Page 25 of Pack Frenzy
The question isn’t really about celery. It’s about whether we’re making room, whether this is temporary or something we’re building toward.
She drums her fingers once against the counter—uncertain, waiting.
“It’s your house too,” I say before my brain edits it. It isn’t—not yet. But the sentence feels like a fixed hinge, solid in the frame. “Just don’t touch Eli’s herb garden out front, I swear he reads bedtime stories to it every night.”
Something unreadable crosses her face, and she looks down, tucks a damp strand behind her ear before I can tell what it is.
She looks up. “Celery salt? Though I didn’t know that was a thing.”
“Experimenting is the mark of a great chef.” Eli lines up spices.
Eli talks easily while we work—about timing, about the oven that runs hot, about the dumb little herb garden he keeps murdering and replanting on the back deck.
Jess listens, color back in her cheeks, shoulders lowering another inch. The kitchen fills with good smells and ordinary noise. The kind you lean into.
The scent of damp hair and clean skin curls up and under, and my self-control holds because it has to. Eli doesn’t look at me. He knows the smell of my restraint.
“Half an hour,” he says, sliding the timer down with one finger. “Then baste.”
Jess nods like she’s agreeing to something bigger.
I wipe my hands on a towel and step back, heat prickling my neck. Rowan’s words from earlier return from the workshop—give her a chance to know us—and I realize I’m not shutting her out. I’m trying not to crack the door too wide.
I’m not sure which is harder.
Eli glances at me over her head and says, mild as tea, “Hey, Cass? After we eat, I want to talk through tomorrow’s Nexus check-in.”
“I’ll be there,” I say.
Jess goes still for a fraction. Then she breathes out, steady. “Me too.”
“Yeah,” Eli says, warmth tucked into the syllable like a promise. “You too. Shouldn’t take longer than half an hour before we have to do the online call.”
The timer ticks down, steady as a heart.
CHAPTER 7
ELI
Rowan’s scent of sandalwood and rain still clings to my skin when I pad down the hall.
At the kitchen threshold, I make myself breathe, pocket the afterglow, and put on my hands-are-steady face. Jess doesn’t need to read sex off me like a neon sign, and Cassian doesn’t need the reminder that I can be irresponsible in the twenty minutes he’s not watching.
The Instant Pot ticks on the counter. Early evening sun filters through the back windows, turns the dust into glitter; a maple outside is already throwing amber like confetti.
Cassian stands at the island, sleeves shoved to his elbows, knife flashing as he cubes carrots. He’s leather, amber, and black pepper—a warning and a welcome braided together.
He’s all muscle and chaos, a wide grin bisecting his unshaven face, eyes doing a lazy perusal of Jess, who’s perched on a stool across the granite counter from him.
She’s got long, dark hair and olive skin that hints of her mixed heritage of Italian, Spanish, and Portuguese. Her white robe is wrapped around her, and I make a mental note to checkthe dryer for her clothes I threw in before Rowan and I started kissing, and one thing led to another, like it always does with us.
And she’s sharp: every word, every look, calculated and fast, like she’s daring you to keep up.
Plus, she’s kind underneath that gruff exterior. Proved this when she shared her food, which made me check her file that Nexus pulled from the Omega Institute.
The real test is whether she’ll call me out on it.
Her scent threads through the room: vanilla and jasmine with a tart citrus snap underneath, like a blade tucked in a cupcake. And my Beta instincts stand at attention: pay attention, don’t crowd, earn your place.
