Chapter 17
JESS
The cabin porch light throws a soft cone onto the steps. Eli holds the door for us.
Night two in this rental, and it already feels like a second home, not because of the walls, but because of Eli, Cassian, and Rowan.
Home shouldn’t be three near-strangers and sea air, but the tension I smuggled from the city has started to dissolve like the space between heartbeats when you realize you’re not alone anymore. And I’m not sure if that terrifies me or excites me.
Inside, the heater buzzes. My bedroom is the smallest room off the hallway, but I love it mostly because the window faces the bay and the bedspread is the least offended-looking. Except even though I’m tired from several hours at the fair, I’m not sleepy yet.
On the mantel, I spot a paperback I hadn’t noticed before, dog-eared and swollen from someone reading it in a bath.
I tuck myself into the armchair, hoodie covering me to my knees, hair still smelling faintly of the bay, and sink into chapter three where the detective swears he’ll never fall for the witness and then immediately does.
I should probably put this down, but I’m already halfway done with no good explanation for why I keep turning pages. Both in the book and in this cabin that smells like cedar and the ocean and three Alphas who look at me like I belong with them.
Footsteps pass my door. Cassian leans in the frame, towel slung over one shoulder, dirty blond hair damp and dark at the ends.
His scent carries amber and pepper and curls through me until my next breath trips, like my body’s forgotten what comes after wanting.
It’s the same reaction I had to Rowan yesterday, to Eli the day before that, and I’m starting to realize I’m not reacting to three different men. I’m reacting to the terrifying possibility that all three of them could be mine. That my biology isn’t confused—it’s heartbreakingly certain.
“Where are you going?” I ask, marking my page with a finger.
“For a swim.” His grin tilts, slow and trouble. “Care to join me?”
A dozen reasons not to flicker through: it’s cold, it’s late, it’s a bad idea. Every therapist I’ve ever seen would have notes. I’ve survived by being careful, by never wanting too much, yet deep inside me is screaming abort, retreat, safe ground.
But the pull in my chest yawns wide and asks a question that sounds dangerously like hope: What if wanting doesn’t mean breaking? Because every time I’ve wanted something, it’s cost me pieces I couldn’t grow back.
“Okay,” I hear myself say, and it’s stepping off a cliff. “Give me two minutes.”
I quickly dress in the teal swimsuit Eli bought me and grab a towel. There’s no sign of Eli or Rowan but in case they’re sleeping or together, I don’t want to disturb them. Cassian is on the porch, waiting for me, and I’m not going to lie and say seeing him in a Speedo doesn’t make me drool.
The moon is a thumbnail scratch on black canvas. The bay stretches out dark as metal, stars scattered across the surface like someone knocked over a jar of light.
I should not be doing this.
The thought follows me down the sandy path, but my feet keep moving anyway.
A cold prickle hits my ankle—just the Nexus monitor catching the wind—and I’m absurdly grateful the damn thing’s waterproof. The last thing I need is it shorting out and alerting Nexus mid-swim.
I came here to get space from all of them—from Rowan’s mouth that made me want more, from the way their voices fill every room, from needing all of it too much. Salt, cold, quiet. A reset.
Except I’m following Cassian to the water’s edge instead of staying safely in my room, so yes, I’m thriving at this ‘space’ thing.
Cassian’s already at the edge, ankle-deep, testing the water with a sharp inhale that I hear from six feet back.
“Last chance to call it,” he says, turning. Water clings to his calves, dark and rippling.
Translation: say no and he stops.
“No way! I’m not a coward,” I throw back, and wade in before I can listen to the voice that says screw this and head to the cabin.
The first touch is a lie—just cold, manageable, nothing I can’t handle. I take another step. The bay floor drops and suddenly it’s not cold anymore, it’s aggressive. Like teeth.
“Jesus,” I hiss.
I keep going. The water climbs—shins, knees. Each step is a negotiation my body doesn’t want to make, each inch higher a dare I’m too stubborn to refuse. It reaches my waist and punches a gasp out of me, air leaving my lungs like I’ve been hit.
Every nerve wakes up at once. I can’t decide if I hate it or if this—this bright, sharp aliveness—is exactly what I’ve been missing.
“You’re committed now,” Cassian calls back, already waist-deep like he’s made of different nerve endings than the rest of us.
He’s right. Stopping would mean admitting defeat.
Cassian wades out to his ribs then turns and grins. “You good?”
“Perfect,” I lie, and splash him.
He sputters and splashes back. It’s ridiculous and wild and the sound of his laughter knocks something loose in me.
It devolves fast—graceless and childish and exactly what I need. He lunges, but I twist away. He fakes left; I kick water at his face and he laughs, the big unguarded sound he doesn’t let out often, the one that shakes loose from his chest like he forgot to contain it.
He catches my wrist mid-arc. Even soaked, he’s warm; his fingers bracket my wrist with enough pressure to stop me, not enough to hold. He tugs me in.
“Truce.” His voice has gone low, rough at the edges.
Water drips down his throat. I watch one slide into the hollow of his collarbone and have an unhelpful, extremely specific urge to taste it.
“You fight dirty,” he adds.
“You started it.”
“True.” His eyes drop to my mouth. Flick back up. Drop again like he’s checking for something—permission, maybe, or proof that I really want this. “Jess.”
My name in his mouth does something to my knees.
I should step back. The pack’s rules are rattling around in my skull: ask, confirm, don’t assume biology equals consent. He’s not assuming. That’s the problem and the pull all at once.
The respect in it makes me reckless. I’ve had men take what they wanted and call it chemistry, assume biology was permission.
Cassian’s standing in freezing water asking for explicit confirmation like my autonomy is more important than his desire, and something in me that’s been braced for years finally, tentatively, lowers its guard.
This is safety—not the absence of risk, but someone who makes room for you to choose it.
I nod. Once. Tiny.
“So that’s a green light?” Cassian’s watching me like he’s expecting me to push away.
“Yes,” I breathe. “Neon green. I want this. You.”
This isn’t running from Rowan. Wanting Rowan never erased wanting Cassian; it only made the truth louder. All of me answers to both of them and Eli too, and I’m done pretending that I’m broken. That caring and loving someone will hurt me.
And even if it does, I can’t say no.
For a heartbeat, he goes utterly still—like the words short-circuited something in him.
Then Cassian moves.
Not rushed. Not sloppy. Just… unleashed.
His jaw flexes, a quiet, wrecked sound slipping out before he can stop it. The kind a man makes when he’s been holding himself back too long.
His hand curves around my cheek, careful but shaking, like he’s gripping the last thread of his control. “Jess,” he rasps—just my name, but it lands like a prayer he didn’t mean to say out loud.
The way he looks at me—hunger, relief, disbelief—hits low and deep, like he’s been starving and I finally opened the door.
He kisses me like he’s wanted to do this since he first saw me, and maybe he has in every loaded glance, every careful distance he’s kept. Salt and heat and the faint taste of cotton candy still sweet on his tongue. And every wall I’ve built softens in his embrace.
His hand slides to my waist, fingers spanning my hip, grip firm but careful—the kind of hold that says I could press harder and I won’t unless you ask.
I open for him because I’m done bracing against this.
Done treating desire like a threat. This hunger has been growing with every second I’m with them—not despite my fear but because of the growing certainty that maybe, possibly, I could have this and survive it.
That wanting doesn’t have to end in wreckage.
His scent kicks up under the salt—amber warmed by skin, pepper with a bite—and mine rises to meet it.
Vanilla and jasmine with a sliver of citrus.
The embarrassing honest truth of what my body does when he touches me like this.
Not just arousal, but recognition. This is what home smells like when it’s tangled up with another person.
He curses softly against my mouth, half yearning, half surrender, and I understand the feeling. This isn’t just chemistry. It’s the frightening, exhilarating edge of something that could matter. Something that could hurt.
My hands find his shoulders. Slide up the solid map of him—neck, jaw, the damp tangle of hair at his nape. He shivers when I scrape my nails there, just barely, and the sound he makes goes straight to my stomach.
The part of me that catalogs danger is screaming stupid, messy, you promised yourself focus and safety and not confusing heat with heart. The rest of me is greedy. Mouth open. Hands mapping. Closer. It’s all tangled up. And I don’t care.
He breaks first, barely, a ragged inch between us. His forehead rests against mine. His breath stutters.
“We shouldn’t,” he says, and the words sound wrecked.
This is messy and complicated and I still don’t know if I can do this—three of them, all of them, the weight of being wanted like this when I’ve barely learned to want myself.
My breath is shaky, but I answer, “Probably not.” And kiss him anyway.
Because agreement and action aren’t the same thing.
Because I’m tired of protecting myself from good things just because they might become painful ones.
Because the second kiss is worse—better—the kind that steals your ability to form vowels, and for once I want to be the kind of person who chooses the thing that terrifies her.
“We’re not—” He kisses my jaw, behind my ear, making goosebumps rise across my body that have nothing to do with the cool water. “We’re not careful like this.”
“I know,” I breathe, forehead to his. The whole night smells like him through the salt, like the bay decided to keep what I can’t. “I’m not confused. I’m not in heat. I want this, you.”
“Rowan will murder me,” he mutters, but it’s fond. Doomed.
“No, Rowan will pretend to be disappointed.” Though he did kiss me first, but I won’t ruin the moment telling Cassian that right now.
If they truly want me as their Omega, then they know there’ll be sharing.
Besides, Rowan also has Eli, and I can’t say I’m not curious about how that will work when I do go into heat.
He huffs a laugh. “Eli will take notes.”
“Eli already has notes.”
He kisses me again. Softer this time. His hand drifts up my spine, settles between my shoulder blades, and the gentleness of it shatters me.
The world shrinks. The cold is creeping in—slow, inevitable, the price of staying—but I don’t care yet. Time goes strange. There’s only the temperature of his mouth and the taste of him and the way the night leans back to give us room.
We stop because chattering teeth and numb fingers win.
He eases back, studying my face in the thin moonlight. “You okay?”
The question is too big for the moment. It’s asking about more than the cold, more than the kiss. It lands anyway, soft as a blanket.
I nod. My voice takes a second to find me. “Yeah.”
He presses a kiss to my forehead. “Let’s get you inside and warm.”
Wind scrapes the salt from my skin. The house will still be full of us when we go back—Rowan, Eli, and Cassian. I’m not running from this, from them anymore.
We slog out together, water dragging at our legs, sand sucking between our toes. He hands me the towel. Doesn’t look while I wrap up, which is somehow more intimate than if he had.
We walk back to the cabin side by side. Not touching. If we start we won’t stop.
My body is still buzzing, nerve endings singing a song I don’t have words for. But underneath the wanting, something quieter settles: I did that. I chose something for myself, something reckless and sweet, and the world didn’t end. I’m still here. He’s still here, and the sky hasn’t fallen.
Maybe this is what it feels like to stop running. Not the arrival—I’m not fool enough to think I’m there yet—but the first stumbling steps toward staying.
The giant shark slumps against the porch rail like a half-ass sentry, grinning its idiot grin at the moon. Somewhere down the hall, a floorboard creaks. Then Eli’s low laugh sounds from the master bedroom.
Cassian covers me in blankets as I sit beside the fireplace that he lights for us. Then he just wraps his arms around me, holding me until we both stop shivering.
I could make a list of reasons this is dangerous. I could pin them to the wall with knives and label them in permanent marker. Instead I sit in the dark with the water saying hush against the rocks, and let myself have this small, salt-sweet thing until morning asks for me again.