Chapter 29
I open my mouth to break the silence, and Matteo squeezes my knee before I make a sound. His punishing grip is communicating “don’t you dare,” but I’m going to pretend like I cannot interpret his nonverbal cues and get the conversation going again.
“So about that elephant.”
Dexter groans and Dario chuckles, but it’s Alex’s reaction I’m watching.
And she doesn’t disappoint.
“Did you know male elephants leave their herds once they reach maturity and then cluster together in what they call bachelor herds until they’re strong enough to challenge for breeding rights in established herds?
” she says before taking a tiny bite of her eggroll.
“You guys are kind of a bachelor herd, if you think about it.”
“Competing for breeding rights?” Dexter asks, his tone incredulous.
Alex takes another small bite before speaking. “That’s what happens in packs, right? A bunch of Alphas and maybe a Beta or two fighting for the attention of an Omega like she’s a piece of meat, competing for the right to be the one to knot her during heat.”
“You wound me,” I say dramatically, clutching my chest. “You’re something to be cherished, not fought over by feral beasts. I understand you don’t have a good experience with packs, but you cannot possibly think we’re the same as those assholes.”
“That’s the thing!” Her voice is stronger than I expected it to be after everything she’s gone through.
“I don’t know what to think because I don’t know you !
” She pushes back from the table and looks between the group of us.
“I don’t know you, and yet I’m supposed to accept that because I smell good, you’re going to take care of me.
Forgive me, but that hasn’t worked out well for me in the past.”
“Then get to know us.” I lean across the table, crowding her space and refusing to let her bury her head in the sand about this. “Go on a date with me. With us. Each of us.”
I watch the gears turn in her head, trying to come up with a way to deny me.
She won’t find one.
But she still tries. “We’re colleagues. I cannot be your doctor and your Omega.”
“Is that the best excuse you have?” I sit back in my chair, crossing my arms over my chest. “Because I can’t find myself to care about that.”
Her cute nose crinkles as her cheeks turn pink with frustration. “It’s not as simple as not caring, Quinton! I have my medical license to think about, here.”
“There has to be a caveat for scent matches, though, right?” Dario asks, resting his elbow on his knee and his chin in his hand .
She sputters for a minute before deflating. “Yes, but…”
“But nothing. You’re here until December. You’re under a strict contract, right, Jude?” I look at our showrunner for backup.
He does not disappoint.
“Yes, the doctor made it quite clear that the contract is ironclad.” His curly hair falls into his eyes as he leans closer to her. “She’s here until December.”
“Then let us date you,” I insist again. “All of us. Let us show you that we’re different.”
“I dare you to,” Dario whispers.
She tries to deny us, looking around the room for backup.
Unfortunately, she finds it in Dexter.
“I don’t want to date her,” he says sharply. “I don’t want this any more than she does.”
“You said you’d try,” Dario hisses, hurt bleeding into every word. “You promised.”
“Why should I try if she’s not?” he responds petulantly. “My trying is pointless because she doesn’t want this. It doesn’t matter anyway. She’s made it clear that she’s going to leave as soon as the contract is up.”
Is that hurt in his voice?
Alex’s chocolate scent takes on a bitter edge, and she pushes back from the table, wobbling to her feet. “You don’t get to pass judgment when you have no idea what I’ve lived through!”
Dexter crosses the room in two steps, crowding my Omega. I want to intervene, but Dario shakes his head tightly.
We have to let this play out, or nothing will ever get better between the two of them.
They’re nearly chest to chest, her head thrown back so she can glare at him.
Dexter’s hands are clenched at his side, like he’s fighting with himself not to grab her.
“My Omega father killed my Alpha mother in front of me, and I have no idea what you’ve lived through?
It seems to me that if anyone understands the fear of being shackled to a designation, it’s me. ”
“Then why are you acting like you’re only against this because I am?” she shouts, throwing her hands in the air. “I thought you, of all of them, would be on my side with this. I thought for sure you’d want me gone as soon as possible.”
“You smell so fucking good I can’t function!
” His words cause her to drop her hands and blink at him.
“You smell incredible. Like the best dessert I’ve ever tasted—rich, decadent, and undeniably mine .
And you were hurt and in danger, and the only thing I could do to help was to be an Alpha.
Your Alpha.” He groans and turns his back to her.
“I have never let my Alpha instincts take over before, and when I did, I wasn’t afraid.
I knew you wouldn’t hurt me, ever, because you need me as much as I need you. ”
“I don’t need any of you,” she whispers, shaking her head as she backs away from him. “I can’t. I have to do this on my own. I can’t trust anyone.”
“Keep telling yourself that,” he snarls, spinning around. “But when your old Alphas come after you, you’ll want us by your side, facing them down.” He stalks closer to her, taking a strand of her still-wet hair in his fingers.
The tension between them has their scents swirling in the hair and making my cock swell. Do they not understand their arguing is just aggressive foreplay? I can’t be the only one affected by this.
Matteo’s hand slips up my thigh and squeezes right below the crease of my leg, telling me it’s not just my horny ass that is into this display. It takes everything to hold back my groan at the sensation. I’m sure my scent is thickening, but I can’t do a damn thing about it.
“I can do this on my own.” Alex crosses her arms over her chest petulantly.
“But why? Why do it yourself when you have us?” Dario questions, finally jumping to his feet to back up his brother.
“Yeah, that’s a good question,” Matteo says casually, as if his hand hasn’t just moved to rest atop my cock. “Why force yourself to do something alone?”
“We’re not like them, Alex. We won’t force you to do anything you don’t want to do, even this.
” He makes sure she is looking him dead in the eye before he says the next thing.
“When you’re ready, which you will be, one day, come tell me and I’ll be yours.
Until then, go rest while the guys and I get your nest cleaned up. ”
“We’ve gotta figure out who did this,” I say, wincing when my back twinges as I bend down to pick up a shredded blanket from the floor of Alex’s nest. All these decisions that she struggled to make and I helped guide her to lay in pieces on the floor.
My pain is both better and worse. It’s better because it’s not increasing, and it seems to be decreasing with more exposure to my scent match, but it’s worse because I know it all hinges on her deciding she wants to be with me.
It feels like it can be ripped away at any moment.
And while I hate it for myself for being so selfish and wanting her to stay so I can get better, it’s worse to see the stress it’s putting on Matteo.
He’s about to chew a hole through the bottom of his lip, and the sideways glances he gives me make me want to pull him to my chest and purr to calm him down.
This is going to work out. It has to.
Because I fear that if I lose her, I’ll lose my Beta as well. He’ll no longer be my partner; he’ll be my full-time caretaker. I don’t want someone to take care of me through my illness. I want my Beta. My lover.
“It’s bound to be the same guys who attacked her, right?” Dario asks as he wipes a cloth on the wall behind her bed with a grimace. I don’t even want to know what he’s cleaning up back there. “This feels like an extension of that anti-Omega rhetoric.”
“I fucking hope so. I can’t afford to fire more than three people if it were someone else.” Jude grabs a trash bag and ties it off, tossing it into the main living area. “Not that I wouldn’t. I’ll do whatever it takes to root out the bad apples.”
Dexter is leaning against the wall outside the room, not helping in the cleanup, but still being present. “I’ll help find whoever it was. Everyone knows I don’t like Omegas, so maybe I can ask around and figure some shit out.”
“Yeah?” Jude pushes his hair off his forehead. “That’d be helpful. Thanks, Dex.”
Dexter nods tightly, then goes back to reciting sonnets in his head or whatever the fuck it is he does when he zones out.
After shoving another ruined pillow into a garbage bag, I give up pretending that anything here will be salvageable.
“We need to get her new nesting material.” When the others stare at me with confusion, I drop the trash bag and shove it into the corner.
“Did none of you research Omegas? Fuck, guys. Her safe space was destroyed. Omegas build their nests with their Alphas to be a soothing, comfortable space for them and their pack. But now she has nest trauma. We, as her Alphas, need to gift her a nest. Build it for her, so she knows we approve of it, and so it has our scents in it. If we leave her to do it herself, she may never settle for fear that it’ll not be good enough for us.
After we get her to accept what we built for her, then we can take her out to pick out extras to go with it. ”
“All of us?” Dexter asks with a grimace. “Why does it need to be all of us?”
Dario tosses a torn pillow at his brother. “Because you said you’d try, Dexter. What’s the harm in picking out a couple of pillows? You saw how much she loved that eye mask. Don’t you want that again?”
“Well, we can’t leave her alone!” Dexter says, batting the pillow away. “That’s the harm in going nest shopping.”
“Then I’ll stay with her.” Matteo’s voice is quiet, but he looks up at me for support.
“It makes the most sense. I’m not an Alpha, so she doesn’t need my input on her nest, and she also doesn’t have any Beta trauma that we know of.
I don’t think she’ll protest having me stick close to her side as much as if it were one of you. ”
I clap my hands together. “As always, my better half is right.”
“Wouldn’t Alex be your better third now?” he asks, nose scrunched. I bend down and kiss him on the tip of it.
“No, she’s not. You will always be the other half of my soul. She is the spirit that ties us together.”
Matteo’s mouth stretches into a smile, and he gives me a quick peck on the lips. “I love you, you sentimental fool.” I don’t let him get away with the fleeting kiss, choosing to wrap my arms around his waist and pull him tightly against me.
“I love you, too, my Beta.” When I let him up for air, I nip his lower lip before patting him on the ass. “Go. Take care of her. Maybe this can be your first date.”
He snorts. “This doesn’t count as my date. I’m going to get a real one out of her. This can be the appetizer, though.”