Chapter 9 #4
The Zoom link is staring accusingly at me like a ghost of responsibilities ignored.
“Okay,” I mutter. “Apologize. Explain. Try not to cry. Great plan.”
“We’ll be quiet,” Knox says, retreating toward the kitchen like a large, considerate cat.
“I’ll mute the office speakers,” Eli adds, already tapping commands on his own keyboard.
Declan, instead of leaving, flops into the armchair just out of frame, clearly settling himself for a show. Rhys stays on the arm of the couch next to me, close but not in the shot. I can feel his body heat like a furnace.
I say a quick, desperate prayer to the gods of freelancing, and click “Join.”
It rings for a tense few seconds, then my editor’s face fills the screen.
“Finally!” she says, brows knitting. “I was about to send you a strongly worded email, Mia. Everything okay?”
She looks exactly the same: smart bob, sharp glasses, the aura of an alpha female who has never once missed a deadline in her life.
“I am so, so sorry,” I babble. “There was a plumbing emergency and I—”
“Plumbing?”
I tilt my camera slightly so she can see the blanket at my back, the damp hair, the distinct lack of my usual kitchen background.
“I—my main line burst,” I say. “Full geyser. Flooded the back of the house. I had to—” I wave a hand to encompass the chaos. “Deal.”
Her eyes widen. “Oh my god. Are you okay?”
“Yes. I mean, I think. My house is…less okay.” I huff a breath. “I’m so sorry I didn’t email. My first priority was getting the water off and my laptop out and—” I lie through my teeth. Knox and Eli saved it. I abandoned it like a sinking ship.
“And you saved the laptop,” she says, eyes crinkling. “Good girl.”
In the corner of my vision, Rhys’s mouth twitches.
“And now you’re…where?” she asks, squinting. “That’s not your kitchen.”
“Um.” I resist the urge to hide under Declan’s massive hoodie. “My neighbors’ house. They, uh, rescued me. I’m kind of… trapped here until the plumber finishes.”
“The neighbors,” she says, slow and interested.
Oh no.
I feel her go from Editor Brain to Romance Brain in real time.
She peers past my shoulder at the background. “The ones you told me were ‘drilling incessantly’ late at night last week?”
I wince. “Yes. Those ones.”
“I see,” she says, her gaze dropping to the oversized hoodie. “You didn’t mention they were the kind of neighbors who provide wardrobe changes.”
Declan chokes audibly from the armchair. I stab blindly for the mute button on my end, barely catching him in time.
“Mia?” my editor says, amused. “Everything okay over there? That sounded like a man choking on his own ego.”
This is why she’s an editor. She notices everything.
“I—uh—one of them almost inhaled his coffee,” I admit.
Her eyebrows rise. “So you’re not alone.”
Heat crawls up my neck.
“I—no. They’re… around. Helping.”
“Helping,” she repeats, drawing it out like a thesis topic. “Is that what we’re calling it?”
Rhys shifts beside me, his expression a mix of fascinated and entertained.
My editor’s gaze flicks offscreen, like she’s trying to peer around my camera frame.
“You know I’m going to have to see them now,” she says. “For research.”
“I really don’t think—”
“Tell one of them to come say hi,” she orders, like we’re workshopping a pitch and not my actual life.
I make a strangled sound. “Absolutely not.”
“Mia.” She leans back, folding her arms, smirking. “You’re forty minutes late. You owe me content.”
I glare at her. She’s right. I hate that she’s right.
I tap mute and turn my head the tiniest bit toward Rhys without looking directly at him, because that way lies spontaneous fainting.
“So,” I whisper. “My editor…wants to meet you.”
He blinks. “Me?”
“Or any of you,” I hiss. “She’s…being weirdly cool about the flood thing, but I think she’s about to dock me points if I don’t produce a live alpha.”
Declan is already halfway out of his chair before I finish the sentence. “I VOLUNTEER AS TRIBUTE.”
“No,” Eli and Rhys say in chorus.
Eli doesn’t even look up. “Dek, you’ll make it a whole thing and then, before we know it, we end up in an article.”
“Where is the downside?” Declan asks.
Knox appears from the kitchen, mug in hand and grinning. “I want to see this.”
I am going to die.
Rhys slides off the arm of the couch. “I’ll do it.”
Oh God. I swallow hard, clenching the sides of the laptop as I try to find a way out of this, but I can find none. Shit. Swallowing again, I clear my throat and carefully angle the laptop so that there’s a bit more couch in the frame.
My editor perks up immediately. “Ah. Movement. Are we summoning the alphas?”
I take off the mute. “Don’t say it like that,” I groan.
Rhys drops into the cushion beside me, just at the edge of the shot. He gives me a quick, questioning look: this okay?
It does not help my blood pressure that he is still damp and looking like the exact kind of hero my heroine would fall for.
I manage a tiny nod, and rotate the laptop a little more.
“Uh,” I say. “This is Rhys. Rhys, this is my editor.”
Her eyes light up. “Ah. The suspiciously competent one.”
Rhys’s brows go up. “I’m…not sure how to respond to that.”
“‘Thank you’ works,” she says, amused. “So, are you the one who wrestled the pipe?”
“I did,” Rhys says, his voice that low rumble that the microphone probably has trouble picking up. He glances down at me, his gaze dropping to the oversized hoodie I’m wearing, then back to the screen. “And then I picked up this beautiful lady and carried her out of the way.”
My face instantly flames.
My editor grins, leaning back in her chair. “I see. Full service. Nice. Thank you for rescuing my writer and her laptop.”
His mouth does a small, warm curve I never knew it could do. “We’ll send you the invoice.”
I watch her eyebrows shift upwards a notch as she looks at me again. “Seriously, though. Bursting pipes are a valid excuse. If you’d emailed, I’d have rescheduled.”
“I know,” I say, guilt prickling. “Everything just happened so fast and I was—”
“Busy not drowning,” she says. “I can live with that. You’re okay. You’re safe. You have hot beverages and apparently three guys on call.”
“Four,” Eli calls from his desk.
My editor blinks. “There are four of them?”
I drop my head into my hands. At my reaction, she full-on belly laughs.
“Look,” she says, business mode sliding back into place, “since you’re clearly in the middle of a disaster, we’ll push the detailed notes to Friday, and you take the rest of today to dry your house out and maybe not die of stress, okay?”
Relief floods me so hard, my eyes sting. “Okay. That would be—thank you. That’s amazing.”
“You can thank your charming neighbors,” she says, eyes flicking to Rhys. “If they hadn’t popped up, I might have been crankier.”
Rhys tilts his head. “Happy to help.”
“Careful,” she says. “I might steal you.”
By the time we say goodbye, my editor is smiling.
“Take care of yourself,” she says. “And tell your alphas—”
“They’re not my alphas,” I say, but for some reason it doesn’t come out as more than a whisper.
“—that if they break your concentration too much, I expect to be compensated with exclusive previews,” she finishes. “I’m not above bribery.”
“I’ll… pass on the message,” I say, voice faint.
The call ends, the screen goes back to my mortified reflection, and I close the laptop slowly.
Silence hums for a beat.
Then Declan explodes. “Your editor is my new favorite person. Iconic. Queen.”
Knox strides farther into the room, grinning like it’s Christmas. “She clocked us in ten seconds. Respect.”
“I like her,” Eli says, crossing his arms. “She has priorities.”
I give him a grateful nod as I sink down into the couch, dragging the blanket over my head. “I’m never speaking to any of you again.”
Rhys chuckles softly beside me. “She wasn’t mad, you know.”
“I was forty minutes late and she met my neighbors on Zoom,” I moan into the fabric. “This is my nightmare.”
“Could’ve been worse,” Declan says into the quiet. “You could’ve told her the truth.”
“Which part?” I mumble.
“The part where you’re currently refusing to emerge from my hoodie because you know it smells good.”
My face heats so quickly I’m pretty sure my skin could burn the blanket. “I am freezing! I’m trying to avoid hypothermia!”
“Sure you are,” I hear Declan say. “Denial. Very cute. I like it.”
“DEK,” three voices snap.
“What? She loves the hoodie.”
Under the blanket, my face gets even hotter. I peek out just in time to notice Eli’s turning toward the window, his attention shifting a split second before a heavy van door slams outside.
“Plumber’s here,” he announces.
Oh yeah, the plumber. The fact my whole house is under water. I struggle to sit up, tangling in the blanket. “I need to go talk to him. It’s my house, I have to—”
“Sit,” Eli says.
The word drops into the center of the room with that heavy, grounding beta resonance that vibrates in my chest. My limbs lock up. My omega hears the tone and practically melts into the cushions. I sink back down before I even realize I’m doing it.
“You’re barefoot and still shivering,” Eli says, his voice softening once he sees I’m not moving. “I’ll handle the walk-through. Stay warm.”
He doesn’t wait for my response. Just walks out the front door, closing it with a solid click that feels like a lock turning between me and the world.
Rhys settles back against the cushions. Knox doesn’t move. Declan stays in the chair.
They aren’t going out there.
The realization hits me hard: The alphas are guarding the nest.
And I am the thing in the middle.
It hits me then: if Knox and Eli hadn’t saved my belongings, if Rhys hadn’t hauled me out of the flood, if they hadn’t shoved me onto their Wi-Fi and charmed my editor, that call would’ve been a disaster. Or not happened at all.
I owe them.
Not just for the house, or the rug, or the laptop.
For my actual career.
I will never, ever say that out loud.
But as I peek out from under the blanket at Rhys’s profile, at Declan still grinning, at Knox leaning against the doorframe, the thought lodges in my chest and stays:
I’m indebted.
And, grateful.
Which is the most dangerous feeling of all.