Page 16 of Pack’s Prize
I held my breath, bracing for his touch.
My vision blurred.
“Ava,” Elias said, but his voice didn’t sound like it had before, rough and needy. He sounded… worried.
“Ava,” he said again, and his massive hand came up to cup my cheek. His hand was wet–or, no, it was my cheek. “Ava, are you okay?”
* * *
I wasn’t okay.
“I’m so, so sorry,” I whispered. My lashes were heavy with tears and I knew they were probably clumping together unattractively. “I thought I was ready.No, IknewI was ready–”
“Shh,” Elias said. “Shh.It’s okay.” He was still naked, leaning against the headboard of the bed while I sat curled in his lap.
I had spilled the whole damn story: how Roman and his pack had courted me, had led me on, and on, andonforthree damn years.
And now, even when I’d left them, I apparently couldn’t leave them behind.
“I’m sorry,” I said again between sniffles. “For unloading all this baggage on you. This isn’t how I imagined this going. I’m not usually like this, and… I won’t slip up like this again. I promise, I’ll be more with it when we’re in public.” I wiped my eyes and laughed. “God, I’m glad this isn’t a real first date, I’d be even more mortified.”
Elias stiffened behind me, his arms tightening around my shoulders.
“I just–I spentthree yearswith them, three of mybest years–”
Theo scoffed. “They don’t sound that great to me.”
“You don’t understand,” I said, suddenly defensive. “Ilovedthem–”
“And that’s why you’re here, trying to fuck them out of your system?” Theo asked, eyebrows lowered.
His shot struck home, the guilt in my chest turning bitter.
“Yeah, well,” I snapped back. “Look how well that turned out.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
“You don’t evenlikeomegas,” I said, my voice slipping into a whine. I took a deep breath, trying to steady my rapid heartbeat, my breaths that still came too shallow. I didn’t wait for them to argue with me. “You can, uh,” I said, looking down at the crumpled sheets around me, “I can go, and you can finish without me.”
That was a nice perk of hooking up with the other alphas in your pack, wasn’t it?No omega, no problem.
“Ha.” Michael. “I don’t think so, Ava.”
My heart sank. I’d ruined their night: promising afun,casualhookup and then going full melt-down basketcase on them.
“Well, even so,” I said, pulling the blanket around me tighter, and wriggling out of Elias’s arms and off the bed to stand next to it. “I’ll go, so you can…”
What, cuddle?
The thought was almost enough to make me smile. Almost.
“So you can get some sleep,” I settled on. “I should go.”
“Ava,” Elias said, his brow furrowed. “Do you want to leave?”
Of course I did: I wasmortified. I’d eaten their fancy dinner, seen them at their most vulnerable, and then, at the last second, given them three matching pairs of blue balls.
And then I’d spent a good ten minutes sobbing about my ex.