Chapter 25
Ranier
I don’t leave the study after I finally get home. There’s too much leftover vicious energy floating around the manor from the event earlier, and I’m liable to say something permanent to someone who doesn’t deserve it.
It’s my fault. I know that. What I don’t understand is why I thought ignoring Emery the entire day would make her just go away. Or any of this go away.
Fucking idiot.
My father’s desk is made from old oak. I keep expecting the wood to warp under my hands or buckle under the weight of the day. Nothing in here has ever collapsed under pressure before, least of all me.
I might tonight though.
I set the phone down, expecting it to combust.
Not my phone, not my account, not my problem. That’s what I tell myself. But something is possessing me far beyond my sense of control and it’s only partially because Emery is so fucking perfect.
The public loved her. The press didn’t manage to dig as deep as they wanted. And when they did, it was only to acknowledge my shortcomings.
Nothing I’ve done to keep to the plan has survived first contact with Emery and her genuine determination, and I hate it.
I also love it at the same time.
But both of us can’t win. One path might lead to a happy pack but it also brings with it a displeased family of mine. One who’s put this weight and expectation of me I’m stuck holding.
The other spells what might be the end of this pack. Which also means breaking every promise I made to Christopher about Wyatt.
How ironic that the very tool I may use to break it all belongs to Wyatt.
Wyatt left his phone in the car after the event and didn’t notice. I took it as a sign when the driver flagged me down to give it to me.
Or a dare.
The debut was supposed to be a formality: bring the omega, let the Council reps shake her hand, get the press photos, and escape with our reputation intact.
I was ready for it, the expected glares and rehearsed lines.
I even planned the exact number of paces I’d keep between myself and Emery onstage, so nobody could accuse us of spontaneous affection.
Instead, she debuted in front of the entire city and made it look effortless.
Emery answered every question with a joke.
The mayor laughed so hard she spilled her own coffee.
The press ate it up. Wyatt and Bastion orbited her like twin satellites, both trying not to get caught staring, both failing.
And I—head of house, last best hope for the Everhart line—stood at the podium like a mannequin with a mouth sewn shut.
Afterward, the blogs called me “distant.” The Council liaison called me “cautiously prudent.”
And then, of course, there was the backchannel: DMs, screenshots, voice memos forwarded to my personal email.
An orgy of speculation about whether the Everhart pack could “survive such an obvious mismatch,” or whether I’d “accidentally imprinted on the omega and was now too emotionally stunted to admit it.”
If I could burn the internet, I would.
There’s been one site quite obviously silent. Royals Anonymous. Wyatt hasn’t bothered even pre-writing something for this event.
I unlock Wyatt’s phone and scroll through the notes app. He’s got half a dozen drafts of Royals Anonymous posts, some finished, some just a sentence fragment and a string of emojis. I add a new draft and type:
You ever get the feeling your whole life is one long dare, and if you refuse it, you cease to exist?
It’s not what I want to say, but it’s the only thing that doesn’t sound like a confession. I delete it and try again:
Saw the "commoner" omega at the Council debut today.
Blue hair like a gas station slushie and a dress from the children's department.
Everhart's new pet talks like she's auditioning for a comedy special nobody would watch.
If this pack is desperate enough to claim street trash with no bloodline or breeding, they deserve extinction. #OmegaFail #TrashPack
I almost send it. I really do. Instead, I close the app and power off the phone.
I’m not a coward, but I’m not suicidal either.
I also most definitely cannot decide which path to take. Pack happiness or family duty.
Why must they have to carry the same weight?
I stare at the wall and try to remember what my father used to say about legacy. It’s not about the name, it’s about the noise you leave behind. If you’re loud enough, they remember you. If you’re quiet, they turn you into a ghost.
I don’t want to be a ghost, but lately it feels like I’m already halfway there.
I open the window and let the air in. Somewhere outside, Bastion is revving his bike and pretending the world can’t catch him.
Wyatt is probably in the kitchen, nursing a third or fourth beer, waiting for me to show up.
Emery is—fuck, who knows. Probably drawing comics about how stupid my face looked while I refused to acknowledge she exists.
Oh, I’m aware she exists. I’m so aware it burns me up alive from the inside out. Her scent soaking through the entire house during her heat. Her bubbly personality. Her bright blue and purple hair making her easy to see in every room no matter how crowded.
She’s my omega. She might also be my family’s downfall.
I slam my fist into the wooden desk. Pain ricochets up my arm.
“Shit.”
There’s a knock. Not loud enough to be Bastion, too assertive to be Wyatt. That leaves one option. Emery.
“Everything okay in there?”
I don’t answer quick enough for her, it seems, as she pushes open the door and peeks her head in. Her cotton-candy hair is up in a messy bun and she’s already got streaks of paint on her arms. She also has a half-eaten blueberry muffin in one hand.
Emery looks around—I assume for the source of the loud bang. Her gaze zeroes in on my clenched fist, and she frowns. “You really hate this, don’t you?”
I force a laugh. “What, PR events and debuts?”
Emery levels me with a look. “Me, Ranier. You really hate me, don’t you?”
I let out a deep breath and rub my temples. My fist still stings. “Don’t flatter yourself.”
Emery grins. “Is that a no?”
I want to say it is. I want to say she’s a headache, an inconvenience, a PR disaster. I want to say all the things my father would have said, with the same icy conviction.
But I can’t make myself say any of it.
My body relaxes as I try to surrender to whatever is coming. “You ever think maybe this isn’t about you?”
“Then who’s it about?” Emery pops a bite of muffin and chews slow.
I open my mouth. Nothing comes out.
She waits, patient as a sunrise.
I glance out the window. The streetlights paint long bars across the floor. “Every time I think I have a handle on things, you do something that ruins the script. You were supposed to be a disaster, and instead you’re—”
“Charming?” she supplies with a mischievous grin.
I roll my eyes. “Unmanageable.”
She beams. “I try.”
We lapse into silence. It’s almost comfortable.
Emery tilts her head. “If I was really that much of a problem, you’d have sent me home already.”
“You think I have that much power?” It comes out more bitter than I mean it to.
“I think you have all the power,” Emery says, serious now. “But you don’t want to use it.”
There’s a steel in the set of her jaw, a challenge in her eyes. Emery stands, muffin wrapper in one hand, and walks to the desk. She leans over, close enough that I catch the edge of her scent—sugar and candy.
She smells delicious. My jaw clenches so hard my teeth might crack.
I curl my fingers into fists beneath the desk, nails biting into my palms, and force myself to exhale slowly through my nose.
The room suddenly feels ten degrees hotter, my collar too tight, as if someone’s cranked the thermostat and cinched a belt around my throat.
Emery meets my gaze. “If you want me to go, just say it. Enough is enough.”
I swallow. “I don’t.”
“Then what do you want, Ranier?”
Nobody’s ever asked me that before. Not in a way that actually matters.
I shake my head. “I want to keep this family from burning to the ground.”
“Which family?” Emery asks. “Yours, or the pack?”
Fuck if I know. “The pack matters to me just as much as my parents and siblings, Emery.” Which is the truth. I just don’t know how to move forward without losing one or both.
She smiles softly. “You want to protect us. The pack.”
I bristle. “Don’t make it sound noble. I just want to survive the waves being made.”
Emery shrugs. “Same thing. But I’m not some demon. I’m just a commoner omega who worked her whole life to get into this position. How is that so scary?”
I can’t tell if she’s mocking me or trying to help.
Emery reaches out and taps the phone on the desk. “Wyatt’s been looking for that, by the way.”
“I’ll give it back to him in the morning.”
I look at her hand, the slender fingers resting on the screen.
I want to take her hand, pull her onto my side of the desk, and see if she’d let me hold her down.
I want to see what she’d do if I told her the truth: that she scares me more than any Council directive, and far more than the prospect of dying alone, packless, in this mausoleum of a house.
Instead, I say, “You’re not what I expected.”
Emery leans in. We’re close enough now that I can count the freckles on her nose. “Neither are you. I was hoping for noble alphas intent on truly forming a pack. Not trying to fit in while also being ousted at the same time.”
Her words are like a knife to my heart. We did that. I did that. Fucking hell. I squeeze my eyes shut and roughly scrub my forehead with the palm of my hand.
All I wanted was to make the family and our legacy proud.
“Do you know what your problem is, Ranier?” she asks with a voice so soft, I’m not sure I would’ve heard her if we weren’t so close. But she’s confident, too. Even.
I exhale, impatient—mostly with myself. “Enlighten me.”
“You think you’re the only one who can fix things. But sometimes you just have to let them happen.”
I wish it were that easy. “Is that what you do?”
Emery laughs. “I’m an omega. My job is to make a mess, then act cute until someone else cleans it up.”
I want to hate her for that, but all I feel is relief. I sit back, exhausted. Emery has seen right through me. So far, she’s not running away. But I have no idea how to carry on from here.
Emery straightens and for a second I think she might vault over the desk and kiss me. Instead, she says, “You should get some sleep.”
I nod, but neither of us moves. As she looks down, I see them. Bite marks on her neck. Fresh.
Bastion and Wyatt have staked their claim. Without me.
Shit. Shit. Shit.
This is inevitable.
Terrifying.
Wonderful.
All of it. All at once.
Does she want me to add my bite mark, too? Do I want to?
Emery looks at me with eyes that seem to search my very soul. “Ranier?”
“Yeah?”
She takes a deep breath and then, for the first time since entering this study, hesitates. “… if you wanted to, you could. We’re all in Everhart Pack together.”
It hangs there, a dare and a lifeline at the same time.
My pulse thunders in my ears. Every nerve ending ignites as the truth slams into me with physical force.
Her scent floods my senses—candy-sweet and primal—awakening something feral beneath my skin.
The walls of my control crack, then shatter.
Legacy, duty, family expectations—they all burn away in the inferno of this moment.
I've been fighting a war against my own instincts since Omega Selection Day, denying what my body has been screaming: she is mine.
She is ours. The alpha in me claws to the surface, desperate to claim what it has recognized from the first inhale.
My hands shake with the effort of restraint. One more second and I'll combust.
I close the space between us and kiss her. I capture her mouth with mine and dip Emery into a gentle kiss.
The moment our lips meet, the world contracts to a single, breathless point.
The office, the heavy mahogany desk, the ancestral portraits glaring down in judgment—all of it dissolves in the rush of heat that tunnels through my chest and lights up my synapses.
Emery’s lips are soft, tasting faintly of blueberry and sugar.
She freezes for a millisecond, then melts into it.
Her fingers clutch the edge of the desk but her body leans into mine, as if drawn by a force neither of us can name.
Everything I’ve been holding back—fear, anger, want—funnels through this kiss.
My hand finds the small of her back. The shape of her fits perfectly against my palm, delicate but solid, and I pull her closer, greedy for the contact.
I feel her exhale against my mouth, a nervous laugh or a sigh, and the vibration goes straight to my core.
I want to devour her and protect her in the same motion: a contradiction I will never resolve.
Emery’s other hand finds my wrist, tentative.
She’s trembling, but she doesn’t pull away.
Instead, she tilts her chin and kisses me back, open and honest, her scent blooming between us in intoxicating waves.
I’m dizzy with it, high on her and the reckless abandon of finally, finally letting myself have what I want.
My teeth catch on her lower lip. I nearly lose my mind when she whimpers, just once, quiet and pleading.
The room is so quiet I can hear the clock in the hall, the whisper of her breath, the soft crackle of air between us. The only thing louder is the thrum in my chest.
Emery pulls back and looks straight at me, not smiling for once. There’s a dare in her eyes and I’m choking on it.
I reach out and tuck a loose strand of her blue hair behind her ear. My hand hovers there, trembling with the effort not to grip, not to claim. She tilts her head, eyes steady, daring me to do it.
I give in.
I bend down and kiss her again, then trail my mouth along her jaw and down to her neck. Her skin is soft, pulse frantic under my lips. She shivers when I inhale, her scent dizzying, overpowering. Resistance is futile. I nip at her throat, not hard, just enough to tease.
Emery gasps, then laughs, then gasps again as I bite down, a little harder this time, enough to mark her. My hands are in her hair and at her waist. Hers are on my chest, then my shoulders, then in my hair, pulling me closer. Always closer.
When I pull back, Emery’s smiling—and she is mine. Ours.
Everhart Pack’s omega.
“There,” Emery says. “Now everyone knows I’m yours. That I belong to Everhart Pack for good.” Then she giggles. “So much for not desiring me, huh?”
I kiss her again and don’t let go until we’re both too tired to continue. Then she leaves for the night. There will be so much more time for what’s to come, but today was a lot, and she’ll have to recover from three alpha bites.
And tomorrow is a brand-new day for Everhart Pack.