Page 75 of Pack Frenzy
We slog out together, water dragging at our legs, sand sucking between our toes. He hands me the towel. Doesn’t look while I wrap up, which is somehow more intimate than if he had.
We walk back to the cabin side by side. Not touching. If we start we won’t stop.
My body is still buzzing, nerve endings singing a song I don’t have words for. But underneath the wanting, something quieter settles: I did that. I chose something for myself, something reckless and sweet, and the world didn’t end. I’m still here. He’s still here, and the sky hasn’t fallen.
Maybe this is what it feels like to stop running. Not the arrival—I’m not fool enough to think I’m there yet—but the first stumbling steps toward staying.
The giant shark slumps against the porch rail like a half-ass sentry, grinning its idiot grin at the moon. Somewhere down the hall, a floorboard creaks. Then Eli’s low laugh sounds from the master bedroom.
Cassian covers me in blankets as I sit beside the fireplace that he lights for us. Then he just wraps his arms around me, holding me until we both stop shivering.
I could make a list of reasons this is dangerous. I could pin them to the wall with knives and label them in permanentmarker. Instead I sit in the dark with the water saying hush against the rocks, and let myself have this small, salt-sweet thing until morning asks for me again.
CHAPTER 18
ROWAN
My fucking thoughts won’t shut the hell up. I can still hear the door click behind them, the quiet shuffle of her laugh before it disappeared. Cassian made her a fire.
I lay there, fists tight, pretending I didn’t care. Eli’s breathing was slow beside me, the kind of calm that makes you feel feral by comparison.
My Alpha side wants her—wants to taste the sound she makes when she gives in, to mark her until the whole damn cabin smells like us.
If I’d gone out there, I wouldn’t have stopped at a kiss. The bed she’s been sleeping in wouldn’t have survived it, and neither would my control.
So I’m up, pacing. And I’m trying real damn hard to convince myself this is fine.
She chose Cassian last night. That’s everything we promised her she’d get here. But what’s eating me is if they did more than kiss. If she’s a one-male Omega or if she even wants Eli and me. We’ve been here before—females who fit us in pieces but never as a whole.
My jaw hurts from clenching.
I give up on sleep and throw on a sweatshirt. The hall smells like her. Vanilla and jasmine underneath that makes my teeth ache. Cassian’s towel is slung over a chair, still damp. Sand tracked across the rug in two sets of footprints leading to the blanket basket. Half the blankets are gone. I stand there fucking too long staring at those prints like they’ll tell me something useful.
They don’t.
Outside, the fog is thick enough to choke on. Gray water, gray sky, no line between them. The tide’s out, flats shining wet in the almost-dawn. A motorcycle screams past once.
I lean against the porch rail and breathe. Cedar. Salt. Cold air that bites.
And underneath it all: Cassian’s scent mixed with vanilla that’s gone soft and easy, the kind of scent that means she felt safe. Means her Omega stopped bracing long enough to let go. I’ve been chasing that scent in my head for days. The idea of her loose and willing and trusting enough to justbe.
Cassian pulled it out of her first.
My knuckles go white on the rail.
Behind me, the door opens, and I know without looking that it’s Eli. He’s got his ridiculous big mug with BETAS DO IT BETTER stamped across it, and he’s not saying anything, just standing there like he’s got all the time in the world.
“You heard them come in,” he says finally.
“Yeah.”
He huffs in a way that’s neither yes nor no. Just space for me to sit in my own shit.
I don’t look at him. “I checked earlier. The fireplace was cold before we went to bed.”
Eli takes a sip of his coffee. “He lit it after.”
Don’t need a picture; I can imagine more than enough with him wrapping her in a blanket, starting the fire, maybe evensharing a bottle of wine. No fucking way am I going to check if he’s in his bedroom or alone.
