Chapter 1
FIVE YEARS AGO
Liam
My body aches, and my eyes are heavy. I’m exhausted. Both physically and mentally.
I’m not sure how much longer I can go on like this. And I don’t just mean my job. I mean my life.
I’m a twenty-four-year-old single, packless Alpha working a dead-end job because it’s the first thing I could get that got me far away from my old life.
I needed to start over new, somewhere that I didn’t know anyone. After everything that went down last year, I was drowning.
After all the legal stuff was sorted out and I was cleared of any involvement and charges, I packed up everything I could fit in the few bags I owned and went back home.
Thankfully, Mom said I could move back in with her.
Nothing makes you feel more like a man than moving back into your mother’s basement.
I know I shouldn’t complain; it could have been so much worse.
Mom worked for a party planning company, and they knew a security firm that was hiring. So, I was able to get a job pretty easily.
This firm works some pretty big gigs, so the pay is decent.
Still, this wasn’t how I thought my life was going to turn out.
Calling Wood was supposed to be my new start.
A shot at a different life than the one I grew up in. A life of my own.
I love my mom—she’s an amazing woman—but what little boy thinks that one day they’re going to grow up to help take care of their younger siblings because their dad’s a piece of shit, cheats on his wife, and abandons his family?
I was the oldest of three; my younger brother and sister needed me. What else was I supposed to do when my mom worked three jobs and barely kept us afloat?
When I became of legal age to work, I got a job. Then another, and another, until all my free time was spent working.
Yes, I had money, and we didn’t have to suffer anymore, but at what cost?
I didn’t get to go out with friends and be a teenager. I hardly had any time to do homework, so I just barely scraped by enough to graduate. The only reason I didn’t drop out completely was because I knew that if I did, there was no way I’d get accepted into Calling Wood University.
It was a pipe dream I had that actually came true when the time came.
And it was good... for the most part... until it wasn’t.
How could three men I thought I knew better than anyone do something so fucked up? Just thinking of it makes my skin crawl and my stomach churn with guilt.
There hasn’t been a day that’s gone by that I didn’t wish I could have done more and seen the signs; possibly, stopping things before they even happened.
I might not have been directly involved with what went down, but I feel like I’m also to blame, merely by association. They were my pack, people I thought I could trust with my life.
Was I hurt by the consistent rejection? Yes. Would I have loved nothing more for an Omega to have picked us to love them, care for them, and be their pack, their Alphas? Of course.
But I would have never gone as far as to hurt another person to get it. I wouldn’t force an Omega to be ours.
I’ll never understand what went through their minds, what made them do what they did. No matter how hurt I was, I would never have taken it that far.
The whole thing ended up fucking with my head, and now, I don’t trust anyone but my family.
