FIFTY-ONE
DAKOTA
I wake up because someone is touching my wrist.
Not grabbing or restraining, just touching. Two fingers pressed to my pulse, light enough that I can pretend I’m not instantly awake with murder fresh on my mind.
My eyes crack open and murder disappears so fast I feel dizzy with it when I see Xeon lying beside me, quiet and still, fingers resting against my wrist as he sleeps.
It almost looks like he’s checking my pulse like Ellis would, but I know that’s not what this is.
He’s simply touching me like he needs proof that I’m still here, even in his sleep.
The room is dim when my eyes check every corner and door and window quickly, noting the exits and mapping out an escape route before my brain is even fully awake yet. Six years of survival will do that to a person.
Looking around, I find everything warm. Messy in a way a room gets after too many bodies, too much heat, and not enough clothing.
Blankets are tangled around my legs and someone’s shirt is lying on the floor.
Ewan’s cracked headphones are still sitting on the table next to an empty water glass.
Maine’s hat somehow survived last night’s festivities, still resting on the pillow close to my head.
My whole body aches fiercely, but not in a bad way. Not in a dying way, which is always nice.
It’s more like a survived and overdid it, made several incredibly bold and fun choices, and will absolutely be hearing about it from Ellis later kind of way.
The reminder of my choices makes my lips twitch just as four bite marks throb under my skin.
Ewan.
Kaito.
Fletcher.
Xeon.
Four bonds that simmer quietly inside me, all alive and fresh and new.
They’re not pulling or shouting, they’re just there.
Mine because I chose them. That thought should terrify me, and maybe it still does a little.
But it also makes my chest feel full to bursting, which is honestly kind of inconvenient because I’m already a host to bruises, stitches, heat exhaustion, emotional damage, and whatever crime my left knee is currently committing.
I feel the moment Xeon wakes, his hand tensing around my wrist and his fingers pressing into my pulse ever so slightly before he immediately eases the pressure. A second later, his eyes open, dark and clear and filled with emotion I can now feel thrumming through our bond.
“You’re awake,” he says softly, rubbing his thumb over my splotchy-colored skin.
“Mm,” I grumble, the side of my face buried in a pillow that holds all of our scents together. “Define awake. Because it feels pretty debatable. What even is awake?”
Across the mattress, Ewan makes a rough, sleepy sound that wakes certain parts of my body up that I ignore before they become a problem. I love being a problem, but my body needs a minute to recover before it starts throwing suggestive punches.
“If she’s already threatening reality, she’s awake,” the sleepy Welshman rasps.
“Betrayal first thing in the morning. Wow. Diabolical,” I mumble.
“Simple observation, love,” the bastard groans, shoving his own face into a pillow and sighing deeply.
I consider arguing for all of five seconds before I realize that will cost more energy than I have this morning. I apparently spent all of mine bonding with an entire pack and making choices that are going to make walking a hazard for at least a day.
So I do the only sensible thing I can manage.
I roll toward Xeon, dragging the blanket with me, and crawl halfway onto his lap now that he’s adjusted himself to sitting.
It’s a bold move that shocks me, a move way bolder than I have a right to pull out of the bag given that this kind of thing still terrifies me to a degree.
But I have four bonds I can feel, four men around me that have proven time and time again that I can trust them.
If I can give them my body to completely defile in the best way imaginable but can’t sneak in a cuddle the morning after, then there’s something cosmically wrong with me.
I don’t want to feel wrong. I’m done feeling wrong. And scared. And in a perpetual state of survival. I want to be able to initiate affection, even if it’s in small doses right now. Like only partially lying on Xeon and using him as a body pillow.
Apparently I shock the human body pillow, too, because Xeon goes still under me. I ignore it and my thundering heartbeat and the learned fear I’ve spent six years harboring, opting instead to shove my face into his chest and close my eyes again.
“There,” I mutter. “Fixed it.”
Silence answers me and I don’t need to open my eyes to see the shock on four Alpha faces.
I can feel it thrumming through the bonds.
Jesus Christ, can’t a girl cuddle after bonding with four guys and spending all night in a heat cycle and taking four knots like it was my job until the sun kissed the horizon before crashing in an exhausted heap?
I mean, it’s me. So I suppose there is validity to the lack of response and the stunned silence. I’m learning, though. Growing as a person. All that weird, gross stuff.
Then Ewan whispers, “We’re all seeing this, right?”
“Shut up,” I grumble, regret slowly working its way through my brain. “I’m sleeping.”
Fletcher’s laugh rumbles from behind me, low and rough. He leans in and presses a kiss to the crown of my head, wiping away the regret with a simple touch, and says, “Mornin’, darlin’.”
“No. Night.”
“Pretty sure it’s morning,” he counters, his argument supported by the light sneaking under the makeshift curtain that covers the window.
“So I’m actually going to reject your timeline, but thanks,” I mutter, sighing deeply as if that’ll soothe the sudden restlessness that has awoken in me. I guess that’s what I deserve for jumping headfirst out of my comfort zone without a parachute or helmet.
Kaito’s voice comes from my other side, calm and way too awake. “Your knee is bent.”
“That’s typically what a knee does,” I snort.
“It’s bent badly,” Kaito corrects, and I hear the subtle amusement in his words.
“She’s a dramatic bitch,” I sigh, destined to remain awake now that I’ve gone and shot myself in the foot with my choices.
Xeon only moves when I adjust him, picking his arm up and wrapping it over my shoulder awkwardly until he catches the hint. Then he adjusts the blanket around my leg, careful and practical, easing the pull in my knee without making a big thing of it.
That almost annoys me.
Almost.
I breathe him in instead of making it a thing. Frost and steel. Clean skin. Warmth he hides from everyone except apparently me now, because my life has decided privacy was built for people with fewer bonds.
“You’re uncomfortable,” he says softly.
“I think I’m a little too emotionally unavailable for discomfort,” I tell him.
He pauses for a second before dutifully informing me, “That doesn’t make it go away.”
“Medically unnecessary, but okay,” I grumble against his chest.
Ewan lifts his head, and I open my eyes enough to catch sight of his wrecked hair and half-lidded eyes. He holds his arm up and declares, “I support her denial. Big fan of denial. Carried me through years of emotional constipation.”
Kaito sighs.
Fletcher says, “That so?”
Ewan drops his face back into the pillow. “Don’t psychoanalyze me before breakfast. That’s just not on.”
Breakfast?
Before I can chase that appealing word with a rumble in my stomach, there’s a knock at the door.
Every Alpha in the room changes, but not dramatically.
Not with growling or chest-beating or whatever crap my body apparently finds interesting now.
They just grow alert enough that the atmosphere shifts a little.
Ewan’s hand shifts toward the knife by the mattress.
Fletcher sits up a little straighter. Kaito looks at the door with that quiet intensity of his.
And Xeon’s arm tightens once around my back before loosening instantly.
Choice.
Always choice.
Maine’s voice comes through the door a second later, rough and careful. “Kota? It’s me. I’ve got breakfast.”
I lift my head like a puppy who just heard the word treat. Xeon looks down at me, waiting. No one answers for me, and I like that a lot. It kind of makes me want to bite something. Probably affectionately, I don’t know. All of this is very new to me and I don’t even know how to act anymore.
“One sec,” I call back.
“Take two,” Maine answers through the door. “I’m not coming in until you give the go-ahead.”
My throat tightens at that because the last time Maine and I were safe in a room together, we were kids.
Before death learned our address and came knocking.
Before Dad left for work one day and didn’t come home only days before the virus spread across nations.
Before Maine left. Before Mom died. Before I learned every locked door has two sides, and sometimes love is on the wrong one.
Now he waits outside one. Waiting for me to choose.
Damn him.
Personal growth is actually disgusting.
I push myself upright, clutching the blanket to my chest. Not sure why. Everyone in here has already caught several eyefuls. Ewan finds my shirt and passes it over without comment. That’s suspicious enough that I narrow my eyes at him.
“What?” he asks.
“Out of jokes already?”
“I have depth, I’ll have you know.”
“You have pond water at best,” I argue, catching the glint of amusement in his eyes that matches the same feeling that rattles our bond.
“Welsh pond water,” he counters. “Very scenic. Bring your camera.”
I snort and pull the shirt on. It smells like smoke and clove, which means it is his. My own clothes are somewhere in the room, but apparently ownership has become an incredibly loose concept when everyone’s scent is already having a team meeting on my skin.
Once I am dressed enough to ensure my brother’s will to live, Fletcher opens the door.