Chapter 115

Ollie’s POV

I shove Wes as hard as I can. He stumbles backwards, pushing up and off of me. There’s pain in his eyes, but I know I’m not strong enough to have physically hurt him.

As soon as I have an opening, I roll out from under him. Falling down onto the ground, I scurry to my feet and back up, putting as much space between us as possible. As I roll down my shirt, he steps away from the couch, toward me.

I keep backing up until my butt bumps into one of the nearby tables. He stops when I do, his hands outstretched as if trying to calm a frightened animal. Maybe that’s exactly what I am. I don’t know. It’s difficult to think about anything right now, I’m still so confused at having woken up to this.

“You don’t have to be afraid, Ollie,” Wes says. “Not of us. I promise, we won’t hurt you. We will be the perfect mates for you.”

I shake my head, not willing to believe that. “With how you’ve treated me in the past, how can you even say that? You made me feel lower than dirt, and you always put Sylvia before everything?”

Wes blinks, confusion crossing his face. “Sylvia is a big part of our lives. She is our lost sister, returned to us. I can’t deny that she will always come first… but that doesn’t mean we don’t have room in our hearts for love.”

He’s admitting it, right here and right now, that even as their mate, I would still be second to Sylvia.

That means he won’t believe me if I tell him the things she had done to me. If I accept Wes and the others as my mates, she’ll only get worse. She’ll continue to drive a wedge between us until, in the end, by Wes’s own admission here, he will choose Sylvia over me.

“She’s not a good person,” I try, seeing if I can trust him to at least reconsider his blind belief in Sylvia, even for a moment. Even for his mate. “She delights in torturing me.”

Wes’s brow crumples like he’s torn.

Please pick me, I plead with all my heart.

“You must be misunderstanding her,” Wes says. “Yes, she can be abrasive sometimes, but that’s only because she had such a rough time of things before she came to us.”

“You don’t believe me,” I say, a hollow feeling expanding in my chest.

“It’s not that I don’t believe you,” he says. “I just think you are misunderstanding. If the two of you could sit down and talk, really hash out your differences, you would see she doesn’t mean the harsher things she says.”

“You are still taking her side,” I say. “You will always take her side.”

Wes let his arms flop down uselessly at his sides. “She’s my sister.”

“And I’m not your mate,” I tell him. “I’m not, I refuse to be! I never will be, do you hear?”

“Ollie,” he says, and starts forward, toward me again. I duck away from him.

“Just leave me alone, Wes! I don’t want you and I don’t need you!”

His face crumples then with some pain showing. “You don’t mean that.”

I don’t know what I mean. I’m just hurt, and I want to get away from this hurt as soon as possible. The only way I can think of is to run, so I do just that.

Wes, blessedly, doesn’t follow me. Maybe he can see I need some space. Maybe he’s still reeling with his own shock and dismay.

So many things have happened in quick succession.

Do all the brothers know now? Is the truth finally revealed? Is there nothing I can do take this all away and hide it again and pretend like everything is fine until I can put my year in and transfer to escape?

How am I supposed to escape now?

The only way I can think of is to make a run for it, to flee beyond the border and become a rogue without a home pack. I didn’t want to do things like that. In many ways, being a rogue is even worse than being an omega.

I won’t belong anywhere. No pack would come to my aid, and I would be denied all healthcare and education being a member of a pack would grant me.

I would be utterly and truly on my own in every possible way.

Yet even that dark possibility still seems preferable to staying here and living a life where I would be tortured by Sylvia for the rest of my life.

With limited access to food and shelter, I could die from a mere cold, but at least I would be free.

Maybe I’m being too hasty.

What I really need is just the time and space to think things through.

This is all happening too quickly. I feel boxed in.

I need to get away, to find a secluded place where I can –

I run face-first into a hard chest. The chest doesn’t move an inch, but I bounce off of it like a plastic ball and start to fall backwards. A pair of arms securely wrap around me, steadying me before I can fall.

Breathing in, I’m overcome with a feeling of safety, of home. Immediately following that is a wave of dread, because I know only 4 people on this earth could make me feel so safe so quickly, and none of them are who I want to see right now.

I look up and into the eyes of Conrad. His hair is damp from a recent shower. Likely, he just got out of hockey practice, and then showered and changed.

He looks down at me with a measure of bemusement, one corner of his mouth lifting up ever so slightly. Yet, more prominently, there is a fire starting to burn in his eyes. The juxtaposition is jarring, and renews my sense of foreboding.

All over again, I want to run.

“What are you doing out so late, Ollie?” he asks. “You have a curfew.”

“I-I was at the library…” I say, hoping that will be enough.

“This late?” he asks, his eyes narrowing.

“Please let me go,” I say.

He doesn’t. “Tell me what’s going on,” he demands.

I can’t do this. I can’t be here! I can’t be close to him! To them!

I just want to be free!

Just like that, my perfect resolve crumbles, and I yank my arms out of his hold with the entirety of my strength.

My werewolf strength.

The show of force works and I’m free of him. But he’s left standing there, looking at me. Then, he sniffs the air.

At once, I realize what I’ve done.

In flexing my werewolf strength, I allowed my true scent to shine through just for a moment. But it was long enough for Conrad to smell, to put the pieces together.

As he looks at me, his confusion clears and the spark in his eyes becomes a raging wildfire.

“It’s you,” he says, and whatever tiny hope I maintained that the brothers might be able to move on from this immediately shrivels up.

I’ve made the mistake, and Conrad caught me.

He knows.

“Angel,” he says.

There’s no going back.