Page 203 of All Packed Up

The innocent concern in his voice made her skin crawl.

Gavin leaned into Roman, whispering in tones too quiet to hear, but she read the worry in their gazes loud and clear. It had to be fake worry. False concern. Another lie.

This wasn’t happening. What the actual fuck were they talking about?

Her cheeks heated with frustration, with anger. “I don’t have any kind of condition! Stop talking about me like that!” she shouted.

Derek was lying. Absolutely lying to her face. To all of their faces.

He had to be.

The bite mark on her neck tingled, and she couldn’t help but reach out instinctively to see… to see what? She didn’t know. But what she felt was… nothing. Where the bond should have been was some kind of block. Like staring down a dark empty tunnel and searching for the tiniest bit of light because you knew there was a door at the end. But instead there was nothing.

“You’re bipolar, Wendy, and you’re having a manic episode. The prescription I canceled wasn’t birth control, it was the medication you’ve been taking to balance you out. They tried to fill the wrong dosage, and I canceled it to have them refill it the correct way. That’s all.”

With nothing but that echoing emptiness in her mind, she shook her head.

“You’re lying!” she bit out through clenched teeth. The audacity couldn’t be measured. Who was he to spin such a baseless lie? She turned to Nic and Griffith. “He’s lying,” she repeated, pleading with them to believe her.

Someone had to, because she wasn’t sure she did.

Wendy wanted to fist her fingers in her hair and pull. She just couldn’t comprehend what these alphas were doing. It was just… so impossible. How did she reason with someone who twisted reality so viciously?

Movement from the corner of her eye caught her attention, and she twisted her head to find Nic’s gaze locked on her.

“What is it?” she questioned. His lips were tightened in a thin line, and she couldn’t read his expression.

“When they first came to the apartments asking about you, they told Arlo you were sick.”

That was all Nic voiced, but she could read between the lines. The doubt creeping in like skeletal hands from each direction to drag her back into the waiting, cruel hands of the Sterling Pack.

“You don’t believe them,” she scoffed, tilting her head at the beta.

But the seed of doubt they planted was taking root. She could see it in the frown of his lips, the furrow in his brow.

Wendy laughed in disbelief. But how could she blame them?

Who would believe one omega over four alphas? And how… Why would they lie so confidently about it?

Was Wendy really so unlucky as to stumble upon four men—alphas—who were capable of doing something like this to someone? To their omega?

“No,” she denied, shaking her head. “They have to be the ones with the condition!” Wendy said, waving a hand at them, pleading with her gaze for Nic and Griffith to believe her. “Who else would make something up like that?”

“Wendy, what type of person would deny the alphas who have spoiled and doted on and cared for them from day one? What type of person would run away on the edge of her heat, throwing themselves recklessly into danger like that?” Derek asked, stepping forward to address her, making sure her attention was on him as he dealt the final blow. “A manic one, Wendy.”

She felt like she’d been punched in the throat, her head snapping back as if she’d been hit.

Briefly, her gaze glanced over the other three, raw concern and sadness and thinly veiled urgency wafting from them. As if they were worried for her. As if all they wanted was for her to come home.

What if she was wrong?

Wendy ran a hand through her hair, bit her lip to keep it from wobbling.

This wasn’t fair.

Wendy wasn’t having a manic episode. If anything, these alphas made her manic by spinning all these lies!

She couldn’t have run away because of nothing. Something was wrong with these alphas.