Chapter 11
eleven
JULIA
The crackle of the newly lit fire filled the den, but the air between us felt heavy enough to choke on.
Stetson lifted a hand, absently rubbing the faded scar I’d noticed on his knuckle as his green eyes searched my face. “He doesn’t usually share space like that.”
It took my brain a second to catch the shift in topic. Wyatt. I smoothed my hands over my skirt, refusing to break eye contact. “He just wanted a good view of the TV.”
“He wanted you,” Stetson corrected quietly. The immovable certainty in his words made my throat ache. “He knows exactly who he trusts. And so do I.”
The heavy leather of his armchair creaked as Stetson leaned forward, resting his thick forearms on his thighs.
He held my gaze, his voice dropping to a low, gravelly rasp.
“We stepped back this week to let you breathe. To let you process and hopefully to start feeling safe here. You don’t have to keep your guard up in this house, Julia. ”
“That’s easier said than done. When you’re an Omega, playing defense becomes second nature,” I confessed quietly.
“I can imagine.” His dark eyes softened by a fraction, the rich scent of his sweet coffee warming the air between us.
“I hope we’ve done the right thing by giving you time to adjust, but we don’t want to keep our distance anymore.
We’d like to ask for your permission to officially court you, Julia. ”
My heart did a frantic flutter. I looked at Stetson, taking in the sincerity and heat in his gaze.
I arched a brow, refusing to let him see exactly how fast my pulse was racing. “You all put on your Sunday best, lit candles, and fed me homemade cobbler. I assumed the courting had already started.”
The corners of Stetson’s mouth curved into a rare smirk. “Just making sure we’re on the exact same page, Trouble.”
“We understand that you being here isn’t the same as being ours,” Gideon added quietly.
“And we’d like to fix that,” August finished.
“Good,” I murmured, matching his steady stare. “Because if I’m being honest, the polite distance was starting to get a little insulting.”
A flash of amusement sparked in Stetson’s green eyes, and the temperature in the room spiked.
“In that case…” Beside me, the leather cushion groaned. I tore my gaze from Stetson and looked at River.
All week, he’d been the quiet twin. The man who slid a mug of coffee across the counter before I even asked. I’d filed his silence away as caring but passive.
Apparently, I’d been dead wrong. He met my stare, his amber eyes not just warm, but hungry. He hadn’t been hesitating. He’d simply been waiting for permission.
Now that he had it, he didn’t rush. River shifted closer, moving with an unhurried certainty that essentially pinned me to the corner of the sectional. He dragged the rough denim of his jeans flush against my bare thigh, the friction sending an ache straight between my legs.
He stretched his arm along the back of the couch behind my shoulders. His familiar graham cracker scent spiked, thickening with the heavy musk of Alpha arousal. It lacked Ransom’s chaotic energy, replacing it with a consuming gravity that demanded my total attention.
Heavy boots pounded the stairs, shattering the quiet.
Ransom vaulted into the den and threw himself onto the empty cushion at my right side, making a twin sandwich out of me. Unlike his brother, he didn’t ask with his eyes. He just wrapped a thick arm around my shoulders and hauled me against his side.
Ransom buried his hand in my hair. He stroked his calloused thumb down the bare, sensitive skin of my neck.
A gasp tore out of my throat. Surrounded by the sudden, suffocating hit of toasted marshmallow, my senses tipped over the edge.
I blindly reached out with my left hand and clamped my fingers hard over River’s thigh.
I gripped the solid muscle right above his knee, desperate for something solid to hold on to.
River didn’t even blink. He glanced down at my hand on his leg with a slow smile tipping the corner of his mouth. Covering my hand with his own, he smoothed his thumb lazily over my knuckles, holding me steady in the storm.
A sharp buzz vibrated against the wooden top of the coffee table, cutting straight through the growing pheromones.
Ransom playfully whined about terrible timing while I lunged forward, pulling my hand from River’s loose grip to snatch up the phone. The screen lit up while I held my breath, my chest squeezing.
Please be Addy.
The name on the notification banner fractured that hope instantly. An all-too-familiar ache replaced it, but a rush of bittersweet warmth quickly followed.
Demi. I tapped the message from my friend at Pack Maverick.
Demi:
Hey Jules. Hope you aren’t freezing your ass off in Wyoming. Give me an update. How’s the new pack?
I typed out a quick reply with a genuine smile. But when I locked the screen, set the device face-down on the table, and leaned back, the temperature in the den had plummeted.
Stetson was filled with tension in his armchair.
He gripped the leather armrests so hard his scar stretched white over his knuckles.
The rich sweetness in his coffee scent had vanished, replaced by a sharp, territorial tang that burned the back of my throat.
He stared at my phone like he was calculating the angle required to throw it directly into the hearth.
“Everything okay?” Stetson asked. The low gravel in his voice was gone, leaving only cold, hard steel.
“Fine.” I crossed my arms over my chest, suddenly hyper-aware of how closely the rest of the men were watching me. “Just a friend from the OMA.”
Gideon shifted in the chair opposite Stetson, smoothly drawing the room’s intense focus. He pushed a hand through his wavy locks. “It’s good you kept in touch,” the Beta murmured, his tone conversational and easy. “Knowing how long you spent at the OMA, I’m glad you had friends there.”
“I have a few close friends,” I corrected quietly, my thumb tracing a seam in the cushion. “But I actually didn’t meet any of them at the campus.”
Gideon frowned, studying my face for a long moment. “But your file said you were there for six years.”
“I was.” I snuggled deeper into the cushions. “Well, except for the short stint where I was kidnapped, drugged, and almost sold at an underground auction.”
Complete silence dropped over the den.
I looked around the room, realizing my casual tone hadn’t helped ease that blow. For me it was a part of life, something I’d survived. For them, it was new information. And not the good kind.
“That’s where I met them,” I explained, filling the quiet.
“Demi and Addy were in the cages next to mine. We were basically waiting for the highest bidder when Demi’s pack and a mercenary team breached the building to extract her.
They got all of us out and took out the criminal ring.
That’s actually how my brother’s met their mate, Kit, too.
But aside from that detour... yeah. Six years. ”
The quiet in the room thickened into something I almost couldn’t breath past, mostly because it was saturated in the soured, angry scents of the six men in the room with me.
Beside me, Ransom’s arm turned to iron around my shoulders while River went as taut as stone.
“What the fuck?” August ground out. The iron poker he’d been using to stoke the hearth clattered against the stone, slipping from a grip that suddenly shook as he stood.
“It’s fine. Really. I’m safe. All’s well.”
“That’s the biggest fuckin’ understatement I’ve ever heard, Trouble.” I slid my gaze to Stetson as he seethed.
He looked physically ill. He just stared at me, his hands clamped over the leather armrests like he was trying to snap the wood underneath.
The sweet coffee scent I’d grown used to was gone.
In its place, the smell of wild sage hit the back of my throat, turning so bitter it tasted like ash on my tongue.
I shrank against Ransom, trying to put distance between myself and the feral aggression rolling off the Pack Leader.
River noticed. He let out a low rumble in his chest and shot a hard look across the coffee table.
“Reel it in, Stet,” Gideon ordered. The Beta’s voice was sharp enough to cut glass. “You’re suffocating her.”
Stetson closed his eyes. He sucked in a jagged breath. When he exhaled, the acrid notes of his scent finally began to recede.
But the pack overcorrected.
Desperate to soothe the distress they’d caused, five Alphas simultaneously flooded the den with protective pheromones.
The combined wave crashed into me so hard my head spun, my Omega instincts reacting so quickly I didn’t have time to swallow back the whimper that slipped up my throat.
I’d never properly nested and was unused to being surrounded by eligible men let alone my scent matched pack.
But the raw need to have their scents close—to have them on my skin, in my bed, on my sheets, in my nest—was so strong, I was drowning in it.
This sudden influx of safety was like a balm for my nerves even as it made my nipples pebble and my panties damp.
The movie droned from the television, but I couldn’t hear it over the rush of my own pulse.
I gave up fighting the gravity pulling me down and snuggled fully against Ransom.
Without thinking, I turned my face into his neck, chasing the core of his marshmallow scent.
I dragged my cheek along the rough stubble covering his jaw and let out a needy whine.
A fractured groan tore out of his throat, and he tightened his grip around my shoulders like a vise, hauling me impossibly closer. Tilting his head back, he fully exposed his throat to give me better access while his fingers tangled greedily in my hair.
His desperate response snapped me back to reality.
I froze, my rational brain overriding instinct. I was scent-marking him. I’d just bypassed every polite boundary and rubbed my scent right over his pulse point without so much as a warning.