Theo
Headlights sweep across the front window, and I nearly drop the casserole dish I’ve been pretending to dry for the last ten minutes.
“They’re here,” Lucas says from the living room. He’s on his feet before the words finish leaving his mouth.
We meet at the door like idiots, shoulder to shoulder, watching through the glass as Nate’s truck pulls up to the farmhouse. Two days. They’ve been gone two days, and we’ve barely slept, barely eaten, just texted back and forth with Cara getting increasingly cryptic responses.
Things are good.
Really good.
We’ll explain when we get there.
The engine cuts off. Nate steps out first, and even from here, something about him looks different. Looser. Like the iron rod holding his spine straight for the past decade has dissolved.
Then Cara climbs out of the passenger side.
Her scent hits me before she’s even closed the door.
Honey and citrus—that sweetness I’ve been dreaming about for ten years. But underneath it, layered so thick it’s impossible to miss—pine and woodsmoke. Nate’s scent. All over her. On her skin, in her clothes, like he’s been wrapped around her for days.
“Lucas.” My hand finds his arm, grips hard.
“I smell it.”
They walk toward the house. Cara’s wearing one of Nate’s flannel shirts, sleeves rolled past her wrists, and she’s smiling in a way I haven’t seen since high school. Wide open. Unguarded.
Then she turns her head.
The bite mark on her neck is fresh. Still healing. Red and raised against her skin.
A bond bite.
“Holy shit,” Lucas breathes.
The door opens and her scent floods the entryway—honey and citrus, with Nate’s pine-smoke layered underneath—and my knees nearly buckle. She smells like pack. Like she’s already ours. Like she’s been ours all along and we’re only just now catching up.
“Hi,” she says softly. “We’re back.”
Behind her, Nate hovers. Not beside her—behind her. Close enough that his chest nearly brushes her shoulders. His hand rests on her lower back, and his eyes keep drifting to her face like he can’t quite believe she’s real.
Fresh bond behavior. I’ve read about it—the way newly bonded alphas get clingy, almost drunk on their omega’s presence. But watching Nate—stoic, controlled Nate—unable to stop touching her makes something warm settle in my gut.
“You’re bonded.” I’m staring at the mark. Can’t stop staring at it. “You actually bonded her.”
“We sent you to talk,” Lucas says, his voice cracking. “To work things out. Maybe hold hands. We didn’t expect—”
“It wasn’t planned.” Cara’s hand drifts to her neck, touching the mark—not covering it, I realize.
Touching it like she can’t quite believe it’s real.
Like she’s proud of it. “But the best things never are.” She looks up at Nate, and the smile on her face makes my chest ache.
“There were letters. Unsent letters, going back ten years. And when Nate found them—”
“Things escalated,” Nate finishes. His voice has dropped an octave. Gravelly. And he still hasn’t stopped touching her—his thumb is tracing small circles on her lower back, probably without him even realizing.
Cara shivers at the contact and leans back into his chest.
Nate starts purring.
The sound fills the entryway—low, resonant, vibrating through his chest and into her. His eyes half-close with satisfaction, his whole body going loose and content as she presses against him.
Lucas makes a choked noise beside me.
Nate doesn’t purr. In twenty years of friendship, I have never once heard Nate Thorn purr. He’s granite. He’s control. He’s the guy who didn’t flinch when he broke his arm in three places senior year.
And now he’s standing in our entryway, purring like a damn housecat because Cara leaned into him.
“Is he—” Lucas starts.
“Yeah,” I manage. “He is.”
Cara’s cheeks flush. “He’s been doing that since yesterday. Every time I get close.”
“I can hear you,” Nate says, but the purr doesn’t stop. If anything, it gets louder when she tilts her head back to look at him.
“This is the greatest day of my life,” Lucas says flatly.
“Shut up.”
“No, I’m serious. I need to document this. For posterity.” He pulls out his phone. “Say cheese.”
Nate’s glare could curdle milk, but he doesn’t move away from Cara. Can’t, probably. “Put that away or I’m arresting you.”
“On what charges?”
“I’ll think of something.”
I cross the room before this devolves further, wrapping my arms around Cara and pulling her away from Nate just long enough to crush her against my chest. She squeaks in surprise, then melts into me, her face pressing into my shoulder.
She’s warm—warmer than she should be—and her scent shifts as I hold her, going sweeter, richer.
“You absolute maniac,” I say into her hair. “You bonded him in three days?”
“Two, technically.” Her voice is muffled against my shirt. “The first day we mostly fought.”
“Of course you did.” I pull back to look at her. Her pupils are blown wide, her cheeks flushed. She looks happy. Really, truly happy. “Are you okay? Is this what you wanted?”
“Yes.” No hesitation. “Theo, yes.”
Behind her, Nate’s hand finds my shoulder. Squeezes once. When I meet his eyes, there’s no jealousy there—just relief. Gratitude. She’s home. She’s really home.
I release Cara and Nate immediately pulls her back against his side, his hand finding her hip. The purr rumbles back to life.
“Oh my god,” Lucas says. “It’s like a car engine. Does it have different settings? Can you make it louder?”
“I will end you.”
“Idle, cruising, and highway speeds. Got it.”
Cara’s laughing now, bright and surprised, and Nate’s ears have gone completely red. But he doesn’t stop purring. If anything, it gets louder when she laughs—like her happiness is feeding it.
Lucas hugs her next—brief but tight—and when they separate, his hands linger on her shoulders.
“Congratulations,” he says, softer now. “Both of you. Really.”
“We have food,” I announce, because someone needs to move this inside before we all freeze in the entryway. “I made stew. And backup stew. And bread. And possibly too many side dishes because I’ve been stress-cooking for two days.”
“Backup stew?” Cara asks.
“In case you didn’t like the first stew.”
“They’re the same stew,” Lucas says. “He just made twice as much as any human could eat.”
“It freezes well.”
“You made enough to feed the entire town.”
“I was nervous.”
Cara’s looking between us with this soft expression that makes my throat tight. “You were nervous about me coming back?”
“We’ve been a disaster,” Lucas admits. “Theo reorganized the pantry three times. I alphabetized the spice rack. Nate—” He pauses, frowning. “Actually, what did you do before you left?”
“Shoveled the driveway.”
“It wasn’t snowing.”
“It might have snowed.”
“It was forty degrees.”
“Preparedness isn’t a crime.”
Cara laughs again, and Nate’s purr kicks up another notch. It’s genuinely loud now—I can feel it vibrating through the floor.
“Kitchen,” I say, steering everyone in that direction. “Food. Then you can tell us everything.”
Dinner is chaos in the best way.
Cara sits at the kitchen table with Nate plastered to her side, his hand on her knee, his chair pulled so close to hers they’re practically sharing it. Every few minutes she shifts, pressing her thighs together, and I catch another wave of her scent—richer each time, sweeter.
Something’s building. I can smell it.
But right now, we’re eating stew and catching up, and Cara keeps looking around the kitchen like she’s memorizing it.
“So,” she says, gesturing with her spoon. “Ten years. What did I miss?”
Lucas and I exchange glances.
“Where do we even start?” I lean back in my chair. “Nate arrested a goat.”
Cara chokes on her stew. “He what?”
“It was trespassing,” Nate says stiffly. “On municipal property.”
“It was eating the mayor’s roses,” Lucas clarifies. “Nate put it in the back of his cruiser and drove it to the station. Filed actual paperwork.”
“The paperwork was a joke—”
“You wrote ‘suspect is uncooperative and refuses to provide identification’ in the incident report.”
“Because it was true.”
Cara is laughing so hard she’s crying. “Please tell me there’s more.”
“Oh, there’s more.” I grin. “Lucas got banned from the Dairy Queen in Pine Valley.”
“I did not get banned—”
“You’re not allowed back, Lucas. That’s what banned means.”
“It was a misunderstanding about soft serve portions.”
“You asked to speak to three different managers.”
“The large was clearly not large! I measured it!”
Cara wipes her eyes. “What about you, Theo? What’s your scandal?”
“I don’t have scandals. I’m delightful.”
“He set a shed on fire,” Nate offers.
“That was an accident—”
“With a heat lamp. For tomatoes.”
“They were heirloom tomatoes! They needed warmth!”
“They needed you to not burn down a structure.”
“The shed was fine. Mostly.” I wave my hand. “Minor smoke damage.”
Cara is bent over the table now, gasping for breath. “I can’t—I missed so much—”
“You missed Lucas’s brief country music phase,” I add.
“We agreed never to speak of that.”
“He bought a cowboy hat, Cara. And boots. He learned to line dance.”
“It was for a charity event—”
“You went to line dancing classes for six weeks. You have a certificate.”
Lucas’s face is bright red. “I was being thorough.”
The laughter settles, and Cara wipes her eyes. She’s smiling, but there’s something underneath it. Something fragile.
“Sounds like you managed just fine without me,” she says lightly. Too lightly.
“None of us did,” Nate says quietly. His thumb traces circles on Cara’s knee. “Stop having fun without you, I mean. We tried. But it was never the same.”
Cara’s smile softens into something real. “I’m glad you had each other, though. All those years.” She looks around the table at each of us. “And I’m so glad to be home.”
“We’re glad you’re home too,” Lucas says.
“Even if you have been reading my books out loud in the living room,” she adds, eyes sparkling as she turns to me. “With voices.”
I choke on my stew. “Nate told you about that?”