Chapter 18 #6
My watch read seven-oh-three, which gave us plenty of time.
We started toward the station together, Tavian moving several yards ahead while Luca stayed near me and Malek walked on my other side.
They would turn back before the trail reached the area regularly used by station staff, and by then I would also have to change out of Malek’s shirt if I didn’t want Mara asking why I had returned from a supposedly solo wildlife assignment wearing a man’s clothing.
The shirt was still coming with me. That part wasn’t negotiable.
Tavian looked back over his shoulder. “You’re walking carefully.” Tavian observed, the beginning of a grin already forming as his gaze dropped briefly toward my boots.
I stared at the back of his head.
“Tavian.” I warned him as Luca made a suspicious choking noise beside me, my grip tightening around the food bundle.
“I’m just making an observation.” Tavian defended himself without turning around, though his shoulders were already shaking with suppressed laughter.
“You are about three seconds away from observing what my boot feels like.” I warned Tavian as I lifted one foot slightly, seriously considering whether the satisfaction would be worth the effort.
“See? She’s fine.” Tavian announced to Luca as if that had been the purpose of the entire exchange. Luca laughed, and Malek’s purr started beside me.
“You are not helping.” I told Malek as I turned toward him, catching the movement he failed to hide at the corner of his mouth.
“He doesn’t need my help.” Malek replied, his purr deepening while Tavian laughed somewhere ahead of us.
“Your entire pack is exhausting.” I muttered, though I was smiling by the time the words left my mouth.
Their scents surrounded me as we walked—cedar, citrus, sandalwood, wet forest, and traces of myself mixed through all of it.
Sex with Malek had changed the way I knew him, but it hadn’t separated him from the other two.
If anything, walking between all three of them made it easier to picture what choosing their pack might actually look like.
At the point where the trail widened toward station territory, the men stopped.
I changed behind a thick screen of vegetation, pulling my own mostly dry shirt over my head before folding Malek’s charcoal one carefully into the top of my pack instead of returning it.
My damp sports bra stayed tucked away with the rest of the wet clothing.
When I stepped back onto the trail, Malek’s eyes went immediately to the closed pack.
“Still keeping it.” Malek observed, his purr beginning again as his gaze settled on the place where I had tucked the shirt.
“I said I was.” I reminded Malek as I settled the pack more securely onto my shoulder.
“Good.” Malek answered, the quiet satisfaction in the single word unmistakable.
That followed me all the way back to the station. I walked onto the station grounds at seven twenty-one, where Mara was sitting at the table with the field log open beside her and one boot hooked around the leg of the chair.
“You made it.” Mara glanced toward the clock before writing my return time into the log. “Please tell me the cover emergency was worth stealing half my evening.”
“I think I got it.” I told Mara as the exhaustion of the walk gave way to fresh excitement, already reaching for my camera. “River otter, clean background, good light, and enough negative space to make an art director happy.”
“That sounded dangerously optimistic.” Mara observed as she closed the log and looked toward my camera, amusement mixing with genuine interest.
“It’s as optimistic as I get before seeing it on a monitor.” I told Mara while heading toward the equipment room. “Ask me again after I’ve backed everything up twice.”
“Now that sounds more like you.” Mara called after me, her quiet laugh following me through the doorway before she turned back to the paperwork on the table.
By nine, both memory cards were copied, the strongest files existed on two separate drives, and I had sent Caroline a small gallery of low-resolution previews.
The otter was still my favorite. The juvenile capuchin was a close second, but the moment I opened the otter image on the larger monitor, I knew I had gotten exactly what I had gone out there hoping to find.
Only after the files were safe did I shower and return to my room.
Malek’s shirt was still inside my pack, and when I pulled it out, cedar remained strongest. The day had changed the scent, though.
There was forest on it now, the faint clean smell left by rain, traces of me, and somewhere beneath Malek I could just catch the edges of Luca and Tavian from the eastern fork.
I stood beside the bed with the shirt in my hands before tucking it into the bedding near my pillow. I knew exactly what I was doing, and the second I arranged the fabric, something in me relaxed. It wasn’t a full nest yet, but it was the beginning of one.
Malek had been the first Alpha I chose to sleep with here, but somehow that hadn’t made Tavian or Luca feel farther away.
If anything, lying down with cedar beside my face and faint traces of their pack mixed through it made the idea of all three of them beside me feel less theoretical.
For the first time, I could picture joining their pack without picturing myself giving something up, and that thought stayed with me long after I turned off the light.