Obsessed With My Alpha

Sigma & Regrets

Jonah's POV

My cheek still stings.

I'm sitting on the edge of my bed in the Sigma house, the party still going full volume two floors below, pressing two fingers against the side of my face like that'll do anything useful. It doesn't. But I keep doing it anyway, because the sting is the clearest thing I've felt all night, and I need something concrete to hold onto.

She slapped me.

She "slapped" me.

And the most alarming thing — the thing I keep circling back to — is that my first reaction wasn't offense. It was something closer to relief. Like she'd cracked a window in a room that had been sealed shut too long, and the air coming through was sharp and cold and exactly what I needed.

I deserved it. I told her I deserved it, and I meant it. What I didn't say — what I couldn't say while she was still standing there — was that it also felt like the most honest exchange we'd had in months. More honest than the treehouse. More honest than the dark room where I'd said the wrong things in the wrong order and then, catastrophically, asked for one more kiss like she was something I could keep borrowing without cost.

"Can I kiss you one more time?"

I close my eyes. Who says that? Who kisses a girl in the dark without asking, pulls her aside under the pretense of talking, admits "I have feelings I don't know what to do with" like that's an explanation rather than a confession — and then stands there and asks for a bonus?

Jonah Snow, apparently. Future Alpha of Moonrift Pack. Absolute disaster of a human being.

I fall back against the mattress and stare at the ceiling.

The kiss was not what I expected. I had told myself I was running a test — clean, rational, manageable. Kiss her, feel clarity or feel nothing, and either way walk away with an answer. What actually happened was the world shifted on its axis, and I panicked, and then I said the worst possible words in the worst possible sequence, and she looked at me with those bright, furious eyes and her hand connected with my cheek, and I stood there and took it because I knew — even in that moment — that I had earned every bit of it.

My wolf is still agitated. That low, pressing weight in my chest I'd first noticed outside the treehouse — it's stronger tonight, insistent in a way I can't argue down. Every time I try to shelve it, it surges back up like a tide against a wall I built in the wrong place. He wants something from me that I don't know how to give yet. I'm not even sure I know what it is.

I don't know what to do with that.

I don't know what to do with any of this.

The door opens without a knock. Kade, predictably, with Kyan two steps behind him and Liam bringing up the rear. They take one look at me lying on the bed in the middle of a party and file in like they own the place, which at this point they basically do.

"Why are you up here?" Kade asks, dropping into my desk chair with the ease of someone who has occupied it many times before. "Rebecca's looking for you."

"Rebecca can look somewhere else tonight."

Silence. The three of them exchange one of those efficient, wordless looks they've developed over years of proximity — a whole conversation happening in about half a second.

"What happened?" Liam asks. He leans against the wall with his arms crossed, the calmest presence in any room he enters.

"Nothing."

"Jonah."

I exhale. "I kissed Gemma."

A longer look this time. Significantly longer.

Kade leans forward slowly. "You kissed — Gemma Harris."

"During Lights Out. In the dark." I press my fingers over my eyes. "And then I said several things that landed badly and she slapped me and left."

Kyan lowers himself to the floor with the deliberate ease of someone settling in. "She *slapped* you."

"Yes."

"And you're up here looking like—" He gestures at me vaguely. "That."

"Yes."

"Because she slapped you, or because she left?"

I don't answer. Which is, of course, its own answer.

Kade lets out a low whistle. "Bro. You've got it bad."

"I don't *have* anything. I'm confused."

"Honestly? Same thing."

I sit up and look at them — my three best friends, who have known me long enough to see through every performance I put on and have the decency, most of the time, to mostly pretend they don't. They're watching me now with the particular patience of people who have been waiting for this specific conversation for a long time and are finally getting it.

"She told me she was trying to get over me," I say. "She said she was making progress. And then I—" I stop. Run a hand through my hair. "I saw her walk in tonight and something just stopped working. Like a circuit tripping."

"Your brain stopped working," Kade repeats, eyebrows up. "Is that what we're calling it?"

"Don't start."

"I'm serious. I've watched you walk past half the she-wolves on this campus without blinking. Tonight you clocked Gemma Harris from across a crowded room and disappeared for forty minutes." He tilts his head. "That's not your brain. That's something older than your brain."

I don't have an answer for that. Or rather — I have one, and it's the one I've been refusing to say out loud for months, because saying it makes it real, and real things have weight, and weight has consequences I'm not sure I'm built to carry.

Liam pushes off the wall and sits beside me. "Can I say something without you shutting down?"

"Probably not, but go ahead."

"You've been running your father's playbook your whole life," he says — not unkindly, just directly, in that way he has that bypasses defenses by simply going around them. "Keep distance. Don't let anyone close enough to matter. It works, mostly, because nothing gets close enough to test it." He pauses. "Gemma tests it. She's always tested it. And instead of asking why, you run the same cycle every time — get close, panic, pull back, repeat." He looks at me steadily. "At some point you have to ask yourself what you're actually protecting. And whether it's worth the cost."

I hold his gaze for a long moment.

Then I stand up and move to the window, because I need something to look at that isn't three people watching me have a realization.

The pack grounds below are silver-blue in the moonlight. I can see the path toward the east quad — the direction Gemma would have walked when she left. My wolf pushes against my ribs and I let him, because I'm too tired tonight to keep arguing.

My father's voice moves through my head the way it always does — measured, certain: *Love makes you predictable. You think you're choosing her — you're choosing weakness.*

I have heard it so many times I used to believe it was my own thought.

Standing here tonight, I'm less sure.

"I don't know how to do this without hurting her," I say to the window.

"You're already hurting her," Kade says from behind me. "The question is whether you're going to do something about it, or just keep adding to the damage."

I press my forehead against the cold glass.

I've been in real fights. Training sessions that left bruises for weeks, sparring with warriors who didn't hold back because my father didn't believe in holding back. I know what it feels like to take a hit and keep standing.

This is different. She wasn't trying to injure me. She was just done swallowing things quietly, and she'd sent some of the weight back to where it belonged. I'd stood there and taken it because some part of me — even in the moment — understood it was the only fair thing to do.

I turn around.

"Her birthday's coming up," I say. "I want to do something that actually means something. Not a performance. Something real."

Liam nods. "Start there. The rest you figure out as you go."

The three of them don't make a big deal of it. That's one of the things I value most about them — they know when to push and when to simply let a thing land. They file out a few minutes later, leaving the room quiet.

I stand at the window a while longer. Then I go back downstairs.

Rebecca finds me near the door, takes one look at my face, and saves us both the performance.

"It's Gemma," she says. Flat. Certain.

I don't confirm or deny it. I don't need to.

She picks up her jacket from the chair beside me. Gives me one long, clear-eyed look — the look of someone who has been quietly aware of a thing for a long time and has finally decided to stop pretending otherwise. "Figure it out before you waste any more of both our time."

She leaves without a scene. No anger, no raised voice — just clean, dignified, and somehow worse than any argument would have been.

I stand there alone.

My wolf presses against my ribs — steady, patient, still waiting.

I go to bed.

Tomorrow, I tell myself, I'll start figuring out what I actually want.

For the first time in a long time, I halfway believe I might.