Chapter 22
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
Mia
Iwake up alone.
The realization comes slow at first, filtering through layers of heavy sleep like light through deep water. My brain feels waterlogged, thoughts moving like they’re wading through mud.
Then it slams into me all at once.
Alone.
I’m sprawled in the center of the massive nest, limbs tangled in sheets that smell like sex and sweat and them. The blackout curtains are still drawn, but thin afternoon light bleeds through the gaps at the edges, painting the room in muted shades of gray and gold.
The air is thick. Heavy with the scent of musk and slick and the unmistakable tang of alpha claim layered so deep into the fabric it might never wash out. It’s in the pillows. The blankets. The mattress itself.
My body aches. The fire under my skin has finally burned itself out, leaving behind only embers and ash and the ghost of what consumed me. I shift experimentally, testing my limbs.
My inner thighs scream in protest, the muscles there pulled and tender in a way that makes me suck in a sharp breath.
There’s a dull, stretched throb between my legs that pulses with every tiny movement.
When I press my hand to my lower belly, the tenderness there is immediate and unmistakable.
A deep ache that radiates through my pelvis.
I’ve been used. Thoroughly. Repeatedly. In every way a body can be used.
The memories come flooding back in high-definition clarity, no longer blurred by the haze of heat.
Rhys knotting me while I begged for more, his teeth on my shoulder, the feeling of being locked together and filled so completely I couldn’t breathe.
Eli holding my hands above my head, his voice low and commanding as he told me I was made for this, that I was taking him so well.
Knox between my legs, his mouth on me like worship, like prayer, like he could drink me down and never get enough.
Declan rocking into me so gently I cried, his arms wrapped around me as he murmured praise into my hair.
The sounds I made.
Oh God.
Oh God.
I sit up too fast and the room tilts violently. I have to brace my hands on the mattress, fingers digging into the sheet, breathing through my nose until the spinning stops and my stomach settles.
When my vision clears, I look down at myself.
I’m naked. Completely bare. The sheet has pooled around my waist, exposing skin that’s been marked in a dozen places.
Bruises bloom across my hips in the exact shape of fingers, overlapping in some places where they took turns holding me down.
There are faint red lines on my thighs where nails dragged, and a particularly dark mark on my left hip that looks almost like a brand.
A bite mark sits on my shoulder, not deep enough to scar but dark enough that it’ll take days to fade, maybe longer.
There are smaller marks too. On my breasts, my ribs, the inside of my wrist where someone held me still.
I look like I’ve been claimed.
The word sits heavy in my chest, pressing down on my lungs.
I’m the responsible one. The one who moved here for a quiet life. A fresh start away from drama and chaos and men who made promises they couldn’t keep.
And I just spent three days in a feral heat with four men who are my neighbors.
The shame hits like a tidal wave, crashing over me so hard I can’t breathe.
What was I thinking? What were they thinking?
Did they even have a choice, or did I go into heat and throw myself at them like some kind of desperate—
I can’t finish the thought. It sits in my throat like something I can’t swallow.
Are they downstairs right now, trying to figure out how to politely tell me it was just biology? That it didn’t mean anything beyond hormones and proximity?
Are they regretting it? Wishing they’d just driven me to the Omega Center instead of letting me drag them into this mess?
The questions spiral, each one worse than the last.
I need to leave.
I need to be in my own house, behind my own locks, where I can breathe and think without their scent in my lungs and their marks on my skin.
Before they turn and look at me with regret. Before they offer me a polite “thanks for the good time” and a bottle of water and send me on my way with an awkward pat on the shoulder.
I swing my legs over the edge of the nest and try to stand.
I almost fall immediately but manage to catch myself on the nightstand with a gasp, my arms shaking with the effort of holding myself up.
My legs are trembling so hard I can hear my teeth chatter, and there’s a sharp, pulling pain in my inner thighs that makes my eyes water.
“Okay,” I whisper to myself, voice cracking. “Okay. You can do this.”
I grab the sheet, wrapping it around myself. It’s heavy and awkward and smells so much like them that it makes my chest constrict in on itself.
But it’s better than walking out naked.
I make it three steps before I have to lean against the wall.
My thighs are screaming. Every step feels like walking on LEGOS, like my muscles are tearing with each movement. I’m shaking so hard the sheet keeps slipping, threatening to fall and leave me exposed.
But I grit my teeth and keep going.
Hallway. I just need to make it to the hallway. Then the stairs. Then the front door.
Then I can crawl back to my house and pretend this never happened.
I can do this.
I have to do this.
I make it as far as the top of the stairs before my legs give out again.
I slump against the wall, breathing hard, one hand pressed flat to the plaster to keep myself upright. The sheet is dragging on the floor now, bunched under my feet, threatening to trip me if I try to take another step.
Tears prick at the corners of my eyes, the moisture hot and humiliating.
This is pathetic. I can’t even walk ten feet without collapsing like a newborn deer.
How am I supposed to go home like this? How am I supposed to face them when they come upstairs and find me like this? Crying, broken, barely able to stand?
How am I supposed to pretend I’m fine when everything hurts and I can still feel the ghost of their hands on my skin?
Footsteps on the stairs make my head snap, heart lurching into my throat.
Eli appears at the landing, carrying a tray.
There’s a glass of water beading with condensation, a plate of toast cut into triangles, a bottle of painkillers.
He’s dressed in gray sweatpants and a soft white t-shirt, hair still mussed from sleep, and when he sees me clinging to the wall like a ghost, he stops dead.
For a single, suspended heartbeat, neither of us moves.
Then the tray hits the floor with a clatter.
The glass doesn’t break, but water sloshes over the side. The toast scatters. The pills rattle in their bottle as it rolls across the hardwood.
Eli doesn’t even look at it.
He’s at my side in two strides, hands hovering near my shoulders like he wants to touch but isn’t sure he’s allowed.
“Mia.” His voice is rough, scraped raw. “What are you doing?”
The words come out before I can stop them, choked and desperate. “I need to go home.”
His hands freeze in midair. “You can’t walk.”
“I’ll crawl.” I’m crying now, the post-heat hormone crash slamming into me like a freight train, turning everything sharp and overwhelming. Tears are streaming down my face now, and I can’t even stop them. “I don’t care. I just can’t be here when you all realize what a mistake this was.”
He goes very, very still.
“A mistake,” he repeats slowly, like he’s testing the word in his mouth and finding it doesn’t fit.
I squeeze my eyes shut, unable to look at him. Unable to face whatever expression is on his face right now. Pity, probably, or regret. “I threw myself at you. All of you. I was out of my mind, and you were just…you were trying to help, and I took advantage—”
“Stop.”
The command in his voice makes me flinch.
When I open my eyes, he’s closer. Close enough that I can see the muscle ticking in his jaw, the barely controlled tension in his shoulders.
“Is that what you think happened?” he asks quietly, and there’s something dangerous threading through his voice. “That you took advantage of us?”
“I don’t know!” The words burst out of me, ripping themselves from somewhere deep in my chest. “I don’t know what this was.
I don’t know if it was just biology, or if you—” My voice breaks, shattering on the words.
“If you even wanted me, or if I was just the neighbor who was convenient during a heat wave.”
Something in his expression cracks like ice splitting under pressure.
“Mia.” He moves closer, forcing me to look at him, his blue eyes burning with an intensity that steals the breath from my lungs.
“If we wanted you?” His voice drops, rough and fierce and utterly uncompromising.
“We’ve wanted you since you showed up on our doorstep in sleep shorts to yell at us about a drill. ”
I stare at him, my breath stopping.
“We cleaned your trash cans,” he continues, each word hitting like a hammer, “because we couldn’t stand the thought of you smelling garbage every time you went outside. That wasn’t heat. That wasn’t biology. That was us being pathetic.”
There’s the sound of footsteps behind him, and my heart kicks in my chest. I look past Eli’s shoulder and my breath catches all over again.
Knox, Rhys, and Declan are standing at the top of the stairs, like they materialized out of thin air.
They’re half-dressed, Knox in boxers and nothing else, Rhys in sweatpants slung low on his hips, Declan in sleep pants and a t-shirt that’s on backward.
Their hair is messed up, eyes still heavy with sleep.
They see me crying against the wall with Eli holding me up, see the sheet wrapped around me like I’m trying to hide, see the desperation in my eyes and the way I’m trying to run on legs that won’t hold me.
And their expressions shatter.
It’s like watching glass break in slow motion. The hope draining out of their faces, replaced by something that looks horribly like guilt.