Chapter 16
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
Mia
By the time Thursday evening rolls around, Tom’s invitation feels less like a neighborly suggestion and more like a court summons.
I check my reflection in the hallway mirror.
I look wrecked. Not just deadline-tired, but something deeper.
My skin is flushed, eyes too bright, pupils wide like I’ve been taking hallucinogenic drugs.
There’s a restless, electric hum under my skin that I’ve been trying to ignore since I woke up in the pack’s nest, a low-grade restlessness that makes my clothes feel abrasive and the air itself feel like electricity.
I tug at the collar of my shirt, trying to create space, but the heat is coming from inside. I put on extra blockers. If this is a heat flash, it’s the most intense one I’ve had yet.
Stepping out onto the porch, I find I’m not the only one heading to the meeting. Other neighbors are on their way, some stopping to wave at me. I wave back, throat tight as my gaze shifts to 126.
Eli and Knox wait at the end of their driveway. They look like they stepped out of a catalog for dangerous men. Dark jeans, crisp t-shirts tight across broad chests, and that terrifyingly calm alpha-beta energy that sucks the oxygen right out of the street.
Knox sees me first. His head snaps up, nostrils flaring.
A warm smile spreads across his face, but his eyes stay dark. “Hey, sunshine. Heading to the slaughter?”
“I’m heading to Tom’s.” I walk toward them, my legs feeling strangely heavy, like I’m wading through water. “What are you two doing?”
Eli falls into step beside me as I reach the sidewalk. Knox takes my other side, effectively boxing me in. “Just discussing how we’re going to approach this. Apparently, Carol has a few items on the agenda regarding ‘residential equipment’ and ‘noise disturbances.’“
“She’s been busy,” I mutter.
“She has.” Eli’s hand brushes the small of my back and the touch sends a jolt of heat straight to my heels. He leaves his hand there, the warmth of his palm seeping through my shirt, branding me. “But she’s not the only one with a voice in this neighborhood.”
I lean into his touch without meaning to and it causes my scent to spike like sweet, thick syrup. I hear Knox inhale sharply on my right.
“You smell good,” he murmurs, stepping closer until his arm brushes mine. “Sweet. Like sugar spinning.”
My heart trips a beat. “It’s just...perfume.”
“Mmm.” He doesn’t look convinced. He looks hungry.
Tom’s living room is already packed. It smells of lemon polish, stale coffee, and the faint, powdery floral of Mrs. Pritchard’s perfume. But underneath that, the room is a soup of anxious pheromones.
The noise cuts out the second we walk in. Apparently, a single omega flanked by a broad-shouldered alpha and a steel-spined beta is a declaration of war in Sweetwater Pines.
“Mia! Boys!” Tom calls out from the front, sounding genuinely relieved to have backup. “Glad you could make it. Grab a seat. We’re just about to tackle the block party budget.”
We find space on a set of folding chairs near the back. Eli sits to my left, Knox to my right. Knox spreads his legs, his knee pressing firmly against mine. He doesn’t move it.
I don’t move away either. The contact feels like the only thing keeping me tethered to the floor.
The meeting is a blur of noise I can’t parse.
People are talking. Something about fence posts, and then something about holiday lights. But the words float over my head like smoke. I can’t focus on the agenda. I can’t focus on anything except the unbearable, heavy heat coiling in my belly.
The folding chair is hard plastic, digging into my legs, but I hardly feel it. All I feel is them.
Knox’s body is a furnace radiating heat that soaks right through my jeans. He still hasn’t pulled his leg back. Just content with letting the contact burn there, a constant, grounding pressure that makes my thighs clench.
Meanwhile, Eli is a wall of steady, terrifying calm.
He has one arm draped over the back of my chair, his fingers idly playing with the seam of my shirt near my shoulder.
Every time his fingertip brushes the fabric against my skin, a fresh jolt of electricity zings down my spine to pool between my legs.
I shift in my seat, desperate for friction, fighting the slickness gathering in my panties.
Knox’s head turns. He catches the movement, his eyes darkening as they drop to my lap, then back to my face. A slow smirk tugs at his lips.
He presses his knee harder against mine.
My breath hitches.
When Carol stands up, the sharp scrape of her chair leg against the floor spikes through my headache like an ice pick.
“I’d like to bring up the matter of the technical infrastructure at 126,” she announces, her voice a high sound that grates against my nerves. “And the visitors. This is a residential neighborhood. We have families.”
I try to listen. I try to care.
But Eli’s scent of warm oats and clean soap is filling my nose, drowning out the smell of lemon polish and stale coffee. It’s thick. Intoxicating. It makes my mouth water.
“And we have neighbors who help each other,” Mrs. Pritchard interrupts from the sofa.
A ripple of laughter moves through the room, but it sounds distant, like I’m hearing it underwater.
Carol’s face flushes pink. She keeps talking, her mouth moving, words like “ordinance” and “standards” spilling out, but I’m fixated on the way Knox’s hand is resting on his own thigh, inches from mine.
His fingers are long, thick, capable. I imagine them on my skin and a fresh wave of warmth rolls through me, leaving me dizzy.
“It’s the vibe,” Carol snaps, her gaze flickering to me with palpable distaste. “And the influence. We’ve always had a certain standard of privacy on Pine Lane.”
“By privacy, do you mean isolation?”
Knox’s voice is a low rumble that vibrates in his chest, traveling through his knee into my leg. He leans forward, elbows on his knees, the movement bringing his face closer to my peripheral vision. The playful edge is gone. He looks dangerous.
“Because Mia shares a hedge with us and hasn’t complained,” Knox says, his voice dropping an octave. “Except once, when we were drilling. And we stopped the moment we realized it was bothering her.”
“Mia is new,” Carol says, her voice dropping to a hiss. “She doesn’t understand how things work here yet.”
The condescension acts like a spark in a room full of gasoline.
Something inside me snaps. Not a rational thought, but a growl. My omega bristles, offended and protective and suddenly furious that this woman is coming for them. For my…my neighbors.
“I think I understand perfectly.”
My voice surprises me. It’s steady, low, vibrating with a heat I can’t control. What the hell is happening to my omega?
Eli’s hand shifts on the back of my chair. His fingers graze the sensitive skin of my nape in a silent, searing encouragement that makes my toes curl.
“I moved here for community, Carol,” I say, the words tumbling out on a rush of adrenaline. “And in the last week, this pack has shown me more community than I’ve found in the last four years.”
My scent flares, cutting through the room’s stale air.
Mrs. Pritchard starts to clap. Tom joins in. Carol looks like she’s been slapped, sitting down abruptly and clutching Pip.
“Alright,” Tom says, clearing his throat. “I think that’s enough on ‘vibrations’ for one night.”
I stop listening.
I’m trembling. The adrenaline crash leaves me shaky and even hotter than before. Knox’s knee is still burning a hole through my jeans. Eli’s fingers are still teasing the hair at the nape of my neck.
I am melting from the inside out.
The rest of the meeting dissolves into a gray blur. I simply endure it, counting the seconds until I can breathe real air again.
When Tom finally adjourns, I bolt for the door, my legs feeling unreliable.
Mrs. Pritchard catches my arm on the porch, whispering something about “good ones” and winking, but I can barely focus on her face. I just nod, mumbling something polite, and escape down the steps.
The night air hits my flushed skin, but it does nothing to touch the fire in my belly.
“You okay?” Eli asks, falling into step beside me as we reach the bottom of the porch steps.
“Yeah.” I lean against the railing, needing the support because my legs feel like they might dissolve. “Just...tired.”
“You’re shaking.”
Knox steps onto the pavement, turning to face me.
He doesn’t respect the boundary of the porch.
He crowds me against the wood, his big body blocking out the streetlights.
His eyes are dark, tracking the flush that I know is staining my neck as his scent wraps around me in the dark, thick and suffocating in the best way possible.
“You’re vibrating out of your skin, Mia.”
“I’m fine,” I lie, but my voice trembles.
“You’re not fine.” Eli steps up the stairs, trapping me between them. “You’re burning up.” He reaches out, the back of his knuckles brushing my cheek. The contact shocks me, sending a jolt of electricity straight to my core.
“I’m just…flushed,” I whisper. “From the meeting.”
“It’s not the meeting,” Knox growls softly. He leans in, his nose grazing the sensitive cord of my neck, inhaling deep. The sound of his intake makes my knees buckle. “You smell like sugar and panic. It’s getting stronger.”
My heart thuds, the restless hum under my skin turning into a painful, needy ache. Stupid blockers aren’t doing a thing. What’s worse is, I can smell them, and it makes my mouth water.
I push off the railing and start walking back home, ever aware of the two males following along beside me. When we reach back at the junction between 124 and 126, I stop and turn, ready to wish them goodnight.
“Is something wrong?” Eli asks before I can say a word, his voice dropping to a low register that demands an answer. He catches my chin, tilting my face up to search my eyes. “Are you sick, or is this…”
He trails off, his gaze dropping to my mouth, then back up.
“No,” I gasp, pulling back just an inch.
“I wouldn’t go to a meeting if it was that time.
I’m not crazy.” I give a shrill laugh that ends up sounding wobbly.
I don’t bother telling him my cycle app said I had at least two weeks left before my heat hits.
He doesn’t need to know all that. “I just need to sleep.”
Eli studies me for a heartbeat longer, his thumb stroking the line of my jaw. He looks like he wants to scoop me up and carry me across the lawn. He looks like he’s calculating exactly how long I’m going to last before I break.
“Go inside, Mia,” he commands softly, his voice rougher than usual. “Get some sleep. I think tomorrow is going to be a long day.”
“Why?” The word comes out as a breathy pant.
Knox’s eyes flash silver in the porch light. He leans in, brushing his nose against my temple, inhaling my distress, my need, my heat.
“Because you smell incredible, sunshine. And we’re getting really bad at staying on our side of the fence.”
I swallow hard, a fresh load of slick releasing between my thighs. I clamp my legs together, forcing myself to turn and head to mine. Through the window, I watch them walk back to 126, their silhouettes tall and solid against the streetlights.
I lean against the door in the dark.
My house is quiet. Spotless. But as I head upstairs, the silence feels like a countdown. And the hum in my blood doesn’t feel like stress anymore.
It feels like a fuse burning down.