Valentina had never had to force so many terrified people to shift before. It was days later, and she still felt drained, not quite her normal self. It didn’t help that her thoughts never strayed far from Elijah and the hissy fit he had thrown.

“Hey, boss lady,” Kinsley said as she and Liana came into the kitchen.

“Hey,” Valentina responded without removing her gaze from the fridge. The last few days, she had craved solitude more than anything else, and her jaguar was angry with her about it, but didn’t push.

“You okay?”

“Yep.” She popped the p and could feel the unease radiating off her friends. It wasn’t what she was going for, but she was tired of everyone checking in on her, tired of telling everyone she was okay when everything ached.

“Come on, talk to us,” Liana said from the other side of the counter.

“There’s nothing to talk about. I used a lot of energy with everyone shifting and whatnot. Now I’m trying to find packs for all of them. I’ve already had to give in to some alphas’ demands. I’m just tired, that’s all.”

“That’s some bullshit and you know it,” Liana said.

“Lee—” Kinsley gasped as the other woman spoke.

“Look, I know what you guys are thinking. It’s not that.”

“Not what? Elijah?” Liana pressed.

At the sound of his name, a spear of pain went through her heart. She’d never felt like this after any of her other boyfriends or lovers left, so what was different this time?

“It’s okay to admit you had feelings for him, you know.” This came from Kinsley, her soft voice smoothing over the roughness left by Liana’s comment.

She might have had feelings for him, but they had died when he not only didn’t fight with her but didn’t fight for her when she told him to leave. The whisper of his voice calling her kitten for the last time floated through her mind, and she wanted to yell and scream.

“Look,” she said, finally closing the fridge and turning around to face her friends, “I may have been starting to develop feelings for him, but it never would have worked. Two alphas? Come on. That’s a relationship that’s doomed from the start. Besides, I don’t want to drag the pack through that, not right now, and not when we are going to be getting new members.”

“New members?” Liana’s eyebrows pinched together.

“Part of the negotiations with a couple of the alphas was that we take in a member unhappy with their current pack, give them somewhere to stay for a while, and if we mesh well, then I allow them to join. If we don’t mesh well, they can find another pack or go home.”

“So, you don’t want to let Elijah in, but you’ll let complete strangers in?” Liana’s voice was harsh with disdain.

“Elijah didn’t want to stay.” The words barely escaped through her gritted teeth.

“Everyone heard you tell him to leave. It’s not as though you gave him the option.”

“And it’s not as though he put up much of a fight. I should have trusted my instincts and stayed away from him in the first place. Two alphas together doesn’t work.”

“You didn’t—”

Valentina held up her hand. “I’m done talking about it,” she said, throwing her alpha power into her voice so they knew she was serious. “Kins, I expect a report of what you’ve found in the records from that place on my desk tomorrow morning, and Liana, since you apparently need something to do, you can take Liam and go pick up our new members.”

Liana spluttered in response, clearly indignant at the idea of having nothing to do. Valentina knew her well enough, though, and once she got over the shock, the idea of a road trip would practically make her giddy. She was just thankful that the alphas hadn’t made her presence necessary for picking up the new members.

Before either of them could get a sentence out, she was gone. Her stomach protested slightly as she left the kitchen, as though it knew it wasn’t going to get any food, but the only place she felt comfortable at that moment was in her bedroom. No one would bother her there, and she could catch up on some work, which she desperately needed to do after the mess of the last couple weeks.

It was a few hours later, after the house had gone quiet, that the e-mail from Kinsley popped up. She had already compiled all her notes from the files. Valentina opened the attachment and began reading. From the looks of things, they were turning as many people as they could, and then once the transformation was complete, they were executing either the original shifter or the new one, depending on who was stronger since they thought the stronger the original, the stronger the bitten would be. With Dante being so strong, it explained why they had kept him alive for so long, and why there were so many different types of animals there. She suspected that after Elijah had been turned, Dante wouldn’t have lasted much longer had the panther not escaped.

There was only so much she could take before the nausea began to roll in her stomach at the thought of what these people had endured all for the sake of curiosity. The house was quiet at this time of night—it usually was—so she left her room and went to forage for some dinner. The kitchen was blissfully empty, or at least she had thought it was when she went in. Imogen sat at the table by the window with Penelope. The two of them had been reading, but now Imogen’s pale-blue eyes watched her.

Penelope kept her head down, her nose buried in the book, but Valentina knew she was paying attention. The woman had been brought to Midnight after being found by the siren brothers at a facility that kept supernatural creatures to try to tap into the magic they held. The poor woman had been so damaged that she barely spoke for the first few months, and then it was only to Imogen or Valentina. She honestly wasn’t sure when the other woman had last shifted. Although she knew what Penelope’s animal was, she also knew how dangerous it would be for others to find out, so she never forced her.

“How are you feeling, Valentina?” Imogen’s husky voice sounded behind her as she began heating up some of the leftover meatloaf Lizzy had made.

“Fine, thank you.”

The scrape of the chair legs against the floor let her know that the wolf shifter had risen and was coming over. She didn’t particularly want to talk, just as she hadn’t earlier with Kinsley and Liana. Imogen was less likely to be as pushy as her other packmates, though. After all, the woman had secrets of her own, and Valentina had never pushed her to reveal them. To try to distract herself and not snap at Imogen, she began loading the dishwasher. The plates that had been left in the sink had at least been rinsed off, but it looked as if she would need to remind everyone of the house rules, which she could do after the new members arrived with Liam and Liana.

“Alpha.” Imogen’s voice was soft, careful even. and it hurt just to hear it. “Your pain is radiating out of you in waves. The others may not be as sensitive to it as I am, but they recognize that something is wrong nonetheless. I know you probably don’t want to talk about it and may even be upset with me for bringing it up, but you should talk to someone about it.”

“Why? There’s no point.”

“Sometimes it helps just to share the burden.”

“The only burden I feel right now is picking up after everyone while also doing the work for the shelter and trying to find a pack for all those who need it.”

“Those who need it?”

“I think Dante is going to stay with us. His cat trusts me, and I am honestly not sure what would happen if he went to another pack.”

“He is a troubled man, but his future is bright thanks to you and Elijah.”

She wanted to snap and snarl that Elijah had nothing to do with it, that he had abandoned her and Dante to pursue his own goals, but instead, she merely grunted an agreement.

“I see,” was all Imogen said.

Valentina looked up at her from loading the dishes, her gaze sharp on the other woman. “What do you see?”

“You love him, and your heart is broken now that he is gone.”

She scoffed, “How could I love someone I had only known a few days? Someone who then almost let me die?”

“Your cat knows, and so do you deep down.”

“I can’t love another alpha. What would happen to Midnight? How would people handle that? I’m not willing to give this pack up, not for love or anything of that nature.”

“You are the alpha, that is true, but I’m the omega. I’m the heart of the pack. I see what you can’t. And what I see right now is your pain radiating out through the pack, like an infection. While Midnight is unusual in its nature, it’s not immune to rotting from within.”

“Rotting?” Valentina breathed. Surely that wasn’t the case. Her anger and pain couldn’t be destroying the very thing she was fighting to save.

“Rotting,” Imogen confirmed. “Think about this, how many couples are there in the pack? Two, right? Harper and Domino are one, and Liam and Asher are the other. That leaves you”—she began folding fingers down on her hand as she spoke—“me, Liana, Kinsley, and Penelope. How likely do you think your packmates are to find love if they see you refusing it when it’s right in front of you?”

“He didn’t love me,” she said quietly. “If he did, he wouldn’t have left.”

“Or he loved you so much that he did what you asked even though he didn’t want to,” Imogen chided softly.

That thought hadn’t occurred to her before, and she wasn’t sure how she felt about the idea.

Imogen sighed and handed her a dish. “Just promise me you’ll think about what I said.”

Valentina knew the ring of truth when she heard it. “I don’t know how to fix it,” she whispered so quietly, she almost couldn’t hear herself.

“You can do anything you put your mind to. If you couldn’t, you never would have become an alpha in the first place, would you?”

“I suppose not.” Valentina smiled at her friend.

“I’m glad you’re going to get him back. He was nice,” Penelope said from her corner, her wide gray-green eyes watching Valentina.

“Any pointers on groveling?”

“Alphas do not grovel,” Imogen said with a smile. “They might apologize, but never grovel. He will understand as an alpha himself. Being with him will challenge you in ways you can’t imagine, but I think, from what I saw of the two of you together, that you will each push each other to be the best person you can be. It doesn’t hurt that you clearly couldn’t date a beta. You need someone who will call you on your bullshit, Valentina. If you think that’s him, and you care for him as I think you do, then you should go talk to him.”

She sighed. Talking felt like a mistake, as though they would just rip into each other again, but it was the only option she had, so she just had to work up the courage to go to him.