Page 202 of All Packed Up

Her gaze flipped back to the alphas. The alphas that had searched for her for weeks. The alphas she’d met in college who’d whisked her away and seemingly solved all her problems and worries.

But instead of solving them, they’d only created more.

“But you bit me,” she gritted in Derek’s direction, jaw clenched. The bite mark tingled as she slapped a hand over it, and it made her stomach turn.

Derek looked stricken. If she hadn’t felt his teeth in her neck, she wouldn’t believe the persona projected before her was capable of biting an omega against her will. “Wendy, you told me to.”

A rush of white-hot disbelief scored her.

He. Was. Lying.

Wendy remembered telling Derek no. Could still relive the way he’d ignored her, pressed her head to the side, pushing her temple into the mattress until the stretch of her neck ached. She blinked, shaking away the memory. The fear.

“No, I didn’t!” she yelled, voice breaking on the last word.

But as they stared at her, these all too genuine emotions painted on their faces, Wendy’s mind swirled with doubt.

She stared at the alpha, his manicured handsomeness, and wondered if she’d been wrong all along. Was she the problem?

But a hand squeezed tight around hers, and Wendy glanced at her beta. Nic’s eyes were dark with annoyance, and he squeezed again, offering comfort.

“Wendy… are you sure you want to do this here?” Derek asked, eyes flicking to the alpha and beta at her side. The silent pair.

She found Nic’s gaze first, a raging inferno of anger held in their depths. But not at her. Nic was with her. Nic believed her. And Griffith was just a stone of an alpha, she didn’t know if he was angry or if he believed her or if he was even feeling anything at all. That was how stoic he was.

But his presence offered her warmth, and somehow that was all she needed.

“Whatever you can say to me you can say in front of them,” Wendy pushed, and not only because she refused to be alone with them.

Suddenly she didn’t trust herself, and the others gave her some sort of stability, as fragile as it was.

What if I made it all up?

Did she get so in her head about everything that she’d blown it all out of proportion?

“Wendy, how long has it been since you’ve had your medication?” Derek asked, genuine worry in his voice. She’d never heard that tone from him before.

“You mean the birth control you canceled right as her heat was supposed to start?” Nic asked, and it startled her.

His voice was like steel. Wendy had never heard such a tone come from the beta, and the panic in her eased a bit. If Nic was still defending her, that had to mean she was worth defending, right? That meant she wasn’t in the wrong.

“You knew I was unhappy,” she argued. “That’s why you canceled my birth control, so you could trap me into a pregnancy with my heat, to keep me from running.”

“I knew this would bite us in the ass,” Roman said with a frown, and smacked Derek in the arm. “We shouldn’t have lied to her in the beginning.”

Her head spun. What the hell were they talking about?

“Care to share with the fucking class?” she asked, panic beating against her chest and squeezing her rib cage.

Her support was standing alongside her, but she felt so far away from them. Like the more the alphas talked the more distance there was between her and Griffith and Nic. Where were Tate and Arlo? They would believe her, right?

Tate’s first kiss with her had been to lock Derek out of the bond. He knew he wasn’t a good alpha.

But Derek just sighed like he was carrying the heaviest burden of his life. “Wendy, you don’t like it when we talk about this.” He was exasperated. As if speaking to a child.

“Talk about what?” she spat through ground teeth. She had no idea what he was referring to.

“Your condition,” he said, frowning. “Don’t you remember?”