Free Mating the Alpha by Ivy Sinclair

remembered, but yet still exactly the same. I started to walk toward you, and I was about to call out your name when someone else beat me to it. I remember you looked up, and I thought that you saw me. Your face lit up in this huge smile, and it took me a minute to realize that you weren’t looking at me at all. There was a crowd of kids that burst into the common area, and you ran toward them. Everyone started talking at once, and then it was as if the crowd absorbed you from my view. But it was so obvious to me how happy you were. They crowded around you as you all walked off, and I knew that for once, you were the center of attention, and why wouldn’t you be? You were always smart and funny and gorgeous. But when you were friends with me, you were always forced to be in my shadow because I needed to be the one that everyone was looking at. I had to do everything I could to keep the eyes glued on me because for some stupid reason that made me feel better about my sorry life.”
    Maren reached up and touched my hand. I stared at it. It was so small compared to mine. She was trying to comfort me just like she always did. I was supposed to be the one taking care of her. No matter what I did, it always seemed like she was taking care of me.
    “Lukas, you should have said something to me that day. I would have loved to see you then.”
    “That was why your greeting in the hospital a week ago was so warm and fuzzy, right?” It wasn’t fair, and I saw her eyes narrow. This was something else that we did well. Fight. But I didn’t want to fall back into our old patterns; not anymore. I had to open myself up to her and hope for the best. “I’m sorry. You had every right to be upset with me.”
    “Maybe if you had started with what you’re telling me now, the conversation would have gone differently,” she said.
    “I have spent the last ten years convincing myself you were better off without me,” I said. “Despite everything inside of me that said differently. I believed you deserved better.”
    “What was the third time?” she asked softly. “You said that you came to see me three times.”
    I sighed. “I was there the day you graduated.”
    She looked surprised. Then her expression changed, and she shook her head. “You were there. Of course, you were. I thought I felt somebody watching me that day, but Dad said I was being paranoid.”
    “No, that was nothing but your resident shifter stalker checking up on you,” I said. “That was the third and last time. I just had to make sure that you were still happy. I remember thinking your dad actually looked proud of you that day, and I thought that you’d go far. You had the world in front of you. You didn’t need me getting in the way of that.”
    Maren rolled her eyes. “I moved back to Greyelf and went to work for my dad. You wouldn’t have interfered with much.”
    I sank down onto the floor as we stared at each other, and I was less distracted by the constantly disappearing bubbles. “I’ve told you already that you are an incredibly talented writer, Maren. You are only here in Greyelf because you feel an unnecessary obligation to your old man. You could easily go anywhere to any newspaper or magazine in the country, probably even the world, and get a job without even blinking. You’re that good. So don’t tell me that this town’s rag was your only option.”
    She bit her lower lip, and I saw by her expression that she was calculating her next words carefully. For being a writer, Maren wasn’t usually one to mince words when it came to verbalizing how she felt or what she was thinking. That was just another thing that I loved about her.
    And that was the crux of the whole thing. I loved Maren Lene. I probably had since the day I first saw her when we were ten years old. But I had been too dumb and wrapped up in my own turmoil to recognize it. By the time I wizened up, the opportunity to tell her how I felt about her had passed me by.
    “Lukas,