Alpha Erased (Alpha Girl 9)

“My sister is gone. She’s the only one that’s been keeping an eye on Tessa. My mother is occupied. Which means we have time for her to fall in love with you again. And look at her.” Cosette pointed to Tessa asleep in my arms. “She’s here, already drawn to you. When I gripped her hand tonight, I could feel her fighting against my mother’s hold. With both you together again, that magic doesn’t stand a chance.”

I looked down at Tessa. “I almost gave up.”

“I know.” Chris squeezed my knee. “I know how bad it got with you, but you didn’t give up.”

I looked up at him. He was wrong. He was so fucking wrong. “She’s been fighting this whole time—so much that they have to shove the magic down her throat every two hours and press it into the walls where she lives—and she’s still here. She’s still fighting. And I almost gave up?” I’d never hated myself for that weak moment, but in that moment, I did. I hated how weak I’d been. “Tessa said she was running away to a mountain. She was afraid someone would die if she didn’t get there. That was me. Even under all that magic, she was still trying to save me.” I wasn’t worthy of her.

“This has been incredibly hard. I can’t imagine what you’ve gone through. If something happened to Cosette—”

“I saw Chris’s body.” Cosette’s voice was flat, and her words were too fast. As if she spit them out.

My gaze darted to hers. “What?”

“Chris was dead. Stabbed in the heart. I held him while he died. The blood was hot and everywhere and I was screaming and….” Cosette looked away and brushed away a tear. “I lay in my bed after. I couldn’t move.” More tears fell, but she didn’t brush them away this time. “I couldn’t talk to anyone. There was nothing to say. I hid in my room, in my bed, and I didn’t want to live anymore. Van tried to convince me to keep going, but I was fading and fading fast and I…” She turned to Chris, and he brushed her tears away with his thumbs. “I still have nightmares where he’s bleeding on the ground. Cold and lifeless. It haunts me. I’ve never felt that kind of pain before and—” Her voice broke.

Chris pressed a kiss to her forehead. “I’m okay. You have to let it go.”

She pulled away from him. “I can’t. I’ve been alive for a long time and gone through a lot, but losing you nearly killed me. It would’ve killed me if my father hadn’t fixed it.”

Chris pressed his forehead against hers. “Cosette. Please.”

“No.” She pushed him away. “This isn’t about us.” She looked at me again. “You survived much longer and did much better than I did. But this will haunt you forever—her being gone will haunt you—if you let it. I didn’t know you before you met her, but I know who you were with Tessa. She’s your other half, just as Chris is mine. And whatever happened for the last twenty-one months, you did what you had to do to survive, even if it was just barely. You don’t get to beat yourself up over that.”

She was wrong. I could and I would, especially when I knew the truth. “I never should’ve had her in the first place.”

Cosette’s mouth dropped open for a second, but then she covered up her shock. “Why do you think that?”

“I bit her.” I ran my fingers over her shoulder, over where I knew the scar from my claws were. I ran my finger over her lip that I’d bitten. “I took away her choice. I—”

“But you’re starting from scratch now.” Chris sounded so matter-of-fact that I wanted to hit him. He was annoying when he was arguing with me. “Her memory is gone, and she doesn’t remember you at all. And yet she decided to come over and hang out with you after talking to you once—“

“Twice,” I corrected.

Chris huffed. “Fine. After talking to you twice, she decided to come over for dinner, decided to stay, flirted with you, told you her whole backstory, and felt so comfortable with you that she’s currently asleep on you.”

Chris had a point. “But part of her must remember because—”

“No.” Chris cut me off. “Look at her. She has no memory of you, but her soul recognizes yours. You’re True Mates. Two halves. The same thing happened before. I know what I said before—about how I didn’t think you deserved her—but I wouldn’t have said that if I knew you’d felt the same way. And part of me knew because…”

“Because?”

“God. It feels like forever ago. After she jumped out the window, I went to talk to Mr. Dawson. I wanted to make sure Tessa was being taken care of. I wasn’t bitten, but I knew how werewolves would treat her as less than.”

I couldn’t stop the growl. I didn’t want to stop it.

Chris laughed at the sound. “Yeah. I agree. And I heard what you told Mr. Dawson. She left that party and saw you. She came to you. She sat on your lap, after only seeing you a couple of times. After she only talked to you once before. She’d never touched anyone before, and she decided to make out with you? She chose that. She might not have known what she was getting into, but she picked you. She was drawn to you just as you were drawn to her. Nothing could’ve stopped what happened next.”

Now it was my turn to be shocked. “I didn’t know you knew. I…” No one except me, Tessa, Mr. Dawson, and the former Seven knew exactly what happened the night I bit Tessa. At least, that’s what I’d thought.

“Tessa loves you,” Chris said plainly. “So stop thinking about whether you deserve her or not. If you really feel like you don’t, then spend the rest of your days proving yourself wrong. Be worthy. Be better. But enough of the pity party. We don’t need it. Especially not now.”

I moved my hand back to her pulse point. Her pulse was slow but still steady.

Chris was right about something. I would make myself worthy of her. “Okay. So what’s the game plan? I can’t let her go back in there, and I definitely can’t let her take any more of the potion. And we need to be gone before anyone comes to check on her.”

“We’re all going to sleep here,” Chris said. “We take the bed, and you’re going to stay on the couch with her. It’ll be pushing it if you’re in the bed, and I doubt you’re going to let her out of your sight.”

“You have that right.” I looked down at her. “And then?”