Page 56 of Knot Playing Fair 2

I snapped my jaw shut, not sure if her failing marriage made the whole thing better or worse.

“Do you still care about Nat?” Emiel asked. “Only sometimes it seems like you do.”

Now it was Mia’s turn to hesitate.

“I... yes. I don’t know if the marriage can be salvaged, or if I even want to try. But, yes. I still care about Nat. We were friends before we were lovers, and I miss that part. Badly.”

“Sounds like you don’t have to worry about the other two snapping Mia up while she’s still figuring out the rest of it, Luca,” Emiel said. “Does that help?”

I hated the fact that it did, a bit.

“I’ve got a floundering marriage, a floundering restaurant, and a one-sided gang war to fight,” Mia agreed. “As close as I feelto all of you—and that means you, too, Luca—I’m not exactly in the market for a mating bond right now.”

Emiel shifted uncomfortably, and I remembered his confession about how close he’d come to biting Mia without her consent. She must have remembered, as well—but if so, she didn’t show it.

“Did you ever dream about it when you were young?” I asked, the words escaping before I could stop them.

“A pack bond?” Mia asked. “I mean... didn’t we all? I was smuggling alphomic romance novels into the house before I even presented as an omega. My dad would’ve had an aneurism if he’d known about some of the stuff I was reading.”

“Same,” I whispered, then cleared my throat. “Well, not the parental oversight part, obviously. My parents were too busy shooting up heroin to take much interest in my reading material.”

“There are alphomic romance novels?” Emiel asked, sounding bewildered.

We both turned to stare at him in disbelief.

“Of course there are alphomic romance novels,” Mia said. “Holy crap. I amsogetting you some to read now.”

It shouldn’t have been enough to break through the heavy blanket of depression weighing down my shoulders—and yet, somehow, I found myself giggling like an idiot at the mental image of Emiel reading some kind of terrible Mills & Boon trash. The noise was at odds with the tears that were still burning their way down my cheeks every few seconds, but I couldn’t seem to stop it.

“Oh, wow. This I gotta see,” I said, my voice cracked and wavering.

“I’m doing it,” Mia vowed. “Don’t think I won’t.”

“Um... okay?” Emiel said, sounding more confused than anything.

Mia took a huge breath and let it out like a deflating balloon. “Right, guys. It’s super,superlate. I know I’ve got work to do tomorrow, and I’m guessing you two do as well.”

God. There was no way either of us could take off work today—not after missing so much for my damned unplanned heat. Why did my brain do this kind of shit to me? Even though I knew it was just emotional reaction, I felt like I was battling full-blown flu. My head ached. My joints ached. My eyes burned from crying, and my sinuses felt like someone had stuck an air compressor up my nose and started inflating them.

“Yeah,” Emiel said. “It’s a work day. What time is it, anyway? I didn’t stop to check.”

Battling guilt for having dragged everyone out of bed like the pathetic drama queen I was, I crawled over and checked my phone, wincing. “Three-thirty. My alarm goes off in two-and-a-half hours.”

“Sounds about right,” Emiel said, even as Mia failed to stifle a groan.

“I want to sleep here,” she declared. “Otherwise, I’ll just end up staring at the ceiling in my room until it’s time to get up. Emiel, I want you to sleep here, too.”

I could hear the worried frown in Emiel’s voice when he said, “It’s not your room.”

“That didn’t stop you from picking the lock,” Mia pointed out.

I knew I should be expressing an opinion about all of this. I even knew what that opinion should be. But somehow, the reality of having other people make all the decisions so I didn’t have to was strangely addictive.

“Dunno if I should be here.” Apparently, Emiel had found his missing conscience somewhere. “After what we talked about, I mean. I can’t be your alpha. Not yours or Luca’s. We all said so.”The last sentence emerged a bit defensive, even though it was a fair point.

“Emiel.” Mia sounded tired. Maybe a little sad, too. “No one’s talking about mating. No one’s talking about sex, or commitment. You know how sometimes Luca and I spend a night with Byron? Well, there’s no rule that says the three of us can’t spend a night cuddling, or even just sleeping in the same room. We can choose to do that because it’s something we want to do, and for no other reason.”

A tiny noise escaped me—longing, or maybe fear. Could anything be that simple? Was that really what Byron and I had? Sometimes it felt like it. Other times, it felt more complicated... like there were undercurrents I couldn’t see, that might randomly grab me and drag me below the surface.

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