Fifty
FIFTY
Byron
THERE WAS NO WAY THAT a discussion between an omega, her beta husband, the alpha who’d fucked them both, and another omega he’d also fucked was ever going to end well. And yet, I’d agreed to do it anyway, even if I’d gone out of my way to put it off as long as possible.
It was maybe a little bit comforting that Luca also looked like he wanted to teleport through the floor rather than join us. In fact, Luca looked like he was about ten seconds away from fainting on the spot. I frowned, fighting the urge to ask if he was all right. Because that wasn’t the way our relationship worked.
Luca and I managed to eke out our moments of intimacy by respecting each other’s broken edges. Not by calling attention to them. It was why he hadn’t visited my hospital room... and why I hadn’t expected him to. Luca needed an alpha who let him be sexual without expecting actual sex in return. Not a broken asshole who’d stared blankly at a gun barrel while he was dragged away to be gang-raped.
Which was why I was honestly a bit surprised that he’d let himself be pulled into my come-to-Jesus moment with the married couple I’d screwed while they were in the middle of a domestic tiff.
“Sit down, Luca,” Mia said, suiting action to word as she lowered herself onto the floor and leaned up against the wall beneath the darkened TV screen, facing me on the couch. “We might as well be comfortable.”
Luca perched warily on the far end of the sofa, setting his work bag down at his feet. Nat, whose fucking idea this had been in the first place, hovered by the wall opposite the door.
He cleared his throat. “I’m sure you can all guess why I wanted us to talk like this,” he said, for all the world like he was opening a lame-ass employee meeting at his restaurant.
I forced myself to unclench my jaw, layering faux-sweetness into my voice. “Because we’ve all fucked each other?”
Nat’s lips pressed together, and I tried not to make it obvious how satisfying it felt to have rattled him so easily.
“Because I need to make it completely clear to all of you that I shouldn’t come into your decisions about your future,” he said. “Byron, what happened between us was... well, I refuse to call it a mistake. But it was something that I would never have done if I’d realized that you and Mia would end up together.”
“ Nat ...” Mia closed her eyes and gently thumped the back of her head against the wall a couple of times, a sigh gusting out of her.
“See, now, this is what happens when people leave their crystal balls at home,” Luca said, still managing to be snarky even though his spine was stiff and his arms, tightly crossed.
Nat’s jaw tightened. “I’m trying to say that I understand there are repercussions to what happened, even though no one involved had any intention of hurting anyone else.”
I let my head flop back against the top of the couch, echoing Mia’s gusty sigh. “And you expect to be the sole recipient of these so-called ‘ repercussions, ’ do you?”
Nat’s tone, which had already been guarded, closed off completely. “I was the one who blew up my marriage with Mia. I was the one who unilaterally decided to start sleeping around.” He gave a single, flat laugh—devoid of humor. “Turns out, the dildo of consequences seldom arrives lubed.”
I lifted my head at that, even as Luca snorted.
“ Nat !” Mia said, sounding somewhere on the spectrum between ‘scandalized’ and ‘fighting shocked laughter.’
Nat waved a hand in frustration. “My point is, I still believe the most obvious path forward is for you and I to divorce, Mia. I think it’s clear to everyone that your future happiness lies with this pack—who are, frankly, pretty fucking amazing. And I don’t want to be the millstone holding you back.”
Luca had uncurled a bit, and was now watching the back and forth like someone at a tennis match. Meanwhile, I knew I should have been relieved by Nat’s words—and all in favor of this new development. It was a bit worrying that I wasn’t.
Mia, by contrast, was burning holes through Nat’s skull with her warm brown gaze.
“What if I don’t want a divorce?” she asked slowly.
Nat looked stymied. “I know we talked about it before, and decided it was too much additional upheaval on top of everything going on with the restaurant. But... the restaurant is fine now. So, I don’t understand why on earth you wouldn’t want a divorce.”
“I don’t want a divorce because I still love you, Nat,” Mia said simply... and the bottom fell out of my stomach.
Nat looked like he’d been hit with a two-by-four. I couldn’t help sneaking a glance at Luca... and wondering why he didn’t .
“Mia...” Nat whispered hoarsely.
“I’m an omega,” Mia went on, unfazed. “I know I was raised by betas, and that you and I had a beta marriage—as much as we could, anyway. But I am still an omega. And omegas form packs. We form great big, amazing families where the people involved can choose to love each other in whatever way they see fit.”
She paused, licking her lips nervously, as Nat continued to gape at her. To be fair to him, I might have been doing a bit of gaping myself.
“I know I wasn’t perfect at being a beta wife,” she continued. “In fact, toward the end I was getting downright shitty at it. But... have you never considered trying your hand at being a pack husband?”
Luca was watching the exchange with round eyes and a pale complexion. His eyes flickered to mine, only to slide away an instant later like water off an orange peel. My attention shifted to Nat as though drawn by a magnet, only to find him turning to me at the same time.
He swallowed hard. “I don’t think the others would be huge fans of that idea, Mia.”
Silence stretched for several seconds.
“I would,” Luca said quietly.
The soft confession shocked me more than anything else that had happened tonight. “ What ?” The word was dragged from me.
Luca couldn’t meet any of our gazes, directing his words toward his hands, folded tightly in his lap. “I’m still trying to figure things out for myself. But, Nat—you and Byron saved my life. You and he must have felt a spark, when you were together? Otherwise, it would have been a one-night stand, not three separate times. You like Emiel, and Emiel likes you. And, well, Zalen just wants everyone to be happy.”
Nat still looked like he couldn’t believe what he was hearing. However, I was stuck on something else entirely.
“I didn’t save you, Luca,” I said, unsure why I had to spell this out. “I sat on my ass and let you get taken to your doom because I’m a fucking coward. I don’t deserve to be called anyone’s alpha, much less yours or Mia’s.”
The words burned like hot coals on their way out, leaving me hollow inside... but with an odd kind of sick relief once they’d finally been set free.
Three sets of eyes landed on me like lead weights, but Nat was the one who rounded on me, stomping over to loom above me on the couch. He looked... incandescently angry , and I wasn’t sure why.
“You shoved us behind you in the alley when the van pulled up.” His voice was low and choked. “You took a knife wound trying to fight them off. You picked the lock on a fifty-year-old door in the pitch dark with a piece of rusty wire, so we could get free after they took Luca away at gunpoint. You staggered after me with an injured leg and critical blood loss, and you fucking shot a guy who was about to shoot me !”
Mia sucked in a shocked breath that almost sounded like a sob. Her hands flew up to cover her mouth.
“Byron, you saved both of us,” Nat finished, an audible tremor beneath the words.
I didn’t want to hear this. I didn’t deserve anyone talking about me like this. I couldn’t seem to move, though. Not except my hands, which were shaking as badly as Nat’s voice. When had that happened?
“It’s true,” Luca said quietly, meeting my eyes with a determined air. “Every word. It’s all true. I know it makes me a bad person, because I should wish that you’d never been taken. That way you’d have been safe. You wouldn’t have gotten hurt. But... I don’t know what I’d have done if you hadn’t been there, Byron. Both of you, really.”
I tried to draw breath to deflect, and I couldn’t. My lungs weren’t working... someone had welded hot metal around my ribcage. Something perilously close to panic flooded me as I fought for breath, only managing a sort of choked hitching noise. Mortification flooded me.
I did not do this kind of shit. I did not lose my cool. I did not show my disgusting weakness like this.
“Oh, Byron ,” Mia said, her voice thick with tears.
She and Luca reached me at the same moment, bracketing me from either side—soft omega arms wrapping around me. The band around my chest snapped, but what emerged was a strained sort of keening noise.
Mia’s hand cradled the back of my head, drawing me down until my face rested against the crook of her shoulder. I should have resisted, but I was too weak. I buried my nose in the scent of elderflower and tried not to acknowledge the dampness squeezing from the corners of my eyes, as the hitching of my chest grew worse.
“It’s all right, Nat,” Mia said softly, the words vibrating against my cheek. “Come here. I already told you—you’re a part of this, too.”
For a moment, I struggled to make sense of what she was saying... until the weight of a third body dipped the couch on Mia’s far side, and a larger hand settled on my shoulder, squeezing it with a grounding pressure.
“I don’t know how this is supposed to work, or what the end result is supposed to look like,” Nat said, sounding suspiciously congested himself. “But I’m willing to try if the rest of you are.”
I squeezed my eyes more tightly shut, surrounded and held up by three people... trying to convince myself that it was safe to lean on the support they were offering.