Chapter 35
Chapter Thirty-Five
I’ve just put the last pancake on the serving tray when Grant and Ivan come into the kitchen, both freshly showered and dressed nicer than they have all week. Ivan looks delicious in a cream linen shirt that highlights his broad shoulders, and Grant is beauty incarnate in a silken black button-up.
“Those smell good.” Grant kisses my cheek as he reaches around me for plates. “What’s in the pot?”
“Blueberry syrup. Since we’re leaving today, I didn’t want to let the berries go to waste.
” Something innate inside of me said I had to impress my pack this morning.
I want them to see that I’ll be worth having as their Omega.
I recognize that it’s my Omega instincts waking up from wherever I shoved them, and it makes me a little uncomfortable.
Putting yourself out there means opening yourself up for rejection. For ridicule.
Not that I think the guys will ridicule me. No way in hell. But they may not like the syrup. And if they don’t like the syrup, doesn’t that tell me that I’m not a good Omega?
It’s a lot of pressure to put on syrup.
I grab a mesh strainer and pour the blueberry maple syrup mixture through it, making sure no berry pulp gets through. Luckily, this house has a gravy boat, even though I cannot fathom why, and that’s a good enough vessel to put it in.
Grant made drinks while I was finishing, so by the time I make it to the table with the syrup, a mimosa is beside my plate of two pancakes.
Ivan pours so much syrup onto his pancakes that I fear his plate will turn into pancake soup. Grant is much more conservative with his. I can’t tear my eyes away from them as they take their first bite, soft sounds of satisfaction escaping around their food.
“Brilliant. Can this be my special occasion breakfast? My birthday is in two months.” Ivan pours even more syrup on his plate as he shovels it into his mouth.
The Beast may have turned into a man, but he still doesn’t have table manners.
The line from Calvin’s letter floats across my mind, and I don’t cry.
Since he died, every time I so much as thought his name, I tended to tear up.
But this time, they make me laugh. I can think about him and see him through a different lens.
He’s not the Omega who died. He’s the Omega who loved his Alphas so much he followed them into another life.
The one who thought one of his Alphas was like the Beast, just as mine is.
“Whatever you want, Alpha.”
My eyes burn, and I can’t understand why now it feels like tears are going to spill down my cheeks at any moment. I thought about Calvin and the letter and didn’t cry, but calling Ivan Alpha and making a plan for the future has me tearing up.
The future.
That’s what it is. The thought of a future with them, where I make special occasion meals. Where I wake up next to them in the nest and sneak out to make breakfast after a long heat.
Ivan rubs his chest with his free hand and speaks around a bite of food. “Why are you sad and yet also happy? What’s that called?”
“Bittersweet.” My voice is scarcely above a whisper.
He’s nearly cleared his plate before I even put syrup on my pancakes, and didn’t even stop eating to talk to me, but that doesn’t bother me. It’s who he is.
“Why bittersweet?” Grant leans across the table where he sits opposite me and grabs my hand. “What’s wrong?
“I thought about how soon all of us will be able to sleep in the nest, and then I realized I don’t have one.
” My throat catches, and I have to take a sip of my mimosa before I can continue.
“Calvin helped me build my first nest, and I destroyed it after he died. I never thought I’d need to build another because I wasn’t going to have a pack.
I had my heats in my bedroom. And now I have a pack, and I don’t have a nest to take you home to. ”
I don’t like the idea of them looking into the nesting suite I’ve used for storage since I moved in.
“That’s not going to be a problem. We have so much stuff for you, and we’re never more than fifteen minutes away from a Great Nestpectations.
It’s time to build your nest with your pack, baby.
” Grant leans forward, almost brushing his lips over my cheek before he jerks up straight. “Sorry, sticky lips.”
I don’t let him get away with that. Our lips crash together, and he immediately deepens the kiss as his hand grips the back of my head. I taste the sweet sticky syrup on his lips as he trails his tongue against my teeth, asking for entrance. I welcome him happily.
“I love what the two of you are doing and will require you to let me watch about a thousand more times, so I’m terribly sorry that I have to interrupt, but this episode is going to be boring as hell if we’re sucking face the whole time.”
Grant pulls away, then dives forward and presses a final quick kiss to my lips. “You think that the people won’t want to watch an hour of the two of us? Come on now. We’ll melt their screens clean off.”
As I imagine what our future together is going to look like, Grant and Ivan are exchanging barbs. Distracted by my plate, I can’t keep up with their light-hearted ribbing.
“Aren’t you worried she’s going to smell your socks and kick you out of the nest?”
My head snaps up. I never thought about the fact that three guys in my house meant three pairs of stinky socks.
Ivan throws his napkin at Grant playfully. “Your socks don’t smell much better, Beta! Just because you’re pretty doesn’t mean your feet don’t sweat.”
“I don’t wear grocery store socks. My feet can breathe. It makes a difference!”
Wait, I wear grocery store socks. What’s wrong with those? Do my feet stink?
“At least I don’t leave hair swirled on the wall of the shower!”
Whoops, I do that, too.
“And yet your chest hair clogs the drain anyway!”
My head bounces back and forth between them during their verbal tennis match, struggling to smother my laugh behind bites of pancakes.
By the time we finish breakfast and pack up our things, it’s just after eleven.
“We still have two hours? How are we supposed to be entertaining for two whole hours? What do they even show in the final episode?” Ivan’s legs are thrown over the back of the couch, and his face is turning red as he hangs his head upside down.
“A lot of it will be our exit interviews. We’ll probably all do our own, and then they’ll pile us all onto a soundstage and pepper us with questions about our week here.” I pause the game I’m playing and pull a leg up on the couch, facing my Alpha.
“I think one season they skipped the individual and did everyone together.” Grant doesn’t look up from his puzzle as he talks.
He’s trying hard to finish it before we leave, but I don’t know if he’ll make it.
I offered to help, but he said that he needed to do it on his own and prove he was smarter than it.
Not sure what the guy’s issue with puzzles is, but I’m not upset that he said he didn’t want me to build it with him. I hate doing them.
Before I unpause my game, I ask a question that I’ve been wondering about for days.
“Do you think that Derrick will be here when we get out?” They told us not to reveal to the audience that he wouldn’t be, but part of me hopes he’ll surprise us all.
Neither answer me, probably trying to figure out how to without revealing what the producers told us. I never asked Derrick on our calls if he was going to come back. I didn’t want it confirmed that he wasn’t. But I also didn’t tell him I wanted him to be here, so I can’t be upset if he isn’t.
Ivan shifts sideways, lying across the couch and resting his head in my lap. “Maybe. If he’s not, don’t think that’s any indication that he doesn’t want to be here. Maybe the producers didn’t want to pay to fly him in for this when there is going to be a reunion episode.”
“I think he’ll surprise us,” Grant ignores his puzzle to assure me. “Even if they didn’t want to pay to fly him up, I think he’d figure out how to make it happen.”
Okay. Hope for the best, expect the worst. If anything, maybe he told the producers at first that he didn’t want to come back, but he changed his mind.
I want him here, don’t I? Since he left, I’ve told him I love him and want him in my pack, and I’ve had phone sex with the guy. Is it going to be awkward to see him? It’s probably going to be awkward. And it’s going to be televised. That’s just great.
“There’s no pressure with him. You know that, right?” Ivan stops my hand from where I’ve been idly stroking his head, and weaves our fingers together.
“I don’t think he’ll pressure me into anything. But I don’t know how to be around him. I told him he was my pack. Isn’t that basically a promise to bite him?”
Grant leans over and pretends to chomp my thigh. “No, it isn’t. All it is is acknowledgment of who you are to each other. You take things at your pace.”