Chapter 52
FIFTY-TWO
LANI
One week later, the world feels ordinary again.
Not dulled. Not fragile.
Ordinary in the way sunlight on familiar walls feels ordinary – steady, expected, safe.
I wake slowly in Sol’s bed, not tangled in heat, not trembling with aftershocks, but warm. Properly warm.
He seems to like it when I sleep in his bed. The others are giving him leeway due to being shot, but I think their patience is running out and soon he’ll be forced to share.
His arm is heavy around my waist, his hand resting low against my stomach like he fell asleep anchoring me there. The sheets are twisted around our legs, and the air smells faintly of sea salt drifting through the cracked window.
The bond hums faintly beneath my ribs.
It isn’t loud. It doesn’t pulse or drag at me. It feels like four steady lights glowing somewhere behind my sternum – Kai’s bright and restless, Finn’s cool and measured, Koa’s grounding and solid, Sol’s a low, steady heat pressed close.
I don’t have to reach for them.
They’re just…there. And now I’ll never be alone again. I belong. I’m cared for. And the start of something…more is beginning to bloom.
Sol is awake. I know before he speaks. His thread feels alert but calm, like he’s been awake long enough to start thinking about something practical.
“You’re up,” I murmur without opening my eyes.
“Five minutes ago.”
“And already planning something.”
A pause.
“Menu expansion,” he admits.
I turn my head enough to look at him. His gaze drops immediately to mine, and there it is again – that soft flicker that hasn’t disappeared since the heat ended. Not hunger. Not feral instinct.
Awe.
It’s quieter now. Smoother. But it’s still there every time he looks at me like he’s half-expecting me to vanish.
“I just emerged as an omega, bonded to a pack who bicker like children, and you’re thinking about marinades,” I tease.
He brushes his thumb slowly along my hip. “I can multitask.”
I love that in the time we’ve spent together he’s confided in me that his dream is to run the restaurant – from the kitchen, as the head chef – rather than the surf school. We’re working out a way to make that happen.
Downstairs, something thuds loudly enough to rattle the pipes.
“That was deliberate!” Kai’s voice carries upward.
“It was organisational improvement,” Koa replies calmly.
“You alphabetised my chaos!”
“It was not chaos. It was inefficient.”
I laugh, the sound muffled against Sol’s shoulder.
Finn’s presence hums faintly through the bond – already awake, already working, already steady. It’s domestic in the most ridiculous way. Arguments about shelving. Coffee brewing. The scrape of chair legs against kitchen tiles.
It isn’t frantic.
It isn’t urgent.
It’s ours.
And I don’t feel like I’m borrowing it anymore.
By the time we leave for work, the morning has settled into its usual rhythm. They don’t hover. They don’t crowd me. They move around me with easy coordination, touching in small ways – a hand at my lower back, fingers brushing mine as someone passes – subtle, unconscious affirmations.
The café door chimes when I push it open.
Aisling looks up from the counter, takes one slow look at me, and smirks.
“Well,” she drawls. “You look thoroughly…claimed.”
Heat rises to my cheeks, but I don’t duck my head. “I am,” I say evenly.
Her brows lift. “All four?”
“Yes.” There’s no shame in it. No defensive edge.
Just fact. And more than a smidgen of pride.
She studies me for another second, then nods once. “You’re glowing.”
And I am. Not flushed. Not fevered. Glowing.
The door opens again ten minutes later.
Kai strolls in first, sunglasses pushed up into his hair like he’s wandered here by accident. He leans on the counter, flashes Aisling a grin, then drops a casual kiss to my temple.
“Morning.”
It’s deliberate. Public. Easy.
Finn appears next, coffee already in hand.
“You forgot this,” he says, setting it down in front of me before I can protest.
Our fingers brush. The bond warms briefly – steady reassurance.
Koa slips in during a lull and quietly fixes the espresso machine that’s been sticking for weeks. He doesn’t announce it. He just adjusts something inside the casing and wipes his hands.
“It won’t grind now,” he tells Aisling.
Sol arrives last, moving straight through to the kitchen. A few minutes later he reappears with a plate.
“You’re eating,” he tells me.
“I already—”
“You’re eating.”
Aisling watches the choreography with open fascination.
“This isn’t chaotic,” she mutters. “It’s…organised.”
“It’s coordinated,” Kai corrects lightly. “We’re a proper pack now. Thanks to Lani.”
They don’t crowd me. They don’t compete. They orbit.
And by mid-morning, it isn’t spectacle anymore. It’s just obvious: I’m with them. They’re with me. And there’s no hiding it.
By the end of the first full week, the novelty settles into something quieter.
The looks don’t stop – but they change.
At first, people stare because it’s new. Because four men orbiting one woman in a place this small is unusual enough to be worth an extra glance over a coffee cup. There are murmurs. There are half-finished sentences that pause when I walk past.
But there’s no sharpness in it.
No hostility.
Just assessment.
The first time I walk through the harbour alone – without one of them at my side – Mrs Halpern from the florist steps out onto the pavement as I pass.
“You alright, love?” she asks, in that deceptively casual tone that means she’s asking about more than the weather.
“I’m good,” I tell her honestly.
She studies my face for a moment.
People used to look at me differently when I first arrived. Polite. Guarded. Something tight around the eyes. Like they were bracing for something because I was new. Unknown. A stranger.
That’s gone now.
Mrs Halpern nods once, apparently satisfied.
“Good,” she says. “You look it.”
That becomes the pattern.
Not interrogation.
Confirmation.
The town knows I’m bonded, and somehow, they also know that my father is dead.
Doesn’t matter that they never met him or that we’re not originally from around here.
They know everything that happened during the ‘incident’.
That word moves through conversation like a sealed envelope – passed carefully, opened rarely.
No one asks me for details. No one presses. But I get the impression that in a town this small, everyone knows everything anyway.
At the surf school, nothing feels strained. Parents still book lessons. Teenagers still hang around the deck pretending not to watch Kai demonstrate pop-ups in the sand. The early morning regulars still line up for coffee before heading out onto the water.
If anything, there’s a subtle shift in how people speak to me.
More direct.
Less cautious.
Like I’ve stepped out from behind a shadow and they’re recalibrating.
Finn’s presence smooths what little ripple there could have been.
His surname carries as much weight here as the Butlers’ does – generational, rooted.
When he moves through the surf school, shaking hands, clapping a shoulder, discussing permits or tide schedules in that calm, measured voice of his, it sends a quiet message: Everything is handled.
Everything is stable. There will be no scandal.
And because he stands beside me openly – because he doesn’t flinch from it – no one else does either.
Kai thrives in it, of course.
He’s impossible to miss on the beach, laughing too loudly, sun catching in his hair, flirting shamelessly with life itself. But even his teasing feels different now. There’s an undercurrent of certainty to him. He doesn’t posture. He doesn’t perform.
He just…exists. He’s himself. Still effervescent, but now it seems to stem from genuine joy, rather than a need to perform like before. He’s loved taking over the running of the surf school to free Sol up to spend more time in the kitchen, and has been exemplary and reliable ever since.
Koa absorbs logistics without complaint. Fixes what needs fixing. Adjusts lesson schedules. Repairs boards. His steadiness filters outward. People trust steadiness.
Sol’s influence is subtler. He moves between café and shoreline, food appearing exactly when it’s needed, conversations steered gently when they drift too close to dangerous territory.
It isn’t force.
It’s containment.
And the town responds in kind.
I hear snippets when they think I’m not listening.
“He seems lighter.”
“About time someone got those boys under control.”
“It’s nice to see them finally getting along. She’s good for them.”
Not one person says I brought it on myself.
Not one person says I should have done something differently.
They don’t blame me.
That’s the thing that takes the longest to settle in my bones.
No one blames me.
The relief of that arrives slowly, like tide water creeping higher up the sand until suddenly you realise your ankles are submerged.
By the end of the month, the whispers have softened into something almost mundane.
It isn’t gossip anymore.
It’s accepted.
I am with them. All of them. And somehow, instead of scandal, it reads as inevitability. Pack.
As if the town has decided that this makes more sense than the alternative ever did.
When I lock up the café one evening and step out into the cooling air, all four of them are waiting near the board racks, not crowding, not dramatic.
Just there.
Solid.
Obvious.
And for the first time since everything happened, I don’t feel like I’m bracing for judgement when someone looks at me.
I feel…seen. Accepted. And even though it's far too soon, I feel loved too.
My grandmother calls late in the afternoon, just as the tide is turning.
I step outside to answer, moving around the back of the café where the stone still holds the day’s warmth. The sky is softening into that pale gold that makes everything look gentler than it really is.
“I heard about your father,” she says, instead of hello. Her voice is steady. Unshaken.