret, a huge one, no one could ever know, but it had never meant anything. I had wanted Graeme just as badly as I had the others, so I said and did what I knew he would respond to. It was my regular act. Only after did I show them that they’d fucked a tiger, not a kitten, because I was even more unaffected than they were. As their dicks were in the process of shriveling up, that was when I made my exit.
But was that what happened? Because now that I was thinking about it, Graeme had been looking at me oddly, like he was confused, like I was not what he expected. But he hadn’t turned away from me, had maintained direct eye contact, and was just as strong and powerful standing there as he’d been initially. His look conveyed irritation, perhaps a bit of confusion, but that was it. What did it mean? And what was with me feeling unbalanced when my mind had drifted to him earlier? I had thought about being in bed with Steven, and the revulsion—
My chest tightened, and it felt as though my heart seized, like every muscle in my body clutched at once. The choked cry tore from my throat as Wade stomped on the brakes. I heard him yell my name, but it was like he was far away instead of right next to me.
I grabbed for the door handle as my body spasmed, and I lifted up off the seat, my back arching up tight in a rictus of pain.
Frozen there, I felt a blast of cold air when the door opened, and there were hands on me, between my shoulder blades, on my abdomen, trying to force me down into the seat, to make my body fold in half so I could sit once more. But his hands, Wade’s, were not what I needed.
I had pleaded with Graeme to take me. Had called him not just alpha, but my alpha, and now, suddenly, I could hear the words vibrating down deep inside.
My alpha.
But that wasn’t possible. I wasn’t a beta or a gamma. I couldn’t be his true mate. And if I wasn’t, then this couldn’t be what I thought it was. I couldn’t be calling for him. Omegas didn’t mate. Omegas bonded, that was all. All we were capable of.