Chapter 43
FORTY-THREE
Athena relaxes into my side, rubbing her face into the side of my hoodie.
“I want this,” she says, pulling at the strings. “For the nest.”
I chuckle and kiss the top of her head. “Anything you want, Omega,” I purr, the Alpha in me pleased that she’s finally embracing her Omega nature.
Atlas rolls his eyes, but he’s a moron if he thinks I haven’t noticed that he’s using Wyatt’s favorite blanket.
“It feels weird relaxing like this, now that we know where Tyler is,” Athena admits. “We should just go get him.”
“We can’t,” Atlas reminds her for what must be the fifth time. “We know where he’s going to be and when. No sense in camping out hoping to catch him earlier and potentially showing our hand.”
“He’s right,” Charles agrees, turning the corner into the living room, a tray of cured meats in his hands. Right behind him is Wyatt with a spread of cheeses and Harvey with a selection of breads.
An edible parade.
We eat a lot of charcuterie in this house, and I will never complain about it. Athena eats more when it’s finger foods, and all of us love feeding her.
Feeding and providing for both of our Omegas is one of the most basic Alpha instincts.
They spread the trays out on our coffee table, and I immediately snag a piece of prosciutto and pop it into my mouth.
“Okay, so, who’s picking the game?” I ask as I chew.
Athena smacks me gently on the chest. “Don’t talk with your mouth full, Alpha.”
I’ll never get over how good it feels when she calls me my designation and takes ownership of me.
“We’ve got Monopoly,” Wyatt says, eyeing the bookshelf in the corner of the room. None of them ever touch it. It’s got my books in there, and a few dusty games that we bought and played once.
“And ruin our fledgling bonds already?” Harvey quips. “Nah, let’s do something less aggressive.”
“I have an idea!” I gently untangle Athena from my side, and she squawks in dissent at the movement. I’m back from my room in a moment, my laptop in hand. I hook it up to the television and navigate to a gaming website.
“We can all play it on our phones,” I explain, pulling up the list of games.
“That would be great if we had phones.” Atlas’s voice has my back straightening.
Did we forget to get them phones?
“You have phones,” Charles says, halting the journey that a piece of cheese is about to travel to his mouth.
“We don’t, actually.” Athena adjusts herself, pulling her legs up on the couch and folding them underneath her. “I should probably get one, though. I got to see my parents when I was at my brother’s, but they’re going to want to check in with me more.”
“Shit, I’m sorry,” I say, rubbing the back of my heated neck. “That’s on me, I should’ve gotten that taken care of.”
Athena waves away my concern. “I’m not super worried about it. It’s only been like two weeks.”
Has it truly only been two weeks since we pulled them out of that hellhole?
Holy shit, so much has happened in two weeks.
“And in your defence, a couple of days of it were a heat, and there was a hospitalization, and a detour to a brother’s house because of a certain group of boneheaded Alphas,” Atlas teases. “I would like to call Will, though.”
“Yeah, yeah, of course. I’ll get you two put on our phone plan first thing in the morning.”
“But for now,” Harvey says, slapping his thighs. “Let’s do something fun as a group. We’ve skipped a lot of steps because of our unconventional circumstances, and we may be bonded already, but I don’t want you two to think we’re done making you feel comfortable in our pack.”
Harvey was a good choice for pack lead. He’s always been the one we look to for tough decisions. Maybe it’s the fact that he’s older and has gone through stuff none of the rest of us has, but whatever it is, it was a good call on Wyatt’s part to ask him.
Not that Wyatt was a bad pack lead or anything. He was what we needed when it was just us. Now that we have two more members of our weird little pack, we need something different, and I don’t want the gig. Charles is too neurotic for it, too. He’d drive himself crazy.
“Are you going to court me, Alpha?” Atlas says, resting his chin on his hands and fluttering his lashes.
“Yeah. That’s exactly what we’re going to do.” Harvey stares down our Omega, who was once only our friend and colleague. “And you’re going to let us.”
“He likes bath bombs.” Atlas whips his head toward Charles, a look of pure betrayal on his face.
“Shut up, Charles,” he seethes, grabbing a soft roll from the platter on the table and hurling it at the laughing Alpha.
“I love bath bombs!” Athena exclaims around a mouthful of cheese. “Really, I love spa days in general. Even though my last one didn’t go so well.”
“What happened at your last one?” Wyatt asks. He’s relaxed in one of our armchairs, his white t-shirt tight across his chest, but his basketball shorts are loose on his thighs.
“Oh. I got kidnapped.”
The emotionless way our Omega drops that not-a-bath bomb has all of us freezing, our eyes on her. She doesn’t notice our attention, though, and continues humming as she eats the charcuterie.
“You were kidnapped from a spa? I feel like this is information you should’ve shared with us, princess,” Wyatt says delicately.
“No one asked.” She looks between us, no doubt reading the stricken expressions on our faces. “Why is it important?”
“We need to figure out why that spa was funneling people to the kidnappers. What their connection is to Tyler.” Harvey pulls his phone out of his pocket. “Which spa was it? I’ll call Nitro.”
She laughs, and I’m pissed it wasn’t me that caused it, even if I don’t understand what’s funny. I am not as far ahead in the making Athena laugh tally as I want to be. “It wasn’t in the spa. Someone chloroformed me in the parking lot. Nothing to worry about.”
“Nothing to worry about?” Charles’s voice is squeaky, and I bite back a laugh.
“We knew there were people out there snatching Omegas and some Betas off the street,” Wyatt says, taking a swig from his tumbler of bourbon. “Crystal almost got snatched, remember? This isn’t news. If we get Tyler off the streets, these people won’t get their marching orders anymore.”
Athena gets up from the couch and climbs into Charles’s lap, where he leans back against the loveseat. He wraps his arms around her waist and buries his face in her neck, tension immediately draining out of his body as he takes a deep inhale.
Not only are the Omegas able to scent us now that we’ve bonded, but their scents have separated, allowing us to smell them even when they’re apart.
“You smell like snow,” he murmurs into her shoulder, right over where he accidentally bonded her.
“What does snow smell like, anyway? It’s frozen water.
” Atlas asks. I jolt a little in surprise.
I had no idea he’d moved close to me. He’s not snuggly like Athena is, but more and more, he seems to seek us out, wanting to be near us.
I’m glad he’s doing it, because I don’t want him to become touch-starved and have to force him to snuggle up with us.
“Snow takes on the scent of the environment,” Athena answers. “So in a city it may smell a little oily, like car exhaust.”
“You do not smell like car exhaust!” Charles huffs. “You smell like snowfall in the mountains. Fresh air, a little ozone… It’s clean. Hard to describe.”
“You think our Omega smells like car exhaust. Unbelievable,” I tease. “Come over here, Athena. You smell like the best cup of coffee I’ve ever had.”
Atlas wrinkles his nose. “Does that mean I smell like paper?”
I chuckle. “Fresh ink and newspaper, yeah. It’s good, promise.”
“I feel like I got the short end of the stick here. Which scent did I get from you, Harvey?”
The Alpha rolls his lips inward. “Campfire smoke.”
Atlas throws his head back. “So Athena smells like gooey marshmallows, and I smell like something burning?”
“Did you actually think you’d smell like something gooey and sweet, Atlas?” Harvey crosses his arms over his chest. “You’re the least gooey person I’ve ever met.”
“I guess,” the Omega says. “But you smell like peanut butter! Comfort food, childhood. That’s so much better than smoke.”
“He smells like chocolate to me! Sweet. Like something I would sneak from the pantry.” Athena pipes up. “Aw, our lead Alpha is a peanut butter cup.”
I don’t know why, but that makes me burst out laughing. Harvey is not someone I would associate with candy of any kind.
“Laugh it up, asshole,” he says, rolling his eyes at me. “What do you smell like?”
“Grapefruit to Athena, basil to Atlas,” I hum. “I’m delicious.”
“You all are,” Athena says. “Charles is honey, and Wyatt is mint. Delicious scents for delicious Alphas.”
Atlas grumbles when attention falls on him. “Orange blossom for Charles and bourbon for Wyatt.”
“You sure you weren’t just smelling that on his breath?” Charles quips, moving Athena to his other knee.
“Har har.” Wyatt drains his glass and slaps his thighs as he heaves himself to his feet. “Anyone need a refill?”
I know healing doesn’t happen quickly or all at once, and our Omegas are going to have times when things are hard, when the memories come back to haunt them, but right now, when all of us are laughing and stuffing our faces, things feel almost easy.
I am not a man of science, unless it is of the computer sort. I’ve never bought into the idea that science can explain scent matching away, that it’s a chemical reaction, a combination of our pheromones that react when we’re around one another.
Because if this were only science, I don’t think our Omegas would be ours.
I think this is something more. Something drew Atlas to us from the beginning, and it wasn’t a pack bond.
From the moment Will introduced him, he slotted into our group.
He and Athena were drawn to one another before the designation transformation, and maybe they wouldn’t have been if they had met each other on the street, but honestly, I don’t believe that.
And I don’t believe she’s only ours because she smells like home.
“Hey,” I say, interrupting the light-hearted argument that Atlas and Charles are in over their favorite pizza toppings. “I’m like, really stupidly happy.”
Athena, who at some point transferred to Wyatt’s lap, smiles. “You are?”
“Yeah. Not that I’m happy you guys got kidnapped and experimented on or anything, but I’m glad you ended up here, with us. We needed you two.”
“He’s right, Omega,” Wyatt purrs, nuzzling her neck. “Y’all have brought our pack together in a way we weren’t before.”
Harvey wraps his arm around Atlas’s shoulders. The Omega stiffens for a moment before he relaxes into the hold. “I guess you’re not so bad,” he says, scrubbing his hand over his short beard. “Better than being your employee, I guess.”
“You were never good at taking orders,” Harvey jokes.
“Still aren’t,” Wyatt adds.
Atlas’s rolling chuckle has my chest clenching. I didn’t realize until now that I’ve rarely ever heard him laugh, and I fucking love the sound of it.
Eventually, we all pile into the nest, and we pretend not to see that Atlas and Athena have stashed our clothes around it.
They must’ve gone through our dirty laundry baskets or something.
Both of my Omegas rest their heads on my chest, with Wyatt and Charles at their backs.
Harvey slips behind Charles and reaches around him, resting his hand on Athena’s waist.
I have the best night of sleep of my life.