Chapter Five – Noelle
I should’ve said no, but at the same time, the invitation was too hard to turn down. It’ll help get me out of this house, at least for a little while, maybe even help get my mind off the three alphas and how attracted to them I am.
A little while after the invitation, I emerge from my bedroom wearing warm clothes—boots that go up halfway to my knees, along with two layers on my legs.
Jeans and a pair of leggings beneath them.
I have a puffy jacket on, along with a scarf and mittens.
I feel like a puffball, but when it comes to staying warm in the winter, more puff is always better.
Might not look the coolest, but I learned young that I, as an omega, have a rough time when it’s cold.
Alphas don’t. They run hot. Heck, they could probably bear the snow and wind and cold without a jacket and be fine—at least for a little while.
I waddle down the stairs and find Miranda sitting on the couch beneath a blanket, an empty bowl of cereal next to her. “You’re not coming? Come on, build a snowman with us.”
She yawns. “Nah, I’ll stay warm, thanks.
You four can go freeze your asses off, though.
I think I need a nap.” I know my friend loves her sleep, but a nap right after she got up seems extreme.
“Have fun!” The perkiness in her tone tells me she doesn’t need a nap and that it’s just an excuse for her not to come outside with us.
I frown at her, although she can’t see the frown due to the scarf wrapped around my face.
I need to either take off some layers or get outside—wearing all this stuff is too much inside the warm house.
Opening my mouth, I’m about to beg her to come out with us, but the three alphas come bounding down the stairs, wearing their winter garb, too.
Except, for some strange reason, they still look hot. Even with all that ridiculous puff, they still look drop dead gorgeous. How is that fair?
Felix and Nico are the first to get to me, while Matteo hangs back, apparently refusing to make eye contact with me. Felix checks me out, and I feel as if I’m wearing a bikini instead of a puffy winter jacket. “You look…”
“Like the sexiest marshmallow we’ve ever seen,” Nico finishes for him, earning himself an elbow in the gut—although that elbow didn’t do much damage at all thanks to the coats we wear. “You’re right, you’re right. There was that one marshmallow in that bag a few weeks back.”
Matteo steps around me and heads for the door, and even though I shouldn’t, I close my eyes and breathe in. It is more difficult to smell them with all this stuff on us, I’ll admit.
You know, this might just work to keep my mind occupied.
“Shall we?” Nico says, offering me his arm.
I don’t take it, but I do say, “We shall.”
Minutes later, the four of us are outside, in the freezing cold.
A steady snow falls from the bright gray sky; a snowfall is so different than rain.
Rainclouds are darker and gloomier. Somehow the sky, even though it’s blanketed by clouds, is bright today, so bright I have to squint.
We walk a good ways from the house, away from the driveway, around to the side of the property.
There are a few trees that line the edge of the cleared area near the house, but not many, meaning there’s a lot of snow around that’ll be perfect for a snowman.
The snowflakes are thick and heavy, the kind that you can pack together with little effort—not to be confused with a dusty snow, which doesn’t pack as well.
Nico once said it takes a connoisseur of winter to know the difference, but he was only saying that to make me laugh.
“I say we make him seven feet tall,” Felix says.
“That’s funny,” Nico quips. “I was going to say we should make him three feet tall, short and stout all the way. Matteo, what do you think?” The über alpha doesn’t say a word, so he turns to me, his hazel eyes twinkling from beneath his hood.
His jacket has a built-in scarf of sorts, meaning the jacket zips up well past his neck and hides half of his face.
“What about you, Noelle? You can be the tie-breaker.”
“Why don’t we see where the snow takes us?” I say with a shrug, not wanting to choose one or the other. Whoever won would only rub it in the loser’s face; I know these guys well enough to know that much.
“You’re the boss, boss,” Nico says, and I can practically feel his grin in the air.
The four of us work on building a nice, solid base for the snowman, and with how big the base ends up, I can already tell our snowman won’t be three feet tall.
He’s definitely going to be taller than that.
We work in sync with each other. Matteo focuses on bringing over more snow when we use up the snow within a three-feet radius, while Felix smooths down the curves of the ball, getting it as perfect as nature allows.
Nico and I pack up the snow for the second bit of his body.
“I can’t remember the last time I built a snowman,” I say.
“Me, either,” Nico says. “Felix, though, he’s building snowmen all the time, and no matter how many times I try to tell him, he keeps bringing them inside. They keep melting, and then he feels bad he melted his only friend, so he builds another one—it’s a vicious cycle.”
I giggle, but Felix doesn’t think it’s funny. He packs up some snow that he shaved off the snowman’s lower half and throws it at his twin’s head. “I have friends, thank you very much.”
“Oh, yeah? Are they visible, or are you the only one that can see them?” His witty retort is met by another snowball—and this one gets him right in the face.
“You deserve that,” Felix says, the triumph in his voice plain.
“You think I’m going to take that laying down? First off, newsflash: I’m standing. Secondly…” Nico pauses and makes his own snowball, and just like that I’m standing in the middle of a good, old-fashioned snowball fight.
I laugh and move to the side as the two get into it.
The more they throw, the more they each get hit, and the quicker the response is.
Soon enough they’re ducking and diving, acting like they’re action stars on the big screen.
I watch them for a bit, listen to their witty banter as they egg each other on, and then I look around and find Matteo, who’s busy watching them with a frown on his face.
The only reason I can see that frown is because he didn’t zip up his jacket all the way, and he doesn’t have a scarf on. When he sees that I’m looking at him, he gets back to pushing snow, acting busy.
I don’t know what makes me do it, but I do it without thinking too hard about it: I bend over and gather some snow, pack it into a relatively round ball, and then whip it at Matteo as hard as I can.
The snowball hits on the side of the head, knocks his hood down, and causes him to shoot a deadly glare my way.
But I know him, and that deadly glare merely makes me warm up in all the wrong places.
I stick out my tongue at him, not too seriously, just a little playful expression. I definitely don’t think he’s going to make a snowball of his own and lob it at me, but that’s exactly what the alpha does. He whips a snowball at me without thinking twice about it.
It comes so fast I barely have time to register the fact that he responded in kind.
Felix and Nico see it, though, and they immediately share a look.
The twins are on the same page without saying a single word, turning their considerable snowball stashes toward Matteo, and just like that, the über is under assault.
“Take that,” Felix yells, while Nico throws a snowball and hits Matteo right in the groin, earning him a scowl.
“That’s for throwing a snowball at Noelle,” Nico says.
“She threw one at me first!” Matteo says, trying to defend himself, but it’s far too late. The tides of war have officially turned, and he stands alone under the nonstop assault of snow artillery.
“So? She’s allowed,” Felix says, always on my side.
I grin. “Yeah, I’m allowed.”
Matteo lets himself get pummeled with snowballs for a few more seconds, and then he makes a move none of us could anticipate.
He dives for me, wraps his arms around me and picks me up, dangling me almost three feet off the ground.
I’m so stunned by it that all I can do is giggle, while Nico shouts, “Hey! No using Noelle as a shield! That’s not allowed… is it?”
Nico and Felix start to debate the legalities of using me as a human shield against the onslaught of snowballs, which leaves me in the precious situation of being in Matteo’s arms, with my face about six inches away from his.
Granted, the puffiness of our jackets give us a buffer between our bodies, but still, we’re close.
Too close.
The cold breeze blows, swirling between us, and I do my best not to inhale his delicious scent. Somehow bits and pieces of his yummy scent still get in my system, and we lock gazes.
“They’re distracted now,” I whisper. “You can put me down and get the jump on them.”
The alpha holding onto me doesn’t loosen his grip or go to put me down. His green eyes bore into me with an intensity that makes me feel like it’s the middle of summer here, not winter. Like sunrays pelt my skin instead of snow. The look is almost intimate.
“They’re not the only ones distracted,” he whispers, and there’s only one way to take an admission like that. He’s distracted too, and there’s only one root of said distraction.
Me.
Me?
“Noelle.” Just the way he says my name, so hushed, almost fervent; it doesn’t even sound like my name. It sounds like a prayer, a desperate plea to me, like I’m his god and only I can give him what he seeks. “You—”
We’ll never know what he was about to say, because right then the back of my head is hit with a snowball, and it comes so out of the blue I gasp at the suddenness of it. Matteo finally sets me down, and both of us glare at the twins.