Page 29 of Knotting the Cowboys

They continue preparing dinner around me, careful not to crowd but never leaving me alone.

Their scents ebb and flow with their movement, a complex dance that makes my head spin and my core clench.

I'm grateful. I'm terrified.

I'm aroused beyond reason by men who saved my life and waited for me to come home. The Omega in me wants to thank them the way biology demands—on my knees, throat bared, offering everything.

The woman in me wants to run before I do something I'll regret.

But I stay.

Caught between gratitude and desire, confusion and clarity, the past that brought me here and the future that stretches ahead unknowable.

I stay because Grandpa trusted them.

Because Luna keeps reaching for me like I belong.

Because… despite everything, this kitchen full of patient Alphas feels safer than anywhere I've been in years.

Even if that safety comes with a price my body seems all too willing to pay.

Not Ours To Touch

~COLE~

The October evening paints everything golden as I lead our group back outside, but all I can see is the way the dying light catches in Willa's hair.

Auburn, I'd thought at first, but that's too simple a word for the way copper and chocolate weave together, creating depths that shift with every movement.

She walks beside me, close enough that her scent—vanilla and maple with something uniquely her—winds around my senses like smoke. I force my eyes forward, focusing on the familiar path to the eastern pasture, but my body remains acutely aware of every breath she takes.

Christ, she's beautiful.

Not in the obvious way that demands attention, but in the subtle details that sneak up on a man.

The way her eyes—caught somewhere between orange and gold with flecks of green—widen when she spots the new irrigation system. The delicate curve of her neck when she tilts her head to listen to River explain the grazing rotation. The unconscious grace in how she moves, even exhausted and overwhelmed as she clearly is.

I'd expected... I don't know what I'd expected.

William's granddaughter, the one he worried about constantly, the woman we'd pulled from a burning house—somehow I'd built an image of someone harder, more brittle.

Broken, maybe.And she is damaged, that's clear in the careful way she holds herself, the shadows that cross her face when she thinks no one's looking.

But there's strength there too, steel under the soft curves.

And God, those curves.

I try not to notice, but I'm only an Alpha.

One who hasn’t dared go near an Omega in a long ass time, let alone wish to be with one as young as her…

The mere thought has my cock twitching with an odd sense of anticipation.

The thought of admiring her feeling forbidden…

She's not built like the skeletal models city Alphas seem to prefer—there's substance to her, a real woman's body with hips that would fit perfectly in my hands and breasts that strain slightly against her worn t-shirt.

But it's her ass that keeps drawing my gaze as she walks ahead to examine the garden gate.

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