Theo #2
“He said you’re very committed to the dialogue.”
“I was—it was for context! They needed to understand the—” I gesture helplessly. “The emotional beats!”
“Lucas takes notes, apparently.” Cara’s grinning now, turning to him. “Is that true?”
Lucas doesn’t even look embarrassed. “I’ve read them all twice. For research purposes.”
“Research,” Cara repeats flatly.
“Into pack dynamics. Very educational.”
Cara stares at him, then bursts out laughing. “I can’t believe—you two have been running a book club about my smut?”
“It’s not smut,” I protest. “It’s emotionally complex romance with—”
“Theo cried during the bonding scene in book three,” Lucas says.
“I had something in my eye!”
“For twenty minutes.”
“It was a very persistent something!”
Nate’s been watching this whole exchange with the long-suffering expression of a man who’s heard it all before. “I had to sit through the dramatic readings. Multiple times.”
“You didn’t have to stay in the room,” I point out.
“You followed me to the kitchen.”
“The acoustics are better in there!”
Cara is wiping tears from her eyes, still giggling. “I can’t—this is—you did voices, Theo.”
“The dialogue deserves commitment,” I mutter.
She’s still laughing when she goes rigid. Her hand flies to her stomach, and the color drains from her face.
The shift is immediate. Nate goes alert, his purr cutting off. Lucas’s eyes narrow, slipping into doctor mode. I push back from the table, ready to move.
“I’m fine,” she says. “Just a cramp. I’ve been having them since this morning.”
“Since this morning?” Lucas is already reaching for her wrist, checking her pulse. “Why didn’t you say something earlier?”
“Because I thought it was just... I don’t know. Travel stress. Emotional overload. Not—” She winces again, harder this time. “Okay. That one was worse.”
“Your scent’s been changing all through dinner,” I tell her. “Getting sweeter. Richer.”
“Pre-heat,” Lucas says. His thumb brushes her wrist, and she shivers. “When was your last heat?”
Cara’s cheeks flush. “Um. Ten years ago.”
The table goes still.
“With us,” Nate says quietly. Not a question.
“With you.” She won’t meet anyone’s eyes. “I’ve been on suppressants ever since. I didn’t... I couldn’t face going through that without—” She stops. Swallows. “Without you.”
Something cracks open in my chest. Ten years. She’s been suppressing her heats for ten years because she couldn’t bear to have one without us.
“Being around your pack again after that long,” Lucas says, his voice rough. “Your body’s been waiting. Suppressants can only hold it back so long.”
Another cramp hits. I see it ripple through her, watch her face drain of color. She grips the edge of the table, knuckles white.
Nate growls—low, protective—and scoops her out of the chair before anyone can react. She yelps, grabbing his shoulders.
“Nate—”
“Bedroom. Now.”
“We haven’t shown her—”
“Now.”
He’s already moving, carrying her like she weighs nothing, and Lucas and I scramble to follow.
We catch up in the hallway. Nate’s stride is purposeful, eating up ground, and Cara has stopped protesting—she’s curled into his chest, face pressed against his neck, breathing him in. His purr has started again, deeper now, more urgent.
“Not your room,” I call out. “End of the hall.”
He pauses. Looks back at me.
“Trust me,” I say.
Something in my expression must convince him. He changes direction, heading for the closed door at the end of the hallway. The door that’s been shut for years.
I get there first. Put my hand on the knob.
“Close your eyes,” I tell Cara.
She lifts her head from Nate’s shoulder, brow furrowed. “What?”
“Just trust me. Close your eyes.”
She looks at Lucas, who nods. Then at Nate, who’s waiting, patient despite the tension radiating off him.
“Fine.” She closes her eyes. “But if this is a murder room, I’m haunting all of you.”
“Noted.”
I push the door open.
The room looks different than it has in years.
We spent the last two days airing it out, washing every piece of bedding, chasing away the dust of a decade.
But the bones are the same—big windows with blackout curtains, now pulled open to catch the last of the evening light.
The window seat Nate insisted on, piled with cushions for reading.
Soft lamps casting warm pools of gold. Built-in shelves lining one wall, stacked with blankets and pillows in creams and pale blues.
Mattresses layered on the floor, big enough for four.
I’ve been sleeping here every night since they left, scent-marking the sheets. Lucas took the pillows. We wanted her to walk in and feel surrounded by us.
Nate carries her inside, and I watch his face as he takes it in—the room he designed, finally being used for its purpose.
“Okay,” I say, my voice catching. “Look.”
Cara opens her eyes.
She goes completely still in Nate’s arms.
“We built this room the year you left,” Lucas says from beside me. “Nate designed the layout. Researched what omegas need for nesting—spent weeks getting everything perfect. I picked the lighting, the colors.”
“And I planted a garden outside that window.” I point to the dormant beds visible through the glass, bare now in winter. “Roses and lavender. Everything you loved. They’ve been blooming every summer for nine years. Waiting for you.”
Cara’s breath shudders out of her.
Nate lowers her onto the mattress, but she doesn’t let go of him. Her hands are fisted in his shirt, her eyes fixed on the room around her.
“The door’s been closed for years,” Nate says, his voice cracking. “We couldn’t bear to look at it. But we never changed anything. Never stopped believing you’d come home.”
“Nine years,” she whispers. “You built this nine years ago?”
“The first year,” I confirm. “Right after you left. We were so sure you’d come back. We wanted you to have somewhere safe. Somewhere that was yours.”
She pulls away from Nate. Stands on shaky legs, one hand braced on the mattress. Her fingers trail along the window seat, the built-in shelves. She picks up a pillow, presses it to her face, and inhales.
When she turns around, tears are streaming down her cheeks.
“You built me a nest.” Her voice breaks on the word. “Before I even knew I needed one.”
“We always knew.” I close the distance between us, cup her face in my hands. Her skin is hot under my palms—fever-warm, pre-heat flushed. “We knew you’d come home eventually. We just had to wait.”
“Nine years.” She’s crying harder now, tears spilling over my fingers. “You waited nine years.”
“We’d have waited ninety.” I brush my thumbs across her cheekbones, catching the tears. “You’re ours, Cara. You’ve always been ours.”
She makes a sound—half sob, half laugh—and then she’s kissing me.
It’s not soft. Not careful. Her mouth opens under mine and I groan, my hands sliding into her hair, tilting her head back so I can taste her properly. She’s sweet—honeyed—and underneath it, the salt of her tears and the heat of her building need.
Her scent explodes around us. Slick-sweet-desperate. I feel it pulse through me, straight to my cock, and I growl against her lips.
Behind us, Nate makes a rough sound. I can smell his arousal spiking, sharp and hungry, mixing with hers in the air.
I force myself to pull back before I lose control completely. My forehead presses against hers. We’re both breathing hard.
“Hi,” I manage.
“Hi.” She laughs shakily, tears still wet on her cheeks. “Missed you.”
“It’s been two days.”
“Longest two days of my life.”
“Get in line,” Lucas says—and then he’s turning her face toward him and kissing her too.
Different from me. Slower. More deliberate. His hand cups the back of her neck, angling her just right, and I watch her melt into him with a soft moan. When he finally pulls back, her lips are swollen, her eyes glazed.
“Line’s moving fast,” she mumbles.
“We’re efficient.” His voice is strained, his pupils blown dark. “It’s a medical skill.”
Nate makes a low, wanting sound. She turns to him, reaches for him, and he meets her halfway. This kiss is rougher. Desperate. His hand fists in her hair and she whimpers against his mouth, pressing closer.
When they break apart, her eyes have changed. Darker. Focused in a way they weren’t a moment ago.
She looks around the room—at the blankets on the shelves, the pillows stacked in the corners, the nest we built but never finished.
“Cara?” Lucas asks carefully.
She doesn’t answer. Instead, she turns to Nate.
“Shirt off.”
He blinks. “What?”
“Your shirt.” Her voice has dropped, gone husky. Commanding in a way I’ve never heard from her. “Take it off. Now.”
Nate doesn’t hesitate. He pulls his shirt over his head and hands it to her. She presses it to her face, inhales deeply, then sets it aside.
She turns to me next.
“Theo. Shirt.”
My hands are moving before my brain catches up. I yank my shirt off and pass it to her. She breathes it in the same way—eyes fluttering closed, something easing in her expression—then adds it to Nate’s.
“Lucas.”
He’s already pulling his off. She takes it, inhales, and a small sound escapes her throat. Satisfied. Hungry.
Then she moves.
We watch—the three of us, shirtless and aching—as Cara transforms the room.
She pulls blankets from the shelves, arranges them in layers on the mattress.
Pillows get repositioned, fluffed, placed just so.
Our shirts go in the center, tangled together, and she adds a throw blanket on top, then changes her mind and moves it to the side.
She’s building a nest. A real one. And she’s using our scents to do it.
“This one’s wrong.” She frowns at a pillow, tosses it aside, grabs another. “This is better.”
None of us speak. None of us move. We just watch her work, watch her omega instincts take over, watch her claim this space as hers.
It takes maybe ten minutes. Maybe longer. Time goes strange when you’re watching the woman you’ve loved for a decade finally, finally let herself need you.
When she’s done, she sits back on her heels and surveys her work. The nest is a perfect circle of softness—blankets and pillows and their shirts tangled together in the center.
Then she looks up at us. Three alphas, shirtless and aching, watching her like she’s the only thing in the world.
Her eyes are dark. Demanding. Pure omega.
“Get in. Now.”