Chapter 28
Mo
The last couple of days have been surprisingly tolerable.
Tonight, I’m elbow-deep in a bowl of raw ground beef and questioning every decision that led me to this moment.
The alphas are teaching me to cook—or trying to. I’m not making it easy for them. The carrots are fighting back, the knife is no ally of mine, and the ground beef feels like something I should be apologizing to rather than eating.
Cooking together has become a thing. Archer runs the kitchen the way he runs everything else: with complete authority and zero patience for bullshit.
Elias chops onions beside me and cries about it, loudly and theatrically, wiping his eyes on his sleeve while insisting he’s not actually crying.
Silas works across the counter, quietly dicing vegetables with a skill that shouldn’t be possible from hands that big.
And Darius is still gone.
He’s been gone for a week now. Disappeared into the woods after the failed apology and hasn’t come back.
When I asked the guys about it, Archer said he sometimes goes off alone, but never for this long.
And never without showing up for meals. Elias tried to play it off as “alone time.” Silas didn’t react at all, which told me more than the other two combined.
I should be relieved. Instead, I find myself somewhere in between. Happier than I’ve been in years, but with a small, stubborn part of me that keeps wondering where he is and whether he’s eating and whether he’s sitting on that same fallen log staring at nothing.
Elias leans in behind me, reaching around to guide my hands through the seasoning. His chest presses against my back, his chin nearly on my shoulder, and his sensual scent of orange and sandalwood lingers in my nose.
“Like this,” he says, his voice close to my ear. “You want to work the spices in evenly.”
Every thought I have about ground beef evaporates. His hands cover mine, guiding them through the meat, and the heat of him burns straight through my shirt. My fingers stop working.
I can’t remember what spices are.
I can’t remember what food is.
I elbow him. Hard. “I can figure out how to mash meat, thanks.”
He backs off, grinning. “Just trying to help.”
“You’re trying to cop a feel.”
“Can’t it be both?”
Silas catches my eye from across the counter and rolls his. I snort, but my hands are still tingling where his were, and I hate that. I hate it so much that I season the beef twice.
“I always thought omegas were supposed to be good at this domestic stuff,” Archer says, watching me wrestle the ground beef. No judgment in his voice, just curiosity.
“Yeah,” Elias adds. “Aren’t you supposed to be all about the homemaker thing?”
I point a raw-beef-covered finger at him. “I’m sorry, did my designation come with an apron and a recipe book? Must’ve missed that memo.”
Elias holds up his hands. “Didn’t mean anything by it. Just surprised, that’s all.”
“I’m not your average omega.”
“Don’t we know it,” Archer says with a smile.
We work for a while in comfortable quiet, the occasional insult lobbed between Elias and me. It’s domestic in a way that should make my skin crawl, but it doesn’t. This is the kind of normal I didn’t know I was missing until now.
Then I say something I hadn’t planned on saying.
“My sister was the perfect example of an omega.”
My hands go still in the bowl. The words hang in the air, and I can feel all three of them pause.
“Cooking, cleaning, keeping the head alpha happy. She could do all of it without breaking a sweat. Made it look natural, like she was born for it.” I stare at the raw meat between my fingers.
“Me? I was always the fuck-up. Too wild, too loud, couldn’t keep my mouth shut if my life depended on it.
Sophie used to say I’d argue with my own shadow and lose. ”
My throat tightens at the mention of her name. The first time I’ve said it out loud to them.
The head alpha wanted us both. Sophie knew what would happen to me if she didn’t give him a reason to wait.
She told me once, and I didn’t understand it then.
She’d be everything he wanted. Obedient.
Willing. Available during her heats, for him and whoever he chose to share her with.
She’d be the perfect, compliant omega, and in exchange, he wouldn’t touch me until I turned eighteen.
She bought me time with her own body.
“She sounds amazing,” Elias says.
“She was,” I say.
“The pack you came from—” Archer’s voice is careful, but I cut him off.
“I ran. I was in the woods because I ran. That’s all.”
“Those wires…” Elias starts.
“They were sewn in when I was sixteen. Then I was sold at eighteen after my sister died. I escaped into the woods.”
I don’t elaborate. I can’t. But even those few sentences feel like I’ve peeled off a layer of skin and shown them what’s underneath, and the exposure makes me want to grab a hoodie and disappear into it.
They drop it. No follow-up questions. No sympathetic head tilts. No, “I’m sorry that happened to you,” that would make me want to throw raw meat at them. They just go back to chopping and mixing and being here, and I’m grateful for that.
Silas puts a hand on my shoulder. Just for a second. A single squeeze and then gone. A month ago, I would have bitten his fingers off. Now I find myself leaning into it.
We finish cooking and sit down to eat the meal together, and it’s good. Really good, even the parts I made. The beef is seasoned more heavily on one side than the other, but Elias eats three helpings, and Silas gives me a thumbs-up that makes me laugh.
After we eat, Elias hums to himself while he washes the dishes, and Archer dries.
Silas puts things away, and I sit at the table with my feet up, eating the last bread roll and watching them move around the kitchen.
Ten years of feeding each other, taking care of each other, surviving together.
And now I’m sitting at their table with my feet up and stains on my t-shirt, and nobody is telling me to leave, clean up, or whatever other bullshit Sophie put up with while keeping a smile on her face.
“Any word from Darius?” I ask. Trying to sound casual about it.
Archer doesn’t look up from the dish he’s drying. “He’s fine.”
Something about the quickness of the answer makes me narrow my eyes. “That’s it? He’s fine?”
“Don’t worry.”
“Who’s worried?” I say, picking at the bread roll. “I’m not worried.”
Elias looks over his shoulder from the sink. “You just asked about him unprompted, Blueberry.”
“That’s not a worry. That’s curiosity. There’s a difference.”
“Sure, there is.”
I throw the bread roll at his head. He catches it without turning around.
Annoying.
That night, I think about Sophie. About how she would have loved this kitchen, this table, these stupid arguments about who over-seasoned the beef.
She would have fit in here perfectly. Would have known exactly what to say to each of them, exactly how to smooth things over, exactly how to make it all work.
I’m not her, and I know I’ll never be her… But maybe I don’t have to be.
Maybe being me is enough.