Page 79 of Tempting Fate

Chapter Thirty-Two

Patch

I don’t know what Jamie is doing here. I mean, I know I asked for him—I panicked when Sage, one of Alpha Axel’s betas, had her hands on Em, and I wanted Jamie with us. Em looked confused at first. Hurt. Like he thinks it’s unfair that Jamie’s known this secret all along, but he hasn’t.

That’s not his fault. The rest is. It’s mine, too.

“I explained everything,” I say. My voice is flat and I can hardly hear anything past the whine of my wolf in the back of my mind. “We might have destroyed it all tonight.”

Em whimpers. He’s quiet about it, clearly trying not to make any sound at all, but my entire body jerks with the need to comfort him. Except I can’t. I’m angry, too. He came here looking for us, and he didn’t once think that it might not be a good idea to put that all over the internet?

“How do we fix it?” Jamie asks. His mouth is set in a stubborn line, and my heart breaks all over again. They’re both my mates. They are. But I can’t choose my mate over every other wolf. I can’t… I don’t want to leave. Even though I’ll probably have to anyway.

“We don’t,” I say. “We can’t.”

“Of course we can.”

I growl low in my throat. I’m losing them anyway, but he’s making it worse. “Can you scrub a video from the entire internet? There’s no undoing what we just did!”

“What I did,” Em says. He lifts his head, finally, and I bite back a whine at the sight of his red-rimmed eyes. “But he’s right. We can’t fix this. I have to go.”

Jamie sits back. He doesn’t seem to notice or care that he’s sitting on the carpet. He just stares at us for a moment before his gaze hardens and he shakes his head.

“I can’t believe the pair of you are giving up so fucking easily.” He looks at me. “Why am I here?”

“They got—”

“Why am I here?”

Because you’re my mate. Except if I explain that to him, I have to explain it to Em. What kind of life do we have together after this? Best-case scenario, we both follow Em back to wherever he came from. Would he even want that?

I can’t live without other wolves. I can’t live without a pack. I drop my gaze and Jamie lets out a sharp, sudden breath.

“At least Dax was brave enough to say it, when push came to shove,” he says, and I jerk my head up again, but he’s already getting to his feet. He steps into Em’s space and reaches for him slowly. When Em doesn’t dodge his touch, Jamie tilts his head up so they’re looking at each other. “We’ll do what we can to fix this. I’ll ask Kieran to help. He will.”

I don’t say he won’t. Alpha Deacon’s word is law. That’s all there is to it. If that changes, we have much bigger problems because that paves the way for a challenge.

Em reaches up and catches Jamie’s wrist. “He won’t.” He sniffs. “I-I don’t want to go, but I can’t make things worse. I’m sorry.”

His lips tremble and Jamie steps in before the tears fall again. He holds Em’s face against his chest and cards his fingers through his hair.

He doesn’t look at me. Neither of them looks at me.

Someone raps quietly on the door, and they give us a second before it opens. It’s long enough for Em to push Jamie back, though Jamie has a displeased edge to his scent. It only intensifies when Alpha Axel walks in first, and I want to tell him that it’s not my alpha’s fault, but Alpha Axel will know that Jamie is angry with him just as I do.

“Come on,” Kieran says to Jamie. “It’s time to go.”

“Em is coming with us,” Jamie says.

Kieran sighs. Sam looks as though he is gearing up for a fight, shoulders immediately tense. “No, he isn’t.”

Jamie tilts his head. He looks from Kieran to Axel to Deacon. “Fine. Which one of you is going to come pack all his shit up, then? What, were you planning to drive him outside the M42 and just leave him by the side of the road?”

“Jamie…” Lucien tries, but I don’t think he’s trying hard.

“No. I understand that this is a lot, and it’s very scary for all of you.” He turns a glare on Alpha Axel when Alpha Axel scoffs, and Alpha Deacon grabs Alpha Axel by the arm when he takes a step forward. “But traumatising him doesn’t fix this. Dropping your problem off doesn’t fix it.”

Alpha Axel growls. Jamie jerks in surprise, but he doesn’t step back; he’s standing between us and the rest of them, and I’m certain he knows it.