The Gamma’s Second Chance (Crescent Lake #3)

1. Chapter 1

Chapter 1

NOLAN

Ten steps to the right. Turn around. Ten steps to the left. Repeat.

Over and over I continue this path, pacing in front of the two queen-sized beds in the hotel room I’m sharing with Wesley, my best friend and the future alpha of our pack. Wesley keeps glancing at me in the reflection of the mirror, his brow furrowing deeper with each pass I make.

“Goddess, Nolan, will you please stop pacing?!” he finally spews, a pulse of his lycan alpha aura slipping from him. His lycan has been volatile since his early shift nine years ago, and I’m sure my anxious fidgeting isn’t helping.

I freeze and meet his eyes in the mirror, and he cracks his neck, shaking off his anger and the aura. “Sorry. I didn’t mean to do that.”

I wave off his apology. “It’s fine.”

“It’s not, though. Or you’re not, at least.”

“I’m fine,” I say.

I’m not.

I should be fine. It’s only a mating ball. I probably won’t even find my mate. I’m only twenty-two. Most males don’t find their mate until they’re older.

There is nothing for me to be worried about.

So why can’t I shake this overwhelming sense of wrong?

I run my hand over my hair and down the back of my neck, joining Wes at the mirror. I debate telling him my concerns, confiding in him about my nerves and the sense of dread I can’t shake, but before I can, there’s a knock followed by the whirring of the lock in the door.

“Oh, your room is much nicer than ours,” Reid says as he slams the door open, a key to our room in his hand, and his blue eyes scanning every surface of the hotel room.

Wesley scoffs. “My dad booked all the same types of rooms. Your room is identical to this one.”

“I assure you, having just come from there, it isn’t,” Reid says, shaking his head. “Tell him, Sebastian,” he adds, nudging Wesley’s younger brother as Sebastian walks by him and towards the mirror Wes and I stand in front of.

“They’re the same, dickhead,” Sebastian says from my left as he looks in the mirror and fixes a nonexistent stray hair.

Reid huffs out a sigh and leans against the wall on the other side of Sebastian, pulling his tie out of his pocket. “If you say so.”

“Does anyone think it’s odd they scheduled this mating ball on a full moon night?” Sebastian asks, adjusting his pink tie as he continues to stare at himself in the mirror.

“What do you mean?” Reid asks, tossing his balled up tie in the air.

“I don’t know.” Sebastian shrugs. “I guess it feels like a bad omen to schedule a ball for unmated wolves to potentially find their fated mate on the one night of the month when mates can reject each other. Like they’re just asking for drama and heartbreak.”

My hands slip on the button of my shirt, and a low warning growl slips out of Wesley. He glares at Sebastian, but he doesn’t notice.

Or pretends not to.

“You’re not even old enough to find a mate. Why are you here?” Wesley asks Sebastian, his fists clenching.

“Reid doesn’t even want a mate. Why is he here?” Sebastian fires back without missing a beat, his gray eyes never leaving his tie.

“Moral support,” Reid quips, still playing one-handed catch with his tie. “Plus, Alpha Harrison didn’t give me a choice.”

Sebastian raises a brow at him. “I distinctly remember my dad giving you a choice in the matter.”

“Well, when the ‘choices’ are to attend the mating ball with Wesley and Nolan or be on locker room bathroom cleaning duty for a month…”

“Touché,” Sebastian says, his lips twitching. “Now put your tie on, dickhead, so we can get this all over with.”

“I bet you everything is fine,” Reid says, wrapping his tie around his neck. “I bet you twenty bucks you’re being dramatic about the full moon for no reason.”

I meet Wesley’s eyes in the mirror and blow out a long breath, rubbing the back of my neck. Wesley rolls his shoulders, his hands flexing and clenching again at his sides, a faint hint of his aura leaking from him again. I close my eyes and count to ten, using each breath to relax my muscles like my mom taught me to do before my piano recitals as a kid, a calming technique that’s stuck with me even as an adult.

“Add in doing the winner’s laundry for a week, and you’ve got a deal,” Sebastian says.

Reid smiles. “You’re on.”

Their hands slap together as they shake on it, both of them either oblivious to or ignoring my stress and Wesley’s growing ire. I press my palm against the glass, my heart in my throat, the room spinning, and their voices muffled from the blood rushing through my ears like wind over an open convertible. My stomach twists and revolts against my body. I clench my eyes shut and clamp my jaw down, grinding my teeth together.

“Did you really have to make that bet?” Wesley asks, his voice breaking through the cotton wool in my ears as he scolds Reid and Sebastian.

I force my eyes open, and they both finally look at me. Their laughter stops in an instant.

“Shit, no, I’m just kidding!” Reid says, his head pivoting between Sebastian and me, his messy, slightly too-long, dirty blond hair flying with the movement. “I take it back. Bet’s off.” His hand slices through the air, and Seb nods emphatically.

“It’s fine,” I grunt, pushing off from the mirror and stomping to the hotel suite door. “Let’s just go.”

I adjust my suit jacket and button it as I exit the room, the others following behind me in silence. Wes catches up to me easily, his hands sliding into his pockets. “Just ignore them,” he says out of the side of his mouth. “They didn’t mean anything by it. They’re just…” He trails off, glancing at them over his shoulder and then pretending to observe the hotel decor in the hall as he tries to come up with some excuse for them.

“Being dickheads?” I supply, using our default insult. Or term of affection. The line between the two has blurred so much over the years, and I’m not sure if any of us can tell the difference anymore. Wes laughs, and my lips tilt into a smile of their own accord despite the unease I’ve experienced since checking in to the hotel earlier today. “It’s fine. Neither of them know I’ve been on edge since arriving. Seb is just speaking his mind, and Reid is just… being Reid.”

“Why are you so nervous?” he asks. “You’ve been itching to find your mate since the day you turned twenty-one.”

“I have. I want her more than anything,” I say, punching the down button for the elevator. “I can’t explain it, but it’s like Seb said—I have a bad feeling about tonight. Everything feels… off. Wrong.”

Wesley stares at me as I fiddle with my tie with shaking hands while we wait for the elevator. Reid and Sebastian bicker about Goddess only knows what, both of them already moving on from the discussion of whether or not tonight will end in disaster, both of them blissfully ignorant to the nauseating sense of wrong lurking around every corner. It seeps into my pores, raising the hair on the back of my neck and turning my stomach inside out with every breath I take and every step drawing me nearer to the event in the hotel’s ballroom.

I shove my hands in my pockets, mimicking Wesley’s stance and hiding their trembling from the eyes of the others. Wesley tracks the movement but doesn’t comment on it, instead turning to watch the numbers change above the elevator as it makes its way to us from the lobby.

The silence presses in on me like water pressure around a submarine as we stand there, neither of us saying anything. There is nothing to be said, really. Wesley could say there is nothing to worry about, but we both know speaking those words is a curse all its own. The curse of optimism. But admitting I’m right? Admitting Sebastian is right? Admitting that there is one hundred percent something that feels off about tonight? That would be equally damning.

The elevator dings, the door slides open, and I lead the way into the car. I turn and face the doors again as Reid pushes the lobby button, and the silence continues, the other two finally catching on to the mood.

“Why didn’t you say anything to us?” Wesley asks, letting out a sigh.

I shrug. “I was trying to blame it on the nerves. I felt like acknowledging it would just make it more real. And I didn’t want to bother you all with my unfounded anxiety.” I swallow and clench my fists in my pockets, letting my nails dig into my skin so I can focus on something other than my roiling gut. Then I sigh and shake my head and roll my shoulders. “It’s dumb. I’m being dramatic, I know.”

“You’re not being dumb or dramatic,” Wesley says as the elevator reaches the ground floor and the doors open to let us off. “It’s natural to want to find your mate and be antsy about it. Goddess knows I’m antsy to meet mine.” We file out of the elevator, and Sebastian glances over his shoulder at Wes with a raised brow and a look of incredulity. Wes narrows his eyes at him. “What?”

“Nothing,” Sebastian says, pressing his lips together and whipping his head around to face the front again.

“Listen.” Reid walks backwards, clapping his hands and then rubbing them together as he speaks. “Worst-case scenario: none of us finds a mate, and we all bring a lady friend up to our rooms for a good time.” He claps his hands again and then holds them out to the sides, smiling, nodding, and looking at each of us for approval of his plan.

Wesley exhales through his nose and shakes his head, and I bite my tongue, holding back my laughter. Leave it to Reid to spin this to his advantage, using the prospect of females disappointed they didn’t find their mate to fill his sexual needs for the night.

Sebastian cocks his head to the side and walks sideways, facing Reid. “Wouldn’t the worst-case scenario for you be finding your fated mate?”

Reid laughs and throws his arm around Sebastian’s shoulders. “No, that would be the best-case scenario. Because then I could reject her on the spot and voilà! Reid’s a free agent.”

Sebastian grimaces and twists under Reid’s arm, freeing himself from his grasp, his nose remaining wrinkled as he smooths out his suit. “Please don’t ever refer to yourself in the third person again.”

“Why not?”

“Because it makes you sound like a dickhead.”

Reid stops in his tracks and gapes at him, and Wesley and I laugh, each of us clapping him on the shoulder as we maneuver around him and towards the hotel ballroom.

“If any of us is a dickhead, it’s you,” Reid retorts, finding his words and his footing again.

“Au contraire, my friend,” Seb says, smirking. “I happen to have a picture of you with a dick on your head.” He reaches for his phone in his pocket. “Would you like me to show it to you to remind you who the ultimate dickhead is? Maybe I can even show it to some of the females here. I’m sure they’d be interested in—”

Reid lunges for him, and Sebastian sidesteps, spinning out of his reach before taking off at a run through the cookie-cutter hotel lobby, zigzagging around the mating ball attendees and the furniture. Wesley and I both laugh harder as we follow them, all of us ignoring the slight glares and looks of disdain thrown our way by some of the other werewolves here. The distraction my friends give me is worth the judgment we’re receiving from a handful of guests.

We slow down, however, when we reach the doors into the ballroom, where members of the royal council and the hosting pack admit us to the event, checking our names against their list of registered attendees. The momentary reprieve from my pressing, nauseating anxiety provided by my friends and their antics reaches an abrupt end as I step through the doors after giving them my name and pack name.

My palms sweat, and my heart pounds, blood rushing behind my eardrums. My vision blurs, and as soon as I’m in the ballroom, I step to the side, placing my hand on the wall for balance. The room spins, and my fingers scrape against the wall, my other hand clutching at my stomach as I swallow against the heaving of my gut threatening to bring my meager meal from dinner topside.

Wesley rushes to my side, the others close by, all of them shielding me as I work through the panic surging through me. None of them speak to me or acknowledge me; they instead talk to each other, creating a wall in front of me to block me from the view of any prying eyes as I compose myself.

And then it hits me. The scent of fresh watermelon mixed with daffodils. My wolf perks up from where he’s been cowering and whining in my mind all day, pushing me to act. I shove off from the wall and burst through the barricade my friends created, no longer drowning in anxious pain. I’m on the hunt now, searching for the source of that delightful, soul capturing scent, the scent that wipes away all sense of impending doom. I see nothing as I scan the ballroom—none of the decorations, none of the guests, none of the food and drink. I won’t see anything until I see her. The source of the scent. The one I’ve been waiting for.

My mate.

“Nolan?” Wesley asks, placing a tentative hand on my shoulder.

But I’m gone and out of his reach before I can reply or before he can say anything more, yanked forward by my wolf as that scent dances around our senses and embeds itself into the fibers of my soul.

She’s here. Somewhere. And I need to find her. Nothing matters more than that. Nothing matters more than the female meant for me and only me. The female I will claim tonight and love for the rest of my days.

I weave through the crowd, inhaling deeply every few steps I take as I try to find her. Her scent is heaviest near the entrance where attendees are checking in. I stop, searching the crowd, peeking around bodies and over heads, almost jumping to try to catch a glimpse of my mysterious, disappearing mate. My heart races again—I’ve lost track of how many times my heart has been this fast today—but this time it’s from excitement and the anticipation of finding her instead of from nerves and dread.

I zero in on her scent, on that surprising mix that hypnotizes my wolf and me, following it around the tables at the edge of the room and out a side door into a darkened back hallway of the hotel. It grows stronger again, and I pick up my pace to a jog as I round the corner.

A sharp, surprised gasp echoes in the space as dark chocolate brown eyes lock onto mine.

Mate.

My mate.

Her hand slips on the doorknob of the room she’s trying to enter, and it shakes as she wrings them both together in front of her stomach, her chest heaving and her eyes blinking hard.

I take slow steps forward, my chest mimicking her heavy breathing, her scent filling my lungs and seeping into my pores, into my cells. She tears her eyes away from me and backs up a step, into the corner of the door frame, her eyes flitting about the hallway, our staring contest broken.

I stop only a foot away from her, staring down at where she stands, backed into the corner, almost cowering away from me, something that displeases my wolf. But her eyes meet mine again, then they shut tightly, as she takes in a deep breath and my scent hits her lungs.

I take in the moment, studying every detail of her: her tanned skin; her blonde hair wrapped in a perfect low bun with sweet, curling tendrils framing her face; her thick lashes fanning across her shimmering cheekbones; the enchanting pink bow of her lips that sit parted as she catches breath; and her long, lean body draped in the softest pink, a pink that is a near match to the color of her lips and the tip of her tongue that darts out to wet them.

Her trembling hands press against the smooth surface of the door. Her chin tilts up as her eyes open again, drinking in my face and the unfiltered need for her on display there. I reach for her and brush a curled tendril from her face, my fingertips grazing her sun-kissed skin, the mate bond making both of us gasp and shut our eyes for a moment.

“What is your name, mate?” I ask, my voice husky and filled with desire as I reopen my eyes to gaze down at her, my hand wrapping around her neck, my thumb tilting her chin up more. The sparks playing under my skin from touching her are heady and addicting, a testament to the magnetic, unavoidable power of the mate bond.

She swallows, her eyes still closed, that tantalizing tongue of hers sweeping across her mouth again, ensnaring me with its movement. I’m holding myself back by a thread, and every little thing she does makes it more difficult for me to show any restraint. Everything in me urges me to lay claim to her, to prove myself as a male to her, my primal urges and needs drawn forward by the mate bond and the power of the full moon.

But I need her name first. I need to know the name of the female who will moan mine every night from now on, starting tonight.

“Kimberly,” she says, breathless, her lashes fluttering.

“Kimberly,” I repeat, the word rumbling in my chest as I roll it around my mouth and taste it on my tongue, memorizing the way it feels to murmur her name.

I move closer to her until I touch her with each inhale of my chest. My head angles down, and I slant my lips over her mouth, her warm breath fanning my lips, sending shivers of delight through me.

“What’s yours?” she asks, flinching back a hair before our lips touch.

“Nolan.”

“Nolan,” she says with a sigh, and I bite back a groan at how sweet my name sounds falling from her lips.

“I never realized how beautiful my name was until you said it to me,” I say, my lips brushing hers.

She whimpers, and that little sound breaks the thread on my control. I slam my lips down onto hers, cupping her face with both of my hands. She grips my forearms and presses her body to mine, arching her spine so our hips meet. The kiss switches gears from soft and sweet to frenzied and heated in no time, both of us lost in each other. The feel of the bond is more than I could even imagine, better than anyone has ever described.

“I want you, Kimberly,” I say, bracing myself on the door frame as I rut against her, my other hand searching for the knob. “I don’t think I can wait or tear myself away from you for long enough to take you back to my room.”

“Then don’t wait,” she says, her voice sugary sweet, her lips smiling against my mouth as I fumble with the knob. She lifts her skirt in her hands, raising it up her legs until it’s around her waist, and her smooth skin and sexy as fuck lace underwear fill my vision. Her hand slides down beneath the fabric, touching herself, touching that spot my dick aches for, her gaze almost taunting as she leans away to show herself off to me. “Take me now. Right here. Everyone is too distracted by the ball, anyway.”

I growl, and my cock twitches at the sight in front of me. Her natural scent and the scent of her arousal are everywhere, and between that and the feel of the connection binding us, I have no control over myself anymore. She has it all; her and the mate bond.

I finally get the door open, and we stumble inside, a tangled mess of limbs and lips and clothing as we enter the room. Neither of us checks if it’s empty or takes time to examine our surroundings. I spy a couch out of the corner of my eye and make a beeline for it, lifting her off the ground and tossing her onto it. As soon as her ass makes contact with the cushions, she reaches for my pants and undoes my belt and the closures. She tugs me towards her as she lays herself down, raising her skirt above her waist and sliding her flimsy straps over her shoulders so her tits spring free. Her pink nipples are tight, and her breasts bounce slightly with every movement, every breath.

“Fuck, you’re gorgeous,” I say, moving faster to climb on top of her, shrugging my suit jacket off and pushing my pants and boxer briefs down my hips. There’s no time for us to undress fully, not when the door doesn’t lock and the ball is only a hallway away.

She beams up at me, her eyes glittering with mischief and smugness in the dim light. They flick down to my dick, and she inhales sharply, surprise lighting up her already sparkling eyes, and I echo her smugness. My dick twitches again when her lips part as I slide her underwear down her legs and position myself between her thighs.

She’s already soaking wet. Her body writhes beneath me, and I’ve never felt anything like what I feel right now with the bond pulsing between us, the fizzing tingles everywhere our skin meets, and my cock nestled between her pussy lips as I wait for permission to enter her.

It’s everything I want, everything I’ve waited for since turning twenty-one: my mate beneath me, waiting for me to take her for the first time, both of us willingly submitting to each other to bring our claim to life.

I gaze at her, trying to memorize everything about this moment: the way she looks, the way she feels, and the way she smells. I want to savor this moment, savor my first time with her—with anyone—but my impatient mate slams her hips forward, taking all of me into her pussy in one thrust.

I groan and collapse forward over her, holding my weight above her. My entire body tenses from the feeling of joining with her, and I thank Selene that I decided to wait to share this moment with my mate, that I decided to wait to be with any female until I found the one meant for me.

“Holy shit!” Kimberly says, her hands clutching at her dress. “Oh Goddess, I didn’t realize it would feel like this!”

She tilts her head back and squeezes her eyes shut, her jaw clenched as she moves underneath me, pushing both of us towards release.

“Slow down, sweetheart,” I say, leaning down and kissing her jaw. “I want to enjoy this.”

“I can’t,” she groans, shaking her head. “I can’t slow down. It’s too much and I can’t stop.”

“It’s okay,” I coo, stroking her smooth skin and watching the goose bumps form everywhere I touch her. “I’ll help you slow down.” I wrap my hand around her waist and squeeze, rolling my hips slower, coaxing her to match my rhythm and my movements.

But she shakes her head and pulls her lip into her mouth with her teeth, moving faster against me instead of slowing down. “Touch me,” she commands, her breaths short and sporadic, her hips twitching. “Touch my clit.”

I slide my hand between us, letting myself feel every smooth inch of her, until I reach that little spot at the apex of her legs, at the top of her pussy where my dick slides in and out of her with ease, giving me pleasure like nothing I ever imagined. My thumb flicks over her clit, and she cries out, her knuckles turning white against the pink fabric of her skirt clutched in her fists. My lips tip into a smirk, and I keep playing with her, rising on my elbows to get a better view of her sprawled out beneath me.

I wanted to savor this, to drag it out and take my time loving her and exploring her, but it’s too late now. We’re both too far gone. And we have a lifetime for slow and exploratory.

I ram into her and strum her clit like I’m playing my guitar, and she yells again, her tits thrusting up as her back arches. “Oh, fuck yes! Keep doing that.”

I chuckle and do as she wishes, keeping the same speed, depth, and strength of my thrusts into her and the same rhythm of my touches on her clit. Her pussy flutters around me, and I tense, my balls tightening. Her eyes fly open, meeting my heavy, intense stare. A brief moment of indecision followed by regret flares in her eyes, but it’s gone in a flash as she reaches for her breasts, cupping them in her hands and rubbing her nipples with her thumbs.

“I, Kimberly…” she says, panting and rocking against me as hard as she can, “reject you, Nolan, as my fated mate.”

A crack of pain lashes through my body, like a whip slapped across my heart, and I grunt, clenching my jaw against the roar building in my chest. My hand curls into a fist as I yank my cock from her, my release I can’t hold back shooting onto her skin in thick ropes as I do. She cries out in a mix of pleasure and pain, her body writhing and rolling with each wave of her orgasm, and I gape at her, panting and groaning through the icy hot agony pumping through my body with each beat of my heart.

“I—you—what?” I ask, catching my breath, my body heaving and throbbing as I try to form words or thoughts, my hand clutching at the back of the couch.

“I reject you,” she repeats, her euphoria fading and the lust ebbing. She grabs her underwear, swiping it over the cum on her thighs and lower abdomen.

I continue to stare at her, my heart splitting into two in my chest and my head pounding in pain as the bond splinters partially and then stops. It pulses, waiting, stuck in a limbo of breaking or healing. My wolf whimpers in my mind, taking the brunt of the pain so I can remain upright, remain focused.

“But—”

“I got caught up,” she says, her voice cool and indifferent as she sits and pulls the straps of her dress up over her shoulders. “I got caught up in the mate bond. But I have a boyfriend.” She glances over at me, looking down her nose with disdain even as I tower over her on my knees on the couch. “I have a boyfriend,” she repeats. “He’s an alpha, and he’s going to take me as his chosen mate, his luna, as long as I—” She breaks off and shakes her head, rising to her feet. “Finish the rejection,” she says, her arms crossed.

Every word is a slap in the face. A punch to the gut. A searing brand against my heart. My wolf yelps and collapses, his breathing labored as he lies on the floor of my mind.

I glare at her as everything inside me shatters into an infinite number of pieces, pieces that will never be put back together. She waits, and the distance between us grows and grows, her facade turning colder and colder, until I realize everything I thought I saw from her was never real. The mate bond toyed with me, showing her to me through rose-colored glasses, letting me look past the warning signs that would have been clear had the bond not existed.

The path forward is obvious to me, but I close my eyes for a moment, focusing on my wolf, on his urges. Our mates are supposed to be our other half, the one who completes us. We’re supposed to protect them above all else, above even ourselves, and ensure no harm comes to them. To hurt our mate goes against every ingrained instinct we have. To hurt your mate is to hurt yourself. It’s why rejection is so rare.

But my wolf and I are of one mind. We both know it will be excruciating, but neither of us wants someone who doesn’t want us. Neither of us wants to be tied to someone who will only make us miserable.

I rise onto shaky legs, pulling my pants up again, my limbs and head filled with lead and my body on the verge of collapsing to the floor. But I hold her stare, chin high, not a drop of pain, regret, or sorrow shown on my face or in my eyes. I won’t let her see how she’s breaking me. I won’t let her know how this is tearing me apart on the inside. All I can hope for is that she’ll feel even an ounce of the pain I’m feeling right now once I complete the rejection.

“I, Nolan, reject you as my fated mate,” I say through gritted teeth.

White flashes behind my eyelids as an audible snap echoes through the room, and my wolf howls in my mind. My heart squeezes, like thousands of rubber bands are wrapped around it, and I fall to my knees, clutching at my chest as jolts of pain wrack my body, sending tremors through every muscle, every cell, every nerve-ending. I curl in on myself, my entire body tense, all the way to the tips of my fingers and my toes.

I’m only half aware of her, too wrapped in my torment, my suffering, to care what the rejection is doing to her. She could have been my everything. I would have made her my world. But now, she is little more than dust lurking beneath the couch.

Through blurred vision, I see her stumble towards the door and out of the room. It slams against the wall, then begins to swing shut on its self-closing hinges.

I swallow and growl, clenching my fists and pulling myself inch by immeasurable, agonizing inch across the carpet to the entrance of the room, sticking my hand between the frame and the door before it can close. I welcome the physical pain of the door hitting my forearm. It cuts into my flesh, drawing blood. I shout from the impact, but it’s a welcome distraction from the emotional anguish wreaking havoc on my body and my soul.

“Wes… help me…” I say, reaching out to my best friend through our pack mindlink with the last ounce of energy and strength I have before I succumb to the pain.