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Luca’s intent gaze meets mine. “I wished that I had. I was abandoned. Rejected. I was too young to remember why. My Omega mom left me in the town center when I was precisely four years and five months old, wrapped in a blanket from her nest. For several years, that blanket was all I had of my first pack. The scent faded though.”
My heart breaks because I know that losing the scent is like losing them all over again.
“My pack’s scents are faded too.” When I speak to Sophie about this, she doesn’t understand. How could she? She hasn’t been through this. “I keep thinking that I can still smell them. But it ain’t real. It’s only a dream.”
“I would dream of my mom and dad.” Luca’s breath mingles with mine like he’s confessing something he’s never spoken about to anyone. “I’d wake up, confused. I wouldn’t know if they’d come back for me. But it wasn’t real. Once I presented with my dynamic, professionals and teachers told me that my pack had left me because I was different, too much, a broken Alpha.”
Fury surges through me. “Sons of bitches. That’s not true.”
Luca cocks his head. “But I am different. I remember that I had a sister. Why was I the one who was abandoned?”
“I don’t know.”
“It was winter, and Mom wrapped me in the blanket, kissed my forehead, and said, stay here. I was outside the Feed Store Café. It smelled nice, and I reckoned that if I was good, then Mom might buy me a pastry. When she walked away holding my sister’s hand, I stayed where I was obediently. My legs hurt but I kept as still as a statue for hours. I didn’t move. I was good. But Mom didn’t come back. That night was freezing. I still didn’t move. The next morning, some people I didn’t recognize dragged me away. I cried and fought, telling them that my pack was coming back for me. They didn’t believe me.”
My throat is thick with tears. “Did they find your pack?”
“It took them months.” Luca’s eyes are dry. Sharp. “My pack told the authorities that I was bad. They wouldn’t take me back.”
He looks at me challengingly like he is expecting to be thrown out.
As if he expects this heat to be over before it begins.
I meet his gaze just as challengingly. “I’m sorry. They’re the assholes. I don’t reckon you’re bad. And you don’t need to make yourself smaller around me. For what it’s worth, I like the man I’ve met, and I’m not going anywhere.”
“Enough to trust me in your nest…?”
Wait, has the smart asshole just played me?
I feel like I’m playing chess with him.
But it’s a hell of a rush.
Luca has just been brave enough to let down his walls and tell me about his past. I have the sense that he does that with…damn well no one.
Unless, possibly, you count the butterflies.
I tip up my chin, before holding out my hand to him.
He blinks. “What…?”
“I’m offering you my hand. You can take it if you want.”
Luca’s expression clears. “Why didn’t you say so, Omega?”
It hits me that Beau would have claimed this perfect Alpha, accepting him into his pack, in a heartbeat. He would have shown him that he wasn’t broken, as much as he did the same for Evan and me.
I’m not broken — shattered — either.
I drag Luca after me down the stone path through the butterflies toward the inn. “You’ve made me brave enough to face something that I never reckoned I could again.”
“Where are we going?”
“To meet my pack.”
CHAPTER NINE
Acorn Inn, Oak Hollow
