Chapter 4
Nolan
Raelynn Roberts’ knock is a staccato rap against the suite door. She doesn’t bother waiting for me to answer. Instead, she shoulders into the room—her power suit still crisp and phone already at her ear in case there are more existential emergencies requiring her personal attention.
She focuses on Piper, who’s currently sprawled sideways over the plush ottoman in the living space, half-cocooned in a fuzzy throw blanket.
“Piper.” Raelynn says her name like an accusation. “Sit up. Are you hydrated? Are you in pain? I told the hotel to get us an in-house physician.”
Piper doesn’t look up. “I’m fine. Didn’t I just say that five minutes ago?”
I press my lips into a fine line. Piper’s not sick, but what just happened at that gala wasn’t nothing.
“You’re not fine.” Raelynn clicks her tongue which is the equivalent of a war drum.
“You basically staggered off the stage like you’re faint or—I hope not—drunk, and then had to be rushed out through a fire exit.
You are not fine, and even if you were, your career is not.
So. We’re going to have someone look at you anyway.
” She pivots to me, narrowing her eyes. “You. You should have told me how serious this was. You’re her damn bodyguard, are you not? ”
“I am.” It’s my only defense. I won’t be the one to spill Piper’s omega secret. My loyalty is to Piper alone.
Raelynn huffs, swipes her thumb across her phone, and proceeds to multitask her way through three conversations at once.
Piper’s cheeks are still flushed from the aftermath of the gala’s disaster. Her eyes flick toward me, bright but edged with exhaustion, and she makes a weird, apologetic face as if to say, Sorry you’re stuck in this circus.
More stuck than I realized an hour ago.
I’ve always had a fondness for Piper. Maybe it’s her creativity or the way she takes life by the reins and enjoys it. But I never in a million years would have thought we’d be scent-matched if I could ever scent her.
But I did. And we are.
It doesn’t take long for the hotel to deliver a tray of bottled water, electrolyte packets, and a doctor-on-call. Raelynn all but drags Piper off the ottoman to the velvet couch and hovers over the white-coated stranger while Piper gets poked, prodded, and asked a series of questions.
“Any nausea?” the doctor asks.
“No,” Piper says, “just existential dread.”
Raelynn’s mouth thins out. I try to hide a smile.
“Any history of fainting?”
She grins. “No. And even if I did, I wouldn’t say.”
The doctor looks momentarily unmoored. Piper has that effect on people.
I take up position by the main door to stay out of the doctor’s way. It’s not him, per se, but something about tonight’s air feels charged. Prince Kellen and his bodyguard are all matches, we all belong as one. But they’re strangers, and I don’t let strangers near Piper Sumner.
Piper’s undiluted scent isn’t helping in the slightest. It settles into my head and threatens to scrape my self-control raw.
Raelynn is the first to notice the tension. She throws a look my way that’s somewhere between irritation and suspicion. “Nolan, you can go down the hall. I’ll call if we need you.”
“No,” I answer before thinking. It comes out sharper than I intend. “I’ll stay. The threat hasn’t been neutralized yet.” That last part is bullshit, but Raelynn’s only got so much emotional bandwidth. It’s easier to argue security than biology.
She scowls at me, but gives up. She’s obviously had a long night.
After the doctor clears Piper but recommends “rest, fluids, and absolutely no strenuous activity,” (to which Piper snorts, “Define strenuous, because I have, like, three interviews tomorrow”), Raelynn vanishes to her own adjoining suite, probably to pace and make angry damage control calls.
This finally leaves me and Piper alone, with a dense silence I’m not sure how to bridge.
She doesn’t say anything at first, just shifts her feet onto the couch and pulls her knees to her chest. A lock of her pink hair falls over her shoulder as she stares at me from over her knees.
“I can’t tell if you’re pissed at me,” Piper finally says, “or at the world in general.”
“Why not both?” I try for light, but it comes out closer to gravel. I’m not much for comedy or sarcasm.
She grins. “Classic Nolan answer.”
I’m whatever she needs me to be. That was the contract. Protect her at all costs. Get her from Point A to Point B safely. Nothing more, nothing less.
Until tonight. A scent-match throws all of that into chaos.
Or does it? I already vowed to protect her with my life when I signed that contract. A scent-match just emphasizes the point.
No one will ever hurt my omega.
I pace the suite’s perimeter and re-check the window locks even though I know damn well they’re secure. I’m trying to ignore her scent, but it’s impossible. Every inch I move in the room, it’s there—cherries and vanilla, sticky-sweet. Like she’s designed to taunt me.
Finally, when there is nothing left to check and the silence carries on too long, I decide to face the biggest issue head-on. I pivot to face her. “What’s your plan if this gets out? You’ve been keeping your designation a secret for as long as I’ve known you.”
Piper sighs and looks toward the line of reinforced windows giving us an incredible view of the city beyond. “It’s not going to get out. It hasn’t before, and people will just think I… I don’t know. Drank too much or something.”
“Enough to stagger into the prince?” I try to keep emotion out of it but even I can hear hardness of my tone. My omega.
Piper winces. “I did kind of fall into him, didn’t I?”
“Yes.”
“Shit.” She looks up at the ceiling. “Honestly, then maybe playing the drunk card is the way to go. The press doesn’t need to know otherwise, and the doctor won’t say anything if he enjoys not having Raelynn in his face for the rest of his life.”
“Does Raelynn know?” I’m confident the answer is no or Raelynn probably wouldn’t have involved a doctor, but I need to know for sure.
Piper shakes her head. “Can you imagine? I might still be Reverie Rest’s star artist, but she’ll brand me to be omega-first. I can’t do that.” Her eyes are wide, panicked.
“Maybe not,” I offer. “She is protective of you and the record label.”
“Only in regards to how much money I make her.” Piper clicks her tongue.
“One more album and then I’m free from this mess, Nolan.
I want to go back to making the music that I want, not what Raelynn finds popular enough to fund her extravagant vacations.
I don’t care about packs or nesting or whatever bullshit people think omegas want. I just want this one thing.”
I nod. I get it, I’ve never really thought of pack life either. “You’re good at it. Better than anyone. Making music, I mean.”
Shit. I’m not good with words.
She looks up, and it’s like being targeted by a laser. “You think?”
“I know.”
She uncurls from the couch and regards me with a tilt of her head. “So. Are you going to tell me what’s eating you, or are we going to keep circling it all night?”
I don’t answer.
“Nolan,” she says. “I’m not fragile. You can say it.”
“You’re not fragile, but this is.”
Piper stands. I do the same to match her out of habit more than anything else. But now there’s no buffer between us.
“Do you mean the scent match?” she asks.
I cross the space in three strides and stop just out of reach. She lets me close the distance without backing up, which is enough to tell me far too much. I’m observant. I’ve seen the way Piper’s breath quickens when I’m near, or how she flusters easily at even the smallest comment I make.
Before we realized we were scent-matches, I didn’t think Piper was even all that attracted to me. So this adds a whole other level of complication.
“Piper…”
“You don’t have to pretend it’s not a thing.” Her words are soft but not uncertain. “It’s happening. I’m sorry it is. I wish it wasn’t, for your sake. I know this must make things… complex.”
“That’s not it.” The words are firm but my tone is not. It breaks and I fucking hate it. “I’m supposed to protect you. That’s my job.”
“And you are protecting me,” she insists. “Nothing has changed.”
“Piper, everything has changed.” I inhale sharply with the intent to ground myself, but it has the complete opposite effect. Piper’s scent floods my nostrils. My hands flex into fists at my sides. I want to wrap my arms around her and never let go. To kiss her, to claim her.
But I can’t. She is mine but not mine. And I’m having a hell of a time convincing my inner alpha of that.
Her eyes crinkle at the edges. “So what? Are you going to quit?”
“Never.”
Her breath hitches. She holds my gaze even as her pulse quickens, fluttering in her neck. “Good.”
“Our biology doesn’t dictate how we act,” I say even as my inner alpha roars to take over right now. “And I will keep things professional, but it’d be foolish to think that nothing has changed.”
Piper swallows slowly. Her palm comes to rest on my chest where my traitorous heart beats fast enough to break free.
I turn from her and sit heavily on the edge of the coffee table.
Piper moves to sit next to me, close but not quite touching.
Yet still close enough to feel the static of her presence.
“I liked you before the scent-match, you know.” She speaks quickly, nerves lighting every syllable.
“I’m sure you knew that because you’re observant and I’m an open fucking book, but it’s true.
I just figured…” She looks up at the ceiling.
“I don’t know, that maybe you didn’t feel the same so it didn’t matter. ”
She turns back to me. I don’t know what to say, so I try the truth. “I have feelings for you, too, but—”
“I’m the job,” she fills in for me.
I nod. “Things never end well when those lines get blurred.”
“Well, the lines this time are also highlighted in neon colors saying, You belong together, make a pack.” She chuckles dryly.
I can’t help but laugh, too. “Yeah, I guess they are, aren’t they?”
She nudges my leg with her knee. “You’re steady. I always feel…solid, when you’re around. Like the universe can’t fall apart because you won’t let it. But like, yeah, just because we’re scent-matches doesn’t mean we have to do anything. It’s just the universe putting us on a special path.”
I swallow, and it scrapes my throat raw.
“I don’t want to mess this up,” I admit. “If I cross a line, it’s all over. You lose more than just a bodyguard. Raelynn would fire me. The label would make your life hell.”
Piper shrugs. “So? My life is already hell with Reverie sometimes. Better to have company.”
She doesn’t say pack. She doesn’t say mate. She knows those words are knives, especially when we expand this conversation outward to Prince Kellen and his bodyguard. People I don’t know and don’t trust.
We sit there in the hum of the city lights filtering through the curtains.
The silence stretches and folds around us like a blanket.
My fingers twitch, hovering an inch from where her pink hair curls against her cheek.
The air between us feels magnetic. I curl my hand into a fist and lower it to my thigh, where my knuckles press white against my jeans.
She leans in, very slowly. I tense, but don’t move away. “Is this okay?”
I nod. Once.
She rests her head against me, light as a feather, and lets out a sigh.
This is the closest we have ever been, apart from the times I’m making sure she’s not about to faint.
My jaw clenches so hard my teeth might crack.
Every muscle in my body has turned to stone.
I’m afraid that if I move even an inch, I’ll gather her against me completely and there will be no coming back.
“This is why I was on suppressants,” Piper whispers. “Because when I’m not, I want things I shouldn’t. And who has time for that in this industry?”
“Things like what?” I ask, barely breathing.
She pulls back, just enough to look me in the eye. “Like this.”
She kisses me. Not on the mouth, because that would be too much, too fast—but on the corner of my jaw, just beneath my beard, where my pulse hammers in time with hers.
It takes every shred of self-control to not turn and claim her mouth, to not haul her onto my lap and sink into the cherry-vanilla sweetness she offers up like a dare. But I don’t. I stay where I am, hands still clenched, and let her mark me with her softness.
She pulls away, smiling. “Thank you for getting me out of the gala safely. You are and have always been my hero.”
“Not a hero,” I rasp. “Just doing my job.”
She laughs and then stands up. Thank fuck. If it were up to me, neither of us would be leaving this coffee table until I’d thoroughly checked Piper over.
Piper takes a few steps away but I can still see the tension in her shoulders. There’s so much more to this between us. I have no idea what the fuck to do about it, and neither does she it would seem.
Piper turns back. “I’m going to bed before you combust. Or I do. You’re staying, right?”
I nod. “Couch, as always.”
“Good.” Piper then disappears into the bedroom. The soft click of the door closing is the only sound.
I sit on the coffee table and stare at the closed door until my legs go numb and my head aches with everything I almost did.
When I finally move to the suite’s pull-out couch, I lay down on top of the blankets and stare at the popcorn ceiling.
Minutes go by as I try to memorize every second of this night, of the feel of her lips on my skin, so I won’t do anything I regret tomorrow.
But I know it’s too late for that.
It was too late the first time I caught her scent.