Epilogue - Roan
The bar is dry. Grayson has been staring at the sparkling water in his glass like it was poison for the past twenty minutes.
I haven't said a word because the reason the bar is dry is standing fifteen feet away with her hand resting on the curve of her stomach and her head tipped back against my brother's shoulder, laughing at something her mother just said.
Star is pregnant.
Liam is being Liam about it–an asshole. She's tamed him a bit. Softened some of his rougher edges, but even sandpaper needs time to flatten stone.
He has been touching her all evening. A hand at her back.
His palm flat over hers as she smoothes her belly.
His chin lowers to her hair every time she laughs.
It's a possessiveness that isn't trying to be subtle anymore.
He doesn't hide his feelings, and that, more than the ring, more than the venue, more than the pregnancy, tells me everything about what Star Bryson did to my brother.
She wrecked him, and he celebrates it. Wallows in his fall.
Tells me he knows it will hurt if she passes away first. But she's taught him how to live in the present.
Enjoy every second and believe every day that the best is yet to come.
I almost gagged, instead I raised a glass and toasted him.
Grayson, Hunter, and Liam fell like dominoes, and now there's only me and Viv left.
"This is criminal," Grayson says, holding his glass up to the light like he's looking for evidence of something stronger dissolved in it.
"Star's pregnant."
"Star's pregnant. Not me."
"You were even worse when Lila was pregnant. Don't forget you created an entire division and floor so you could keep your omega from other men."
"That was to protect her."
"From what?"
"From having to see what I would do to a man who put his hands on her."
"I believe you showed the entire floor when you first mated." He doesn't deny it. Can't since it's legend at this point. "Where is your Lila?" I ask looking around. They're never far apart.
"Jas has a fever, so she had to stay home. She wouldn't let anyone else care for her."
"I'm surprised you came."
"She pushed me out the door and locked it. Said I needed to be here for Roan because he's always been here for us."
I laugh and point to his glass. "This explains the foul mood." He doesn't respond other than to narrow his eyes.
Star's mother catches me watching and gives me a wide, bright smile—the same one Star has, that outshines the sun.
She's been at Liam's side all evening. Our mother passed away so long ago that I strain to recall her scent, her laugh, the way she would read to me at night.
When she died, she took pieces of all of us with her.
But seeing Liam with Mama Yvette, as she insisted we call her, doesn't fill the hole, but it's a patch.
Paula is next to her, a glass of something fizzy in hand.
I suspect by the gloss in her eye that she smuggled in something to add to her celebration.
I'm jealous I didn't think of it first. Aunt Niecy arrived an hour ago and has been introducing herself to every alpha in the room.
She's got a lot more single omega relatives. Who's ready to go next?
I dodge her as if she's a big game hunter and I'm prey. I almost make it.
"Roan." Aunt Niecy materializes at my elbow with the precision of a woman who has done this before. "You know, my niece Deja just moved back to the city. Very sweet girl. Omega. Beautiful."
"Good for Deja."
"Good for whoever's smart enough to—"
"Aunt Niecy." I say it gently. Firmly. The way you set something down that you're not picking back up.
She gives me a long, assessing look, then drifts away toward her next target. I exhale.
This is what it looks like. A family, assembled.
Our side, Star's side, the ragged, brilliant, loud thing they're making between them.
Mom would have loved this dinner. She would have sat next to Star's mother and talked for hours without stopping.
I sigh and try to appreciate Liam's new mantra: focus on the present.
Viv arrives late.
She blows through the door at half past seven with her coat half-off and a story already forming on her face. I push off the wall to intercept her, and she gives me a quick hug.
"You're late."
"I'm here, aren't I?" She shoves her coat at me. "Liam start his speech yet?"
"Grayson's still in mourning over the bar. We haven't gotten that far."
She snorts. I'm pointing to where Hunter and Jaleesa are either engaged in a lovey-dovey conversation or another battle of wits. They enjoy both so who knows.
Small talk stops when the woman behind her steps through the door.
I freeze.
Not gradually. Not with warning. I stop mid-sentence, mid-breath, mid-thought. My nervous system reroutes as every nerve fires at once.
She's standing just inside the entrance, shaking rain from her coat, her dark curls pinned loosely at the back of her neck.
A few have pulled free at her temples. She's in an emerald green dress that hugs her hips before flaring out.
Her skin is nutmeg brown, her brows furrow until they land on the newlyweds.
That slays me. She's here for Liam and Star. Not me.
Her scent reaches me before she turns. Sweet.
Deep. Something underneath it I don't have language for—a note that isn't flower or fruit or rain, just its own specific frequency, singular and private, the kind of thing that exists exactly once in the world.
It lands in the center of my chest and doesn't move.
The bond knowledge is not subtle. It doesn't build or unfold or ask permission. It's a flat gray seed that suddenly explodes with budding life. When it erupts it pulses with one word.
Mine.
I know her face, not from memory but from Viv—from birthday parties and childhood summers and the ragged edges of stories I half-heard. She was a kid. Twelve, thirteen, a little serious, Viv's best friend from some summer that's been years behind me for a long time.
That girl is not in this room.
Viv grabs her hand, pulling her into the room, and the movement brings her three feet closer to me. I don't move.
I wait.
It happens in the first breath after an alpha's omega enters range—always.
The flicker. The catch. The small involuntary thing a body does when it recognizes its other half.
I have watched it happen to other people.
It happened to my brother in a flower shop on a Tuesday afternoon and then he spent weeks trying to survive the aftermath.
I wait for her to respond.
She doesn't. She smiles at something Viv says. Brushes rain off her sleeve. Glances around the room— over the cluster of Star's family, to where Star stands with Liam's hand at her back, and her whole face softens.
My jaw tightens.
She's an omega. I know that with the same absolute certainty I know my own name.
Her scent is unmistakable—warm and specific and mine—and it is telling me everything about what she is while she stands three feet away and does not react to me at all.
No flicker. No catch. No slick of awareness moving through her body. She is perfectly, unremarkably fine.
Something is wrong with the signal.
Not my end. My end has never been clearer.
The bond knowledge is sitting in the center of my chest like a weight, permanent and certain, and every instinct I own is already oriented to her—to the dark of her hair, the line of her throat, the way she tilts her head when she listens.
She is my omega. That is a fact, not a feeling. Facts don't require confirmation.
But she is not receiving it.
I think about the suppressants Star used to manage her heats. High-dose. The kind that flatten the signal. The kind that an omega might use if she didn't want to be found, didn't want to be known, didn't want the biology to have a say in her life.
I file that away.
Viv pulls her toward Star's side of the room, talking the whole way, and she goes willingly, and when Star sees her she makes a sound that is pure happiness and crosses the space with Liam three steps behind her and Aunty Niecy saying something that makes everyone laugh and Paula appearing from nowhere to top off glasses nobody asked her to top off.
She's laughing now. She hasn't looked in my direction once.
From across the room, I catch Viv's eye.
My sister looks at me. Then at the woman beside her.
Then back at me. Her expression changes.
Her gaze slides to the side and down. She knows what's happening.
Viv has tells and I know them all. She's hiding something.
Something that will explain why my mate is ignoring me as if I've already hurt her. Except I wouldn't.
Couldn't.
I tip my chin toward the hallway. A question.
Viv shakes her head. A small, firm no.
Later, then. But not much later.
Down the table, Liam leans down to say something in Star's ear, and she cups his face tenderly. Her mother watches them from two seats over with the soft glow of a woman who got exactly what she prayed for and is not finished being grateful yet.
I look back across the table.
She's listening to Star now, chin propped in her hand, completely at ease, her scent landing with a message she doesn't know she's sending. She doesn't know I'm receiving it.
She doesn't know a lot of things yet.
That's fine.
I'm a patient man.
***
Roan and Sharma's story continues in Knotted by her Best Friend's Alphahole Brother — coming soon. Follow me on for all the updates.