What Jack Sees

POV: Jack

I stopped at the door, my hand on the frame, and looked back at my friend and Alpha. What I saw made my stomach clench.

His eyes were bloodshot, the skin underneath bruised with dark circles that hadn't been there a week ago. A sickly gray pallor clung to him, the kind that came from night after night of no fucking sleep. He'd dropped weight too, which made sense since lately he picked at his food like it might poison him. I'd known this man since we were pups fighting over scraps, since before either of us understood what it meant to carry the weight of a whole territory on our backs. I'd watched him grow into an Alpha every wolf here respected, feared even, the kind of leader who never let anyone see him falter. I'd never once seen him look this shattered, and it scared me more than I wanted to admit.

He even stopped letting Trishelle serve him. Gets some other wolf to do it now.

I turned that thought over in my head, slow and deliberate, the way you'd turn over a stone looking for whatever ugly thing might be hiding underneath. Coincidence, or was she tangled up in whatever had James looking one wrong move away from a complete meltdown? The timing was too perfect to ignore, and James wasn't a man who changed his habits without reason. He didn't do anything without reason, not since we were kids.

Is she slipping something in his food? Should I look into that?

I lingered in the doorway a second too long, turning the possibilities over, weighing loyalty against suspicion, and James's eyes snapped to mine before I'd settled on either.

"Jack. Something else?"

"No, Alpha." I hesitated anyway, the words heavy on my tongue before I let them out. "But if something's eating you alive, you know I'm here. We've been brothers since we were pups in the dirt. Whatever this is, you can fucking talk to me."

Something complicated flickered across his face, a tangled mess of gratitude and pure exhaustion, and for just a moment I saw the boy I used to know instead of the Alpha he'd become. For a second, I thought he might actually crack, that whatever he'd been carrying alone might finally spill out into the open where I could help him shoulder it. Then the moment shattered, and whatever he'd almost said stayed locked down tight, buried someplace even I couldn't reach.

"Okay, my friend. Thanks."

I nodded and let myself out, pulling the door shut behind me. I stood in the hallway for a minute, chewing on my own useless worry, replaying every strange detail of the last few weeks, before forcing myself to move.

Great. Now even my best friend knows I'm losing my goddamn mind.

POV: James

Alone again, I dug my fingers into my temple, trying to crush the headache that had set up permanent residence behind my eyes. It throbbed in time with the ache in my dick, a constant, fucking reminder that wouldn't quit. Just the thought of her had me hard enough to hammer nails, and since she seemed to occupy every single one of my waking thoughts, that left me in a state of perpetual misery. I hated it. Hated the way my body betrayed me, turned traitor at the slightest memory of her scent. Hated the way my mind kept circling back to her like some damn moth that never learned its lesson about the flame, scorched again and again but too stupid or too stubborn to stay away.

Why not just take what I want? What's actually stopping me?

If it had been any other she-wolf who'd gotten under my skin like this, I'd have already been balls deep and moved on, satisfied and free to think about something else for once. The fact that I couldn't answer that question, that the thought of it felt wrong somehow, was exactly why it hurt so much. Something about her, something I couldn't name no matter how many nights I spent trying, made every instinct I had scream at me to stay away, even as the rest of me screamed to claim her, to mark her, to end this war inside my own skin one way or another.

Rubbing my head isn't doing shit. Might as well try somewhere else.

I checked the lock on my door, then let the memory I'd been fighting all day finally take over. I gave my imagination free rein, too tired to keep fighting a battle I'd already lost a dozen times before.

What came next wasn't something I'd ever admit to, least of all to Jack. For a few stolen minutes, I stopped fighting it, stopped pretending I didn't know exactly whose face was behind my closed eyes. Her scent. The way her mouth would feel. The way she'd looked at me that one time in the kitchen, like she wanted to run and beg me closer all at once, like she was just as trapped by this thing as I was.

It ended the way these things always did, leaving me empty and no closer to understanding why my own body had decided one specific Omega was the only cure for whatever poison had taken root in me. My heart hammered against my ribs before slowing down, and the silence that followed felt heavier than it had any right to. I blew out a long breath and stared at the ceiling, disgusted with myself in a distant, worn-out kind of way. This wasn't me. Alphas didn't lose their minds over quiet Omegas who flinched every time they got close, who looked at him like he was equal parts salvation and threat. And yet here I was, night after night, doing exactly that, hating myself a little more each time.

Maybe I need to find something else to sink my teeth into.

A distraction. That's what I needed. I showered, threw on some clothes, grabbed my keys, and decided I was done sitting in this office chasing my own tail over an Omega who shouldn't even register on my radar. I needed noise. I needed bodies. I needed something to shake her loose from my goddamn head before it drove me completely insane.

If the she-wolves in this pack aren't cutting it anymore, maybe a pretty human girl will do the trick.

I went solo, pointing my car toward one of the loudest clubs two towns over, somewhere far enough from home that nobody would recognize the Alpha slumming it on a Tuesday night. I told myself the whole drive there that once I finally buried myself in someone new, things would go back to normal, that this ridiculous fixation would burn itself out like it should have weeks ago. I cranked the radio up, trying to drown out the thoughts, and tried, without much success, to believe my own fucking lie.