Betrayed Forced Mate (Rosecreek Special Ops Wolves #4)

And it did. Those days, it felt like she was a permanent installation in my body, something nestled into my organs, delicate and vital and absolutely necessary to my continuation of life.

That night, in the pavilion. I see it through her eyes, feel the air leave her lungs, watch myself disappear into the trees. My entire body is aching with a deep kind of sadness, a loss. Grief.

Now, I gasp for air, letting go of her hands and pushing back.

“It’s okay, it’s okay, man, breathe,” Rafael says, and I feel his hands on my shoulders, pushing me forward, tipping my head up. My head is still full of Olivia, though the memories are starting to wash away like waves receding back into the ocean.

I’m an asshole. I can see that now—feeling what she did, seeing those memories through her lens, it’s too much to handle. It feels like my brain is a blender, like I can’t hold onto a single thought for more than a few seconds before it shreds into pieces.

“Byron,” Olivia says, somewhere, but I can’t see her because my eyes are squeezed shut. “Shit, Byron, you need to breathe!”

Is this a panic attack? Or a heart attack? Have the energy drinks finally caught up to me?

“Byron!” Olivia shouts, and I hear Rafael on the phone, and my heart is stuttering, stopping, squeezing. I feel Olivia’s hand around my fist, stopping the movement of my hand where I was rubbing it into the skin of my chest. It feels raw, and I imagine there will be a bruise there in the morning.

Hey, she sends, which sends more of the images away. I’m sorry, I must have accidentally—

No, I say, sending to her because I couldn’t speak even if I wanted to. Her voice in my head clears out some of the images, and I suck in a deep breath, heart slowing the tiniest bit. I did, too. Olivia, I’m so—

“Veronica says to take aspirin,” Rafael says, running into the room, looking frantic. Some of his hair has come out of his bun, falling loosely around his face. He holds out the pills, and I take them, stretching up in the seat, trying to ease the pulsing pain in my chest that’s coursing out and down my arms. “She’s on her way.”

Olivia disappears for a moment, and when she comes back, she stands behind me as I sit in the chair, her stomach pressed into my back and neck, her arms around me, holding me tight. When Veronica and Percy arrive, he waits in the living room while Veronica comes into the computer room.

She’s in the middle of taking my blood pressure when I hear the front door open.

“Hey man,” Percy says, his voice tight. “What—”

“Olivia called me.”

A moment later, my brother is walking into the room as Veronica reports that I have extremely high blood pressure and a heart arrhythmia.

“Yeah,” Zane says, eyes narrowing in on me. “He knew that, though.”

“What?” Olivia asks, her eyes going wide. She circles around the front of the chair, her eyes narrowed, her lips tight. She’s pissed. “You knew?”

“It’s a genetic thing,” I mutter, and when I reach for the energy drink on my desk, she snatches it away, shaking her head. Zane laughs, and I want to punch him in the stomach.

“Absolutely not!” she says, her voice edging on shrill. “You are done with these.”

“It’s a good idea,” Veronica whispers, and Olivia calls Zane and Rafael into the kitchen with her, so they can help her pour the rest out.

“Those are expensive,” I whisper, when it’s just me and Veronica in the computer room, her taking my blood pressure again.

“Hey,” she says, tucking some of her long brown hair behind her ear. She smells like lavender, but also like Percy. Her stomach is larger now, rounder, and I feel like shit for waking her up. “Percy told me what you said. About the vampire thing. I understand. I mean—I know how you feel.”

“Yeah,” I whisper. “Right. Sorry about that.”

“We’ll get through it,” she says, pulling the blood pressure cuff off with a thwack sound. “That’s what families do. Speaking of families—”

“Yeah,” I say, sighing. “My brother. I don’t know what he’s doing in town.”

“You know,” Veronica says, her voice low. “I would have given anything to have siblings when I was a kid.”

“Yeah,” I say, swallowing through the lump in my throat. This might be a grass is greener kind of moment. Or it might be that I’m too focused on Zane leaving to recognize the moments in which he stayed.

Olivia, Zane Rafael, and Percy flood into the computer room, all shocked at the amount of energy drinks I had in my fridge.

“That is way too many, man,” Rafael says.