Chapter Eleven

Leo was… not at his best. Actually, it was pretty likely that this could be termed his worst. Ever. He was certain he'd never felt so awful in his life, so that would make sense.

He'd lost her.

She'd been right there, pressed up against him so tight he could feel the ridges of her spine against the front of his body, and he'd lost her. Because of who he was. What he did. What he'd allowed being James' Beta to make him into. Someone who hurt people at another's whim, and didn't even try to change things, just like she'd accused him. Just as bad as the man who had hurt her before.

The part of him that seemed to be connected to Della like a physical tether was always there, reminding him what he'd lost. Sometimes it felt like it was wrapped around his intestines, like he could yank his guts out if he pulled on it hard enough.

The first night he drove past her house, he told himself it was just to be sure she'd made it home from work safely. Then he went home and got so rip-roaringly drunk that he woke up next to the first half of a bad poem he didn't remember penning to her, and no fewer than four empty whiskey bottles that he'd apparently shot-gunned one after another. The second night, he gave the same excuse for driving past her house, but at least had the wherewithal to ring Raj and Em and ask them to come over to prevent any more terrible poetry from eventuating. Not that he mentioned that part to them.

Emmett, who arrived first, took one look at him and knew something momentous was wrong. It probably had something to do with the fact that he hadn't shaved in four days and was likely starting to resemble a yeti.

"So, things went pear-shaped with the witch?" he asked, surveying the living room that Leo had only cursorily cleaned up. Well, at least he couldn't see the detritus of the bender Leo had been on for the last few days.

"Her name is Della," Leo said, unwilling to acknowledge the knife-to-the-heart feeling that came from saying her name.

"Oh, man," Emmett said, surveying Leo and cataloguing his expression, a habit he'd had since they were kids. "You are fucked up over this one."

"You have no idea," Leo muttered, taking a swig of the beer he'd set down to open the door. "She's my mate, Em."

Emmett just about dropped the carry bag he'd been holding. "Are you serious? The way you feel about her convinced you of all people that the thing you've been calling the 'mate myth' for years now is actually real?"

"This feeling…" Leo paused, slightly uncomfortable with talking emotions even to one of his oldest friends. "It can't mean anything else. This is more than being in love with someone, it's… belonging, Em. I belong to her. And she doesn't want to see me ever again. She's ashamed of me." The words felt like they were burning his throat. Ashamed. Ashamed. Ashamed.

Emmett laid a hand on Leo's shoulder. "Well, don't tell Raj you changed your mind about the mate thing. He'll never shut up about it if you let him think he got something right."

For the first time since Della walked out, Leo managed to summon a laugh.

"I presume you're talking about me," Raj noted, coming through the door still dressed in the formal clothes he wore as a librarian—a far cry from Leo's own sweatpants-clad form. "What with the discussion of someone being right."

Leo and Emmett exchanged glances.

"It's your little witchy friend, isn't it?" Raj asked, settling on to the couch as he always did when he came over.

"Della," Em and Leo said in unison.

"What happened?" Raj asked. "You two seemed pretty cosy when we saw you the other night."

"It was the other night," Leo burst out, abandoning his beer, and storming into the kitchen in favor of something stronger. The others followed. He pulled out a bottle of something he didn't even take the time to identify and took a swig from it. It burned going down, which was exactly what he wanted. Pain was what he deserved.

"You want to give us some more information about what happened?" Em asked hesitantly.

"She knows what I do for James now," Leo said dully, then took another draw from the bottle. "Delivering messages. The threats. The beatings. I hadn't… told her. Not in detail. I just said I didn't like all the things he had me do and left it there. And she doesn't want anything to do with someone who would do that, would live with that, without trying to change it."

The two wolves stood in silence for a long moment, staring at him before Leo broke the standoff to take another swig of undefined liquor.

"She's my mate," he said, hearing how broken his own voice sounded, ringing in his ears. "She's my mate, and I lost her."

"See? I was right about the mate thing!" Raj crowed, then realized they were glaring at him and promptly changed his tune. "That's brutal, man. Are you sure there's nothing you can do?"

"There are plenty of things I could do, but none of them end without someone getting hurt," Leo burst out. "I leave my position as Beta, leave the pack, and James gets to choose someone who doesn't give a shit about the violence to take my place. I oppose him, and he comes down on the people I care about to force me into obeying. He comes down on you guys, on my mum… on Della, if he can get to her. I wait until he dies from a life of bad living, or someone challenges him for the position of Alpha, and maybe they're worse. Maybe I spend my whole life as a glorified message boy for a violent psychopath who doesn't give a shit about the people he's supposed to be leading." He took another swig of liquor, relishing the burn. Hell, at this rate maybe he would be able to drink enough to actually get drunk after all.

"Leo—" Emmett started.

"I just want to see her," he said, focusing on the bottle in his hand. "My wolf is fucking furious and doesn't know why I'd let her get so far away. But I just want to know that she's okay, that she's eating enough, getting enough sleep. I don't even need to have her back in my bed, I just want to know she's taking care of herself." Because you're not there to take care of her anymore, you stupid prick, his internal voice berated him. Because you well and truly fucked that up, now you don't even know if she's back to working through her lunch breaks.

He wondered if he was going to be sick at the thought and had another drink instead.

"Okay, is your aim tonight to get too shitfaced to remember your own name?" Raj asked. "Because it looks like you're headed that way."

"Leo," Emmett said insistently. "Leo, you know we can take care of ourselves. We'd take care of your mum. And Della's a witch—a damn powerful one, from what I've heard. She can protect herself too."

"I can't risk it," Leo said. "I can't risk him bringing the wrath of the pack down on the people I care about. The way things are now is bad enough. How could I live with it if I was the reason one of you guys got hurt or ejected from the pack? Or Della? God, she's been hurt enough already. I can't risk bringing any more of that shit into her life."

"What did you think was going to happen between you, Leo?" Raj asked, not unkindly. "She's a witch. You know how James is about keeping the pack clear of other species. Were you just going to hide her away and pretend she wasn't your mate? Keep her clear of the pack and hope she never found out the stuff James gets you to do? That's no way to run a relationship, man."

"I hate to be the one to say this," Emmett said after a beat, "but Raj is kind of making sense here. How did you see it playing out, if you were trying to hide her from the pack, and the rest of your life from her? You really think that would have worked?"

"Great, so it was doomed from the start," Leo said, throwing his arms wide. Liquor sloshed in the half-empty bottle. "I couldn't have kept her apart from the rest of… of everything. Couldn't have made her live like that. No matter what, we end up here. You think that makes this any easier?"

"No, but—" Raj started.

"She is my mate," Leo interrupted, feeling something inside him fracture like a punched mirror. "There's only one of her, and I have lost her. I had her and I lost her." He pressed a hand to his chest, half surprised that his heart was still beating, half wondering why the hell it was bothering.

"All right," Raj said, wrapping an arm around Leo's shoulders. "We're gonna watch a movie to distract you and you can get plastered in front of the TV. Boys' night." He steered Leo into the living room and plunked him down on the sofa. "Everything looks better with some scripted gunfighting onscreen in the background."

"Is that a fact?" Em asked.

"Trust me," Raj replied. "You've already admitted that I was right twice tonight. And good things come in threes." When Leo looked up, he could see them having some sort of communication through glances between him, the TV, and the liquor bottle he still held. He was too emotionally exhausted to take offense at their silent communication. He'd gone from being the strong, competent Beta of the pack to this… this hopeless wreck. Could he sink any further when he was already thinking about Della approximately every other second? When the tether that linked them seemed to be intent upon slowly disemboweling him?

"How much booze do you think you have in this house?" Emmett asked. "Because I don't think I can sit through another one of Raj's movie picks sober."

Leo jerked his head towards the kitchen. "All yours. And bring me another one of these. Anything'll do."

Anything would do. Anything to try to fill the hole that losing Della had made in his chest. Though he had a bad feeling that no matter how hard he tried, nothing was even going to come close.