Chapter 17 #2
“You don’t have to do anything,” he continues, softer now. “You don’t have to let us touch you. You don’t have to let us in the room. But at the very least, let us make sure you’re safe.” His jaw flexes. “Let us bring you food. Water. Check on you. Please.”
He adds the word out loud this time.
Please.
My omega rolls over and shows her throat.
I nod before my brain can construct a pro-con list. I watch as his shoulders ease a fraction.
“Okay,” he says, exhaling. “Okay.”
He looks down at my basket again, then at the blockers in my hand, and something like frustration crosses his face.
“You need more than this,” he says, plucking the blockers gently out of my grip and dropping them into his own basket. “And not these. These will fry your nose and do nothing for anyone that comes near your door. Come on.”
Before I can protest, he strides past me, long legs eating up the aisle, my basket hooked in one broad hand, his in the other.
I have no choice but to follow like a baby duck in leggings.
He moves through the store like he’s in charge.
Protein. He grabs two rotisserie chickens, setting them gently in the basket so they don’t crush anything. “Proper food you can eat cold,” he says when I open my mouth. “High protein. Easy.”
He steers us toward produce. Pre-cut fruit. Bananas. A bag of clementines. “Simple sugars. Electrolytes. Trust me, you’ll want these.”
Crackers. Cheese. Yogurt. Soup you can drink from a mug. A second jug of Gatorade. A third, when he sees the way I’m swaying slightly.
“This is too much,” I protest weakly.
“It’s not enough,” he counters. “How long do your heats usually last?”
My face fills with heat. Discussion of my sex-adjacent bodily functions in a fluorescent-lit grocery store with my neighbor was not on my bingo card.
“Three days,” I whisper. “Sometimes four.”
He nods, expression going even more intent. Another set of soup containers joins the pile.
By the time we reach checkout, both baskets are overflowing.
The cashier, a beta woman, glances between us and the contents of the belt with a flicker of knowing sympathy.
“Big weekend?” she asks, tone neutral.
I can’t tell if she’s making conversation or trying to check if I’m safe.
Shame prickles over my skin for a second on the edge of an old, useless echo of Julian’s voice: You’re being dramatic, Mia. Heats aren’t that bad if you just control yourself. But then Eli answers, calm and unbothered.
“She’s going into heat early,” he says, while I swallow my tongue. “We’re making sure she’s stocked.”
The cashier’s gaze softens. “Good,” she says, scanning another item. “It’s always worse when you don’t plan for it.”
I make a strangled noise.
Eli pays before I can even unzip my purse.
“Eli—” I start, but he shakes his head.
“Let me,” he says quietly, signing the screen.
I bite down on my lower lip instead of arguing in front of a stranger.
We load the bags into his truck together, him taking the heavier ones automatically. The air in the parking lot feels too hot; the pavement shimmers. My skin prickles.
“Where’s your car?” he asks, slamming his tailgate gently.
I point toward the far corner, where my sad sedan looks even smaller next to all the SUVs.
He looks at it, then at me. His eyes narrow. Then he pulls out his phone.
“What are you doing?” I ask.
“Texting Knox he’ll have to come get your car,” he says, fingers moving quick. “You’re riding with me.”
“I can drive.” The thought of being in a moving box with him and my scent is both intoxicating and terrifying.
“Mia.” He looks up, leveling the full force of his beta focus at me. “You’re shaking.”
“I am not—” The lie trips over my own body’s betrayal as my knees wobble.
He just waits.
I look down at my hands wrapped around my purse strap. They are, in fact, trembling.
“Heat messes with reaction time,” he says. “I’m not letting you drive like this. Let Knox come get your sedan. He likes feeling useful.”
I want to fight it. But the world is hazy at the edges now. Lights have halos. Every breath drags more of his scent into me, and my body hums like a struck tuning fork.
“Fine,” I mutter.
“Thank you,” he says simply.
He opens the passenger door and steps back, giving me space.
I climb in, and he loads the rest of the groceries efficiently, before closing the door with a solid thunk, and sliding into the driver’s seat.
But he doesn’t start the engine.
Instead, he turns in his seat toward me and holds out his hand, palm up.
I stare at it. “What?”
“Phone,” he says. “Give it to me.”
Heat flashes up my spine for a totally different reason.
“You’re…confiscating my phone?”
His mouth tugs in a ghost of a smile. “I’m putting my number in it.”
Oh.
I fumble my phone out of my bag and slap it into his palm before my brain can supply commentary like this is intimate.
He types quickly, saving a contact. A moment later, his own phone buzzes in his pocket and I realize he texted himself so he’d have my number, too. He hands mine back.
“I put myself in as ‘Eli,’” he says. “If you feel unsafe, if the pain gets too bad, if you need water, food, anything at all, you use it.” His tone is gentle, but there’s iron underneath. “Promise me.”
I meet his gaze. There’s no pity in it. No sense of him doing me a favor he’ll hold over my head. Just… concern. A fierce, quiet kind.
“I promise,” I whisper.
He studies my face for half a second, like he’s making sure I mean it.
“Good,” he says, his voice softening on the word. Only then does he finally start the engine. “I’ve alerted the others. Declan and Rhys are leaving the office now to meet us at the house. Knox is already there.”
The drive back to Sweetwater Pines is quiet. The radio stays off. The truck’s cabin smells like leather, him, and the rest of the pack. My heat makes every scent sharper, sweeter. I have to resist the urge to roll the window down and stick my head out like a dog.
We roll past the entrance sign. Past the park. Past the HOA-mandated flowerbeds. Past my house.
He doesn’t even glance at it. He pulls straight into his driveway instead.
Knox is already outside, leaning against the garage, phone in one hand. When he sees me in the passenger seat, his posture changes. He straightens, nostrils flaring once, twice.
“Oh,” he says softly. “Oh, sweetheart.”
The endearment hits me like a hand sliding under my ribs.
“I’m fine,” I lie, because I don’t know how not to.
“You’re going into heat,” he counters, pushing off the garage to come closer. His voice is gentler than I’ve ever heard it. “That’s the opposite of fine.”
The sound of another car pulling up fast makes me jump. A sleek black sedan skids into the spot next to the truck.
Doors open.
Rhys and Declan pile out, still dressed in button-downs rolled at the sleeves, looking winded like they ran red lights to get here.
Rhys is at my side in a second, having appeared like some huge, silent ghost. He lifts a hand toward me.
“Come on,” he says quietly.
“I—” My throat closes. I slide down carefully, my knees wobbly.
The second my feet hit the driveway, the world tilts on a different axis.
Standing here, between their house and mine, with my scent floating heavy around us, with four men watching me like I’m the only thing in the world that matters…it does something to my brain chemistry.
“How long?” Rhys asks Eli quietly, eyes not leaving my face.
“Hours,” Eli says grimly. “Maybe less. It’s already hitting hard.”
“And she was going to do it alone,” he adds, voice rough.
Something dark flickers across Rhys’s features. “Not anymore.”
I should say something. All that comes out is a small sound as another wave gnaws through my belly.
“Let’s get this inside,” Eli says briskly, grabbing as many bags as he can carry. “Mia, you need to start nesting. Drink a full glass of water before anything else. Eat something.”
“I don’t…have a nest,” I say, and it slips out quiet, like a confession.
Everything stops. Eli’s arms full of bags. Knox halfway through reaching for another set. Rhys’s hand extended toward me. They all freeze.
“You don’t have a nest,” Rhys repeats slowly.
Heat floods my face. “I—I mean, I have blankets. I just haven’t…I kept meaning to make a proper one, but the move, and work, and the flood, and—” I trail off, words shriveling in my throat.
I can’t look at them.
I stare at the driveway instead. At the faint line where their concrete meets the pavement. At the little tuft of grass growing defiantly in the crack.
“Mia.” Eli sets the bags down gently on the tailgate, like he can’t carry anger and groceries at the same time. “You were going to do this on a bare mattress?”
“I’d make it…comfy,” I mutter, humiliation burning my ears. “It’s not like I was planning to just…raw-dog the box spring.”
Knox makes a choked noise that is definitely a laugh he’s trying very hard to smother.
“We’ll talk about this later,” Eli says, too evenly. He picks the bags back up, jaw tight. “Right now, she needs to be horizontal before she falls over.”
“I can walk,” I protest.
“Not the point,” Rhys murmurs.
Knox steps closer, reaching out like he wants to touch and thinking better of it halfway. His hand hovers near my elbow.
“Mia, listen,” he says gently. “We can help you. We’ll bring over blankets, pillows. We’ll help you build a proper nest at your place, or—”
“Or you come to ours,” Rhys adds quietly. “Stronger nest. You wouldn’t have to do this alone.”
My heart jackhammers. Their house. Their nest. Their hands on me. Their eyes on me.
It’s too much.
“I—” My throat tightens. “Thank you for the groceries. I’ll pay you back. I just need to…I need to go.”
“Mia—” Eli starts, but I’m already grabbing a bag and moving.
I turn and run before they can stop me.
My house is wrong.
I knew it the second I stepped inside, but now, with my heat clawing at my insides, it’s unbearable.
The air feels heavy and too still. My own scent hangs in it, thick and sweet and lonely.
I try to build a nest in my bedroom.