Obsessed With My Alpha

Gemma's Point Of View "I've loved you since we were pups, Jonah. Please — tell me you feel the same." I whisper the words to my reflection for the hundredth time, watching my own lips move like I'm memorizing a line for a play I'm too terrified to perform. My hazel eyes stare back at me, unconvinced. My sandy brown hair falls loose around my shoulders, and I hate the way I look tonight — not ugly, exactly, but ordinary. Safe. The kind of girl you pat on the shoulder and call your best friend. Which is exactly what I am to Jonah Snow. I let out a slow breath, gripping the edge of the bathroom sink. "Come on, Gemma. You've rehearsed this a million times. Just say it when you see him." But the pep talk dissolves the moment my dad's voice fills the silence in my head — the way it always does when I'm standing at the edge of something I might regret. "Your job is to mate with a high-ranking werewolf, Gemma. The higher the rank, the better." He's said it my whole life. It's practically a greeting at this point. And I've always smiled and nodded, because what else do you say when the man who raised you sees you as a transaction? When your entire worth in this pack is tied to a wolf you don't even have? That's the thing no one says out loud, but everyone knows: I'm rankless. Almost human. Seventeen years old and not a single flicker of a wolf inside me, no matter how many full moons I've stood beneath, hoping something would stir. My family is beta — my uncle is well respected, well liked — but me? I'm the exception. The anomaly. The girl who smiles too wide at pack gatherings to cover the fact that she doesn't quite belong. It doesn't matter to me, I tell myself. It never has. I only want Jonah. Not because he's Alpha Alaric Snow's son, not because he'll inherit Moonrift Pack and every wolf in it will bow their head to him one day. I want him because of the second grade, when Michelle Bower shoved me down on the playground and called me *rankless* like it was the filthiest word she knew. I was six years old, sitting in the dirt with scraped palms and the beginning of tears, and Jonah — this skinny, dark-haired boy I barely knew — had stepped between us without a second of hesitation. "Say that again," he'd said, his voice so steady it startled everyone into silence. She didn't. Nobody did, not with Jonah standing there. We'd been inseparable ever since. Two puzzle pieces that shouldn't fit — the future Alpha and the rankless girl — but somehow did. He was my first call after every nightmare, my plus-one to every pack event, the only person who never looked at me like I was lacking something. To everyone else, I was a curiosity. To Jonah, I was just Gemma. And therein lay the problem. Because I'd been "just Gemma" for eleven years. His little cheeks — his nickname for me since he'd teased me mercilessly about my round face in the fourth grade. His little sister in every way that counted. And I was so tired of it, I could scream. I stared at myself one last time. I wasn't his type — I knew that too. Jonah went for tall and sleek, cool-eyed blondes who looked like they'd stepped off the cover of a pack magazine. I had curves and freckles and a laugh that came out too loud whenever something actually surprised me. I didn't fit the image. I never would. But I was done waiting in the wings of my own life. I grabbed my jacket off the hook by the door and stepped outside. The night was crisp — the kind of October cold that sharpens everything, makes the world feel more real than usual. I needed that. I needed my head clear, my lungs full, my feet steady beneath me. Each step along the path toward the treehouse felt deliberate, like a countdown I couldn't stop. Our spot hadn't changed in eleven years. It sat at the edge of the pack's training grounds — a battered old structure half-swallowed by the oak that held it, boards weathered silver by years of rain. We'd claimed it as ours the summer we were eight, dragged up blankets and flashlights and sworn we'd never tell anyone about it. We never did. Jonah was already there when I arrived, leaning against the tree with his hands tucked into his jacket pockets, dark hair catching the moonlight. The moment he saw me, that familiar grin broke across his face — easy, warm, the kind that had always made my stomach do something embarrassing. "Took you long enough, Harris," he called. I rolled my eyes, climbing the rope ladder. "Fashionably late, Snow. Ever heard of it?" He laughed, reaching over to ruffle my hair the second I got to the top. I swatted his hand away and he grinned wider, completely unbothered, and I hated how easy it was between us, how natural — and how much I wanted it to be something else entirely. We settled onto the old wooden planks, legs dangling over the edge, the lights of the pack houses flickering through the tree line below. For a while, we just sat in comfortable quiet, passing a thermos of hot chocolate back and forth, talking about nothing — his training schedule, my upcoming final exams, whether Coach Rennick was secretly terrified of Jonah's father. Normal things. Easy things. I was stalling, and I think some part of me knew he knew it. "Jonah." My voice came out softer than I intended, and I watched him turn toward me, his expression shifting — the easy smile giving way to something more careful, more attentive. "Yeah?" I set the thermos down. Pressed my palms flat against my thighs so he couldn't see them shake. "I need to tell you something. And I need you to actually listen — not joke, not deflect. Just... listen." He straightened. Crossed his arms loosely, leaning back just enough to face me properly. "Okay," he said. "I'm listening." I pulled in a breath through my nose. Held it. Let it go. "I love you." The words came out steadier than I expected, and I didn't let myself stop. "Not like a friend. Not like family. I've loved you since we were pups, Jonah — the kind of love that makes every other version of you and me feel like settling. I've spent years convincing myself I was okay with just being your best friend, but I'm not. I'm not okay with it." I met his eyes. "I need to know if there's any part of you that feels the same. Even a little. Because if there isn't, I have to figure out how to stop." The silence stretched. Jonah looked at me — really looked at me — and the expression on his face was the one I'd been most afraid of: not cruelty, not disgust, but something worse. Conflict. Sorrow. The look of someone who already knows what they have to say and hates themselves for it. "Gemma." His voice was low. Careful. He ran a hand through his hair, jaw tight. "You're... you mean everything to me. You know that." "But?" "But I don't—" He stopped. Started again. "You're my best friend. You've always been my best friend. I've never let myself think of you as—" He shook his head, and I noticed he couldn't quite hold my gaze. "I don't see you that way. I'm sorry." "You're like a sister to me." He didn't say it, but I heard it anyway. I'd heard it a thousand times in my own head, preparing for exactly this moment, and it still landed like a fist to the sternum. I kept my face very still. Smiled — that careful, practiced smile that meant absolutely nothing. "Okay," I said. "I just needed to know." "You're amazing, Gemma. Any guy would be—" "Don't." I stood up, brushing off my jeans with hands that were definitely not shaking. "You don't have to say that. I didn't tell you because I wanted a consolation speech." I picked up the thermos and handed it to him. "I told you because I was done carrying it alone." I started toward the ladder. His voice stopped me. "Gemma, wait." I paused but didn't turn around. Heard him stand behind me, felt the warmth of him before his hand touched my arm — light, tentative, like he wasn't sure I'd let him. And I should have pulled away. I should have climbed down and walked home with my head high and let that be the end of it. Instead, I turned. He was closer than I expected, close enough that I could see the uncertainty working through his expression — the war of it, something pulling beneath his careful surface that he refused to name. "You mean a lot to me," he said. "I don't want to lose you." And there it was. The thing that always brought me back, that kept me tethered to the hope I knew was going to destroy me. He didn't want to lose me. He just didn't want *me.* I looked at him for a long moment — memorizing the exact shape of this, the specific weight of this particular heartbreak. Then I stepped back. "Then don't make me choose between staying your friend and losing myself," I said quietly. "Because right now, I'm not sure if I can do both." I climbed down the ladder before he could answer. Walked the path home with my chin up and my vision blurring just slightly at the edges. Didn't let myself cry until I was past the tree line, alone in the dark, where no one could hear it. And in the hollow space behind my ribs, in the silence where a wolf should have been — the wolf I'd probably never have — I made myself a promise. "If I'm not enough for him now... I'll become someone impossible to overlook." "One day, Jonah Snow will understand exactly what he let go."