Chapter 6 #2
"I was—" I stopped, clenched my jaw so hard my teeth ached. The words were there, tangled up in my chest, but getting them out was like trying to breathe underwater. "Trying to figure out. What they wanted. Before I—"
"Before you what? Rode in on your white horse and saved me?" She laughed, sharp and humorless, her arms crossing over her chest like armor. "I don't need saving, Harper. I need information. I need to know when someone is threatening what's mine."
My name on her lips made something in my chest crack open. She'd said it before, that first day, but hearing it now—wielded like a weapon and a caress all at once—made my hands shake.
"I know." My voice came out rough, almost broken, and I gripped the edge of the counter hard enough to make the wood groan.
"I know you don't need saving. I just—" I forced myself to meet her eyes, to let her see the truth in mine even if it damned me.
"I wanted to fix it. Before you had to worry about it. "
"That wasn't your call to make." Her voice was quieter now, but no less sharp, her eyes searching my face like she was looking for something specific.
"No." I held her gaze, refusing to look away even though every instinct screamed at me to submit, to bare my throat, to do whatever it took to make that anger in her eyes fade. "It wasn't. I'm sorry."
Something in her expression shifted. The anger didn't fade, but it softened around the edges, like storm clouds parting just enough to let a sliver of light through.
"The other two." She uncrossed her arms, gesturing vaguely toward the door. "They knew too." It wasn't a question, but I nodded anyway, my shoulders tight with tension.
"Their scents were on the stakes. All three of you, creeping around my property, keeping secrets." She shook her head slowly, and I caught the hint of something that might have been reluctant amusement tugging at the corner of her mouth. "Y'all are terrible at being subtle, you know that?"
A sound escaped me—almost a laugh, rusty and unfamiliar, dragged up from somewhere deep. "Never claimed to be subtle."
"No." She studied me, her head tilting to one side like a curious bird, those green-gold eyes seeing too much. "You didn't."
The silence stretched between us, thick and heavy with everything unsaid. I could hear my own heartbeat. Could hear her breathing, slow and steady. Could smell her scent shifting again—the sharp edge of anger fading into something warmer, more curious.
"Why?" The word was soft, barely above a whisper, and it hit me harder than any of her sharp words had. "Why watch me? Why leave things on my dock and fix my fences and never say a word?"
The question cracked something open inside me. All those weeks of silence, of watching from a distance, of wanting so badly it felt like a physical wound.
"Because I—" I stopped, swallowed hard, felt my hands trembling against the counter.
"You. I can't stop..." I shook my head, frustrated with my own useless tongue.
"The brandy. What you said about it. My grandmother's heart in a bottle.
" The words came out raw and exposed, like I was peeling back my own skin. "No one ever saw that before. Saw me."
Her expression changed. Went soft in a way that made my chest ache with something dangerously close to hope.
"I see you, Harper." She moved closer, close enough that I could count the freckles scattered across her nose, close enough that her scent wrapped around me like a promise. "I saw you that first day. The real you."
She reached out and took my hand. Just took it, like it was nothing, like it was everything.
Her fingers wrapped around mine, warm and certain, anchoring me to the moment.
I trembled. A full-body shudder that I couldn't control, couldn't hide.
Years of being alone. Years of touch meaning nothing but violence or cold transaction.
And here she was, holding my hand like I was something precious, something worth gentling.
A rumble built in my chest—low and involuntary, the sound of an Alpha being soothed by his Omega. The sound of something broken starting to mend.
She wasn't my Omega. Not yet. Maybe not ever. In that moment, with her hand in mine and her scent wrapping around me like a benediction, I let myself hope.
"The other two." Her voice was steady, certain, cutting through the fog in my head. "They're going to hear from me too. I'm getting answers from all of you."
I nodded, not trusting my voice, not trusting anything except the feeling of her fingers intertwined with mine.
"And Harper?" She squeezed my hand once before letting go, and the absence of her touch was a physical ache, a cold spot where warmth had been. "Next time you find something on my property? You tell me. Not fix it. Not handle it. Tell me."
"Yes." The word was a vow, a promise, everything I couldn't say wrapped up in a single syllable. She picked up the stakes from the counter, tucking them under her arm like captured enemy flags. At the door, she paused, her hand on the frame, and looked back at me with those impossible eyes.
"Thursday night. My cabin. All three of you." A smile curved her lips—sharp and challenging and so beautiful it hurt to look at. "Time to stop circling and start talking."
Then she was gone, and I stood there with my hand still tingling from her touch and the sound of my grandmother's bell ringing off-key in the silence she'd left behind.
Thursday. Four days away.
I had four days to figure out how to share the woman I'd been circling for weeks with two other Alphas who wanted her just as badly.
The thought should have made me angry. Should have triggered every possessive instinct I had, should have sent me snarling after Thibodaux and Boudreaux to establish dominance.
Instead, I felt something else. Something that surprised me.
Relief.
Because carrying this alone had been killing me. And if sharing her meant getting to keep her—even a piece of her—then I would learn. I would adapt. I would do whatever it took.
A growl rumbled through my chest. Agreement. Determination. Promise.
Four days.
I had work to do.