This is a short one but I hope it still satisfies nonetheless. This will feature angsty Ben through and through so, without further ado...

Chapter 3

Ben was yawning as he drove his rental to the front of the Huxley's pool house. Rey had directed him there, when he insisted on driving her home.

He yawned again just before he rolled to a stop. Dinner had finally gotten to him and it looked like it had already gotten the better of Rey, who was now lightly snoring in the passenger seat.

It was the first time he really looked at her that night. She had grown into her features, he thought, growing even more beautiful in his estimation. If he squinted hard enough, he was sure to see the stubborn smattering of freckles across the bridge of her nose— the only holdover from their childhood.

He let out an exasperated sigh.

He'd loved her for as long as he'd known her. It was just too bad that there was no future for them.

He was just too broken for that. He had a damaged pituitary gland (whatever the hell that was), and a severely deficient sense of smell because of the head injuries he'd sustained in the car crash that killed his father and very nearly killed himself. And so, while he had retained most of his physical Alpha attributes, he could not and would not, however, be able to scent his mate's heat, knot her, or give her babies. In short, he was essentially a Beta who was useless in every regard to an Omega — or, at least that was how the doctors had laid it out back then when explaining the extent of his injuries. Heck, he hadn't even popped a single knot ever after that first time.

In an even more cruel twist of fate, he had caught Rey's true Omega essence, just a little over a week before that fateful night, right at the moment he had reflexively taken her bloodied finger into his mouth, after she had accidentally injured it while checking on his car's engine — the same car that they had carefully restored, with a little help from his father, for his previous year's birthday.

He had just about gone bonkers, having tasted and scented her, that he hadn't really known what to do with himself then, except to dazedly get back into the car after she got it started again. And he had such a poor understanding of his first rut, being so blindsided by it having come a year earlier than expected, that it had driven him to drown out the sudden barrage of incessant smells, unrelenting sounds and disturbing urges by going on a bender. He remembered calling his dad to pick him up at some bar that he couldn't even now put a name to. He'd like to think that he had drunkenly confessed everything to his father, including his love for Rey and his suspicion that it was she who had triggered his early presentation, because he vaguely recalled his dad chuckling as he congratulated Ben on officially becoming an Alpha and for having discovered his mate so early on. Little did they know that as they celebrated with joyous hugs, that it was also going to be the night that would trash their lives forever.

He had been mourning the loss of his father, yes, but it had actually been the grief of an unrealized future and the anger at the ruination of his most fervently held dreams that had him lashing out at everything and everyone, most of all Rey.

He had started to resent her for catalyzing the chain of events that ruined their future and he had begun hating himself too, for his pettiness towards her, who was someone he'd professed, at least to his father, to love and love greatly. But he couldn't help the way he felt. His Alpha had been too new, too raw and too wild to have been easily mastered. So Ben had turned to alcohol and then to drugs to stem the rising tide of his bitterness, but they did nothing but fail to quell such a deep and profound sorrow.

It took the fear in Rey's eyes the night of their final confrontation ten years ago for him to understand the monster he'd become. It was then that he realized that he would much rather leave before all his seemingly boundless feelings festered into hate because he knew, deep down, that Rey didn't deserve any enmity, least of all from him.

And it had taken him years upon years of intensive therapy, rigorous military training, and even a stint in a monastery, to overcome the dark bitterness he'd allowed into his soul. Letting go of the idea of them had been one of the hardest things he has ever had to do. And even then, it was still Rey's voice that was a near constant inside his head.

And that was perhaps why he didn't really want to look too closely into that almost giddy delight his heart may have felt at her warm welcome of him tonight or at the pleasure that came with her satisfaction as she fed him from her spoon. Maybe he still harbored a secret hope, that maybe, someday, somehow, they'd find a way to still be together in spite of everything.

But of course, he knew that reality always had a way of rearing its ugly head. And yet, he was still tempted to indulge in his little fantasy maybe a while longer because it had been so long since he'd felt as calm, content and complete as he was now, just watching her snore, knowing that this woman had trusted him enough to allow herself to sleep so soundly in his presence.

He sighed yet again, as he slumped his head against the steering wheel. He needed to sober up. He was so punch drunk in love again that he knew he had to level out before he devastated himself once more.

And that, he surmised, was the greatest tragedy of his situation — to love and to love completely, but always, always in secret and always from afar.