Page 91 of Tempting Fate

Chapter Thirty-Six

Patch

Flynn’s head jerks up when someone knocks on the door. I bite back a sigh. He’s been drifting around the flat with me for the past few days, as we both wait for the hammer to fall.

I don’t know why. This is what he wanted, wasn’t it? Well, not this. That’s not charitable of me. He wanted me to tell Em, I mean. Which doesn’t mean it was his fault, but—

I drop my head into my hands. Flynn has gone to answer the door anyway, and as he shuts it, I get a whiff of our visitor.

Dax.

My wolf perks up even as I try to calm him. Dax isn’t part of our pack anymore. Of course I know he already rang Millie. She’s called every day since it happened, but I haven’t answered.

“Hey,” he says when he comes into the room. It’s smaller with three of us in it. I don’t get off the sofa.

“Hey.”

Dax sighs, then comes and sits down anyway, budging me over with his hip. “Hey!”

“You weren’t going to move.”

Flynn snorts. “Want something to drink? We’ve got beer.”

Not like it does us any good. Can’t get drunk even if I want to, and at night I kind of want to. Has to be better than not sleeping, my thoughts spiralling about Em and Jamie and the fact that they’re my mates and now I might never see them again.

“Yeah, thanks.”

Flynn grabs three beers, though the look he gives me before he hands me one is speculative. I shrug at him. I don’t know what he wants from me.

I don’t know what they all want from me.

Dax is silent as he opens his beer and takes a drink. None of us talk, in fact, and for those few minutes, the anxious twisting in my chest eases.

“What’s the plan, then?” Dax asks. That feeling returns with a vengeance. I sigh and shake my head before I down the rest of my beer.

“There is no plan,” I say. “Well, not one that I have any say in. I think Alpha Deacon’s still debating it with Alpha Axel.”

“They might still let you stay?” Dax ventures. Flynn shakes his head. We all know that won’t work. If I’d been in Alpha Kieran’s pack, maybe, but I’m not even certain of that. Alpha Deacon’s favouritism can only extend so far.

“No, I have to go. If I’m lucky, they’ll let me join Millie’s pack. But that’s if her alpha will take me. Otherwise, I think there’s some rural pack Alpha Deacon knows. Last resort kind of thing.”

“It wasn’t your fault,” Dax says.

“Whose else could it be?” I shrug. I wanted to blame Em for a minute. He streamed it, after all, and that was a foolish move. But how could he know it was true? I’ve seen the video that was sent to him— Alpha Axel has been trying to track down the wolf in it, but Alpha Deacon thinks he might be a lone wolf who moved on weeks ago. “I should have just sat him down and told him.”

“Does he know?” Dax asks.

“No.”

He sits up straight, and I smell his surprise. “You haven’t told him?”

“I mean, I said it. About Em, back in Alpha Axel’s office. But no, I haven’t told either of them.”

Even Flynn blinks at that, though I’m sure he has to have worked it out already. All the pieces have fallen into place, and although my wolf has spent the last few days scrabbling at the edges of my mind, trying to get free and shift and take me there regardless of what I think about it, I haven’t allowed him to.

There are limits to what fate can provide, despite what we’ve been led to believe. I can’t stay in London. Jamie is from here. He’s part of a pack here. And Em… Em can’t stay here either, but he’s hardly had a chance to even adjust to the idea that magic is real. I can’t drag him off to some random pack somewhere, not when I don’t know where I’m going.

Maybe it would work a few years from now, but if Em doesn’t know, he might be better off never knowing. The bond still isn’t truly forged. Even I might end up falling in love.