49. Finn
49
FINN
“Something’s off,” Easton hissed. The two of us were in the kitchen, unpacking the Red Lantern takeout I’d picked up for dinner.
I nodded. My alpha was on edge, pushing me to fix whatever was going on with our omega. If only I knew how. “It has to just be because of last night, right?”
What were the fucking odds all our exes decided to go apple-picking at the same time? It was exceptionally rare for me to miss living in a larger city like I had in college—pretty much only when I wanted takeout at midnight, and when I wanted to take my omega out without running into everyone we’d ever dated .
Easton scrubbed his hand down his face, his shoulders bunched and tense. “I just want her to know we’re all in on this. I hate the idea that she could be doubting us.”
I nodded, dishing up some orange chicken into a bowl. I wanted that, too. I also wanted to end that fucking alpha from the apple orchard. Olive had given us some vague non-answer when we asked how she knew him. A growl rose in my chest. My alpha wanted to push her to tell us everything. Get her locked on our knot and spank the truth out of her . Fuck. I couldn’t listen to my alpha. I needed to be reasonable .
Right?
I glanced over to where Olive was curled up on Lars’s lap. The fire was going in the woodstove and an old season of some reality show was playing on the TV. Not that any of us were really paying attention.
It had been a quiet Saturday. After the maze, we’d returned home and fucked most of the night—showering our omega with praise and reassurances of how much we wanted her. We’d slept in—even Olive, which was practically a miracle, although she still dragged us out to the beach when she got up.
Even though we’d talked through everything that happened at the apple orchard and she said everything was fine, her scent was unusually strong with an edge of bitter anxiety that flared anytime we left her side. She kept swallowing whines and moving from one of our laps to the other. There had been moments where it seemed like she wanted to say something, but when we pressed her, she changed the subject.
The only thing I could think to make sense of her behavior was that she must still be unsettled after running into our exes. Hopefully our plan would unfold as I imagined, and it would be exactly what she needed to feel secure in our relationship.
“I’m waiting for Gunnar to call,” I said quietly.
“Good,” Easton said. “It’s going to work.” He shook out his shoulders, grabbed several containers, and headed into the living room.
I was about to follow when my phone vibrated. My heart leapt and I snuck out the back door through the lighthouse so Olive wouldn’t overhear the conversation.
By the time I hung up, the tension had eased from my shoulders.
Everything was coming together for our grand gesture. The guys and I had started planning this after our trip to Nest Wonderland. Olive needed to know we were all in, and we wanted to do something big for her before asking if she wanted to bond.
If she wasn’t ready, that was totally fine. We would never pressure her. But she needed to be clear on what we wanted, how sure we felt about her, and by tomorrow, she would.