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“Talia, hey. Look at me.” I knelt on the floor in front of her and tried to coax her out of her defensive pose. “Tell me what’s wrong, baby. Talk to me.”
I felt confident I knew what was bothering her. Burying my father tore open a freshly healed wound and had been a painful reminder of what she’d been deprived of by the Northwood pack after the alpha murdered her dad.
Still, I wanted her to open up to me.
Talia had been my shoulder to cry on. She listened whenever I needed someone to talk to. I wanted to be that for her, but she refused to let me in.
Something had been eating away at her since before we left for the summit and I wanted to know what the hell it was.
“I’m tired of dancing around your secrets. You are going to tell me what is going on with you. Tonight.” I raked my fingers through my hair, shaking ashes from the funeral pyre loose from the tangled strands.
She poked her head up and gazed at me with puffy red eyes; tears streaming down her cheeks, but never spoke a single word.
“I thought we’d made progress, that we were past this.” I pressed my palms against my eyes and willed my wolf to stay in the shadows of my mind.
We were both raw and on edge after facing the devastation and death the demons left in their wake. Talia shut us out again and that was more than my wolf and I could bear.
“Fine. You don’t want to tell me?” I opened myself up to the alpha bond I shared with the pack and tugged on the thread that connected me to Talia. “I have other ways of getting the information that I need.”
She gasped and tried to close herself off from the bond, reinforcing the mental walls she’d built inside her mind to safeguard her secrets.
I’d never played the alpha card or used the bond that way - because I never had to. Her refusal to share all of herself with me - the bad as well as the good - struck a lethal blow to my pride.
And my heart.
Remorse set in the moment I saw the look of horror in her eyes and my own reflected back at me. It was all too much, too soon. Admitting my feelings for Talia, burying my father and several pack members all in the same week.
I was in turmoil, a bundled mess of emotions.
But that was no excuse. No matter how I sliced it, I’d crossed a line. A line that I’d drawn and sworn never to cross. Talia wrecked me, but there was no one to blame for my actions but myself.
“Fuck.” I dug my keys out of my pocket and stormed out of the apartment, slamming the door behind me.
My boots pounded against the steps as I stormed my way down to the bar. I needed some air and a stiff drink. I stalked across the bar, grabbed a bottle of tequila from the top shelf and stowed away in my office in the back.
I threw open the window, sucking in deep breaths of the cool night air and guzzling down the high priced liquid gold. Half a bottle of the caramel colored liquor later, my temper had subsided and a throbbing headache had taken its place.
But the physical pain was a welcome reprieve from its emotional counterpart and helped cut through the red haze of anger clouding my vision since I’d been forced to resort to burning the bodies of our dead.
The last time I’d felt that out of control was when Jamie died.
And that was the connection. More senseless deaths that I couldn’t prevent and situations that were outside my control. Made worse by the fact that I was the alpha and failing at my job.
As much as I wanted to know what was going on with Talia, she didn’t deserve a show of force like the power flex I’d made up in my apartment.
I made a mistake. One that I couldn’t take back and then made worse by walking out on her.
Another promise broken.
