Page 77 of Pack Frenzy
“We have reservations for brunch later, but I can make you something if you’re hungry,” I say automatically.
Her mouth quirks. “I’m good with just coffee for now.”
“I’ll go make you a cup,” Eli says, leaving us alone on the porch, and I know it’s to give us time alone.
She moves to the rail on my other side. Close enough to feel her body heat. Close enough that if I shifted my weight, our shoulders would touch. She stares out at the water, and when she breathes in and I breathe with her. For a second, we’re synced.
“I, um.” She folds her hands into the sleeves. “Last night?—”
“You don’t owe me an explanation.” The words come too fucking fast. But I’m not making her apologize for wanting what she wanted. For choosing Cassian and doing whatever they did last night. The rules exist so she doesn’t have to manage us. We all chose her, even Eli, I see the way he looks at her--different than how he does me, but there’s still the desire there, the hunger.
Even if I spent half the night awake tracking sounds through the floorboards, I won’t let her know how much I want to kiss her, press her body to me until my scent overrides Cassian’s. Which is stupid. If she agrees to be our Omega, then it’s all of us. Though I don’t know how Cassian feels. If she chooses him and not us? Would he tell her we’re a pack and any female has to want all of us or none of us?
Don’t know if I’d be able to if I were him.
She goes quiet. “Okay.” Then again, more certain: “Okay.”
“Can I ask you something?” Her voice goes soft. Hesitant. The kind of tone that means she’s already half-convinced she shouldn’t.
“Anything,” I say. No qualifiers. She can have whatever she wants from me.
She clears her throat. “Why don’t you all already have an Omega? I mean, you’re what, thirty? You could’ve had your pick by now.”
A bitter sound tries to come out. Not quite a laugh. “We did. Once.”
Her gaze lifts. “What happened?”
Meredith’s name sticks in my throat, catching on the scar tissue that never quite healed right. “We were eighteen when we found her. She was twenty-four—smarter than all three of us combined, bossy as hell, had this laugh that could pull Cassian out of a black mood in thirty seconds flat.” My grip tightens on the rail. “Made me forget I had rules.”
Jess smiles faintly. “Sounds like someone I’d get along with.”
“Yeah,” I admit. “You would’ve. She didn’t take shit from anyone. First week she moved in, she reorganized Cassian’s entire workshop, and when he complained, she told him if he wanted to live like a feral dog, he could do it outside.”
That pulls a soft laugh from Jess. It helps. Makes the next part easier.
“It was good. Better than good. We built the foundation of that house with her—literally. Meredith loved the smell of sawdust and lemon oil. Said it meant we were building something real, that if we just kept going, we could make anything work.” I can still see her standing in the frame of what would become our kitchen, hair tied back, hands on her hips, telling us the support beam was two inches off and we’d better fix it before the inspector showed up.
“We thought we were solid. Thought we’d figured out what everyone said was impossible—four people who fit. Who wanted the same things.”
The fog curls around the porch rail. Jess doesn’t move, doesn’t fill the silence. Just waits. That’s what undoes me.
“Then there was Blake.” The name scrapes me like razor blades to my heart.
“Another Alpha?” Her tone is careful.
“He was twenty-five. Older. Smarter than us, or so we thought. He was… charming in the way men like that are. The kind of charm that hides evil.”
Jess’s fingers tighten around her mug, but she doesn’t interrupt.
“Meredith met him at some Omega rights rally. He was volunteering, said all the right things about consent and pack dynamics, and how Alphas needed to do better. We liked him.” The admission tastes like ash. “Invited him to dinner. To the house. Cass worked on cars with him in the garage. Eli taught him how to make that fucking bread he’s always going on about.”
I have to stop. Have to breathe through the rage that still sits in my chest after all these years.
“We thought he was safe. Thought we were being careful, doing our due diligence. Background check came back clean. References were solid. He seemed like he got it—that she was ours and we were hers and you don’t fuck with that.”
“He called it an accident. Breath play gone wrong.” My voice sounds dead even to my own ears. “But the bruises?—”
Under my grip, the rail creaks. Jess’s hand twitches like she wants to reach for me, but doesn’t know if she should.
