Chapter 8 #2
Declan scoops up his beer box, already sliding back into CEO mode. Knox lingers near the hedge a second longer, looking over it like he can stare through her house and into her thoughts.
Then they go in.
I don’t.
I wait until the sun’s gone and the yard goes soft and gray. The sounds of the neighborhood settle: a car door, the digital beep of someone locking their SUV, distant laughter from someone’s patio.
Then I change.
Dark hoodie. Dark jeans. Black boots.
The back door clicks behind me. The air’s cooler now, carrying the last ghost of hot asphalt and grilled food, layered over with warm earth and Mia’s detergent.
I stand at the edge of the patio, looking at the hedge. Her house looms past it, lights glowing.
I can see the rectangle of her kitchen window, the faint movement of her silhouette as she moves through the room. The small bounce of her ponytail when she turns her head.
She has no idea I’m standing here watching.
Good.
Bad.
My chest is a crowded house of conflicting instincts.
You’re scared of us, aren’t you? The thought slides up, uninvited. You think we’re too much. Too loud. Too big.
She’s not wrong.
I start walking. The perimeter is familiar. Twenty feet from the hedge to the back fence, another twenty along the back, another run up the other side. I trace it slow, sniffing at every post, every patch of ground, every overhanging branch.
At first, it’s noise.
Cut grass. Old rain. The faint sharp ghost of cleaning chemicals from when we scrubbed the bins. Little pockets of squirrel, bird, someone’s cheap cologne from the barbecue.
No strange omega. No strange alpha. No human musk I don’t already know.
That’s good.
It’s not enough.
I pass the spot where her clothesline is bolted in on her side. From here, it’s just a dark pole and the faint creak of rope when the breeze stirs it.
I smell her more strongly there. A wash of strawberries and clean cotton and that sweet, warm note that’s just…Mia.
Under it, the faint, bitter tang of humiliation. Fear.
My hands curl into loose fists.
“I’m not letting anyone else near your laundry, sweetheart,” I murmur under my breath. The words dissipate into the dark, but the promise sits heavy behind my ribs.
Possessive? Absolutely.
I can live with that.
I take another lap. And another.
Lights blink out one by one in her house. Living room first. Kitchen next. The soft glow from the bedroom window over the back yard doesn’t come on. She’s probably brushing her teeth in the bathroom.
I keep my gaze low. On the ground. On the fenceposts.
On the places a sneaker might have scuffed if someone climbed.
On the spots where branches are bent like something heavier than a squirrel pushed through.
When I reach the corner of the yard, right across from where her line is anchored, I crouch, one hand bracing on the grass.
My fingers brush the soil. It’s cool now, but there is nothing out of place. No flash of turquoise lace. No silk caught on a dandelion stem.
I sigh, rubbing a hand over my face.
If she sees me right now crouching in the dark, hunting for her underwear in the grass, I am never getting invited over. She’ll file the restraining order tonight.
But if we find them…if we can prove it was just the wind, or a squirrel, or gravity…then we aren’t the creeps next door anymore. We’re the heroes who rescued the laundry.
“Nothing,” I say quietly as I rise, dusting off my hands. “Not on this side.”
Eli’s voice drifts from the shadows near the house, sounding tired. “Check along the back. If it fell, that’s where it’ll be.”
“I want it found,” Knox murmurs from the darkness, sounding frustrated and competitive. “Tonight.”
I grit my teeth. I know. We all do. We can’t let a missing scrap of lace be the reason she puts her walls back up.
I complete another circuit, passing the stretch of hedge where I can feel her most. Her scent threads through, curious and nervous and stubborn.
I let myself look up once.
Just once.
Her bedroom window is a darker rectangle against the dark wall. The curtains are drawn, but I can see a flicker of movement at the edge. A hand, maybe. The pale blur of her face for a second when the curtain shifts.
I stop.
The night presses around us.
“Sleep tight, sweetheart,” I think, knowing she can’t hear me. “I’ve got the watch.”
It’s stupid, but I tip my chin up, just a little. She jerks back from the window so fast I only catch the shadow of the movement.
Yeah.
Scared of us.
We earned some of that. The rest is just the way the world teaches omegas to do the math on any pack of alphas.
I start walking again.
I pace the line until my legs settle into the rhythm and my thoughts go quieter. Until her scent from earlier this afternoon fades completely from the air. Around midnight, my phone buzzes once in my pocket.
A text from Eli: Dek’s up. Switch.
I glance back at her window one more time.
Dark. Still. I exhale, long and slow.
“Mine,” something low whispers in the pit of me. Then, louder, layered over it: Ours.
“Not yet,” I tell both voices, under my breath.
I step back onto the patio, leaving the shared hedge behind.
Tomorrow, we’ll put up cameras. We’ll ask Tom if any other neighbors have had weird visitors. But tonight?
Tonight, I let myself have one small, selfish thing:
I imagine catching the person who touched her things.
And I imagine what I’m going to do to him when I find him.