Chapter 30
CHAPTER THIRTY
Declan
I’ve never dismantled a woman’s entire existence in under four hours with the express purpose of rebuilding it thirty feet away.
Until today.
“That box goes to our place.” I intercept Mia before she can haul the carton labeled Donate to the curb.
“It’s for donation.” She tries to sidestep me. “I don’t need—”
“Our place.” I pluck it from her hands and pass it to Knox, who’s already creating an efficient staging system in the driveway. Boxes sorted by room, furniture grouped by size.
Mia huffs, pushing her hair out of her face. She’s still wearing the leggings and sweater and she looks adorably frazzled. “Declan, I’m trying to be reasonable about this. I can’t just bring everything. Your place is sleek and modern and—”
“Our place,” I correct. “And you absolutely can bring everything.”
“I don’t want to clutter—”
“You won’t.”
“But—”
I cup her face in both hands, making her cheeks squish adorably. “Mia. Listen very carefully. We want your clutter. We want your mess. We want every single thing that smells like you taking over every corner of that house until it stops being ‘our place’ and starts being ‘home.’”
Her eyes go wide and a little glassy. “That’s…”
“Non-negotiable,” I finish. “So stop trying to leave things behind and let us move you properly.”
She opens her mouth to argue, but Rhys appears behind her with an armchair hoisted over one shoulder like it weighs nothing. “This going?”
“No!” Mia yelps. “That’s too big, I was going to donate—”
“It’s going,” I say at the same time.
“Declan!”
“It smells like you,” I point out. “It’s yours. It’s coming.”
“There’s no room for it!”
“We’ll make room.”
Rhys is already halfway across her lawn, heading for our house, the chair’s floral pattern a bright splash against his dark shirt. Mia makes a strangled sound of frustration that’s honestly adorable.
“You’re being hardheaded,” she mutters.
“That I can be. And was very much so last night.” I don’t even look back when I hear her inhale.
Eli appears from the bedroom, carrying a box of books. “Found another one. This was hidden under the bed.”
“I was saving those for later.” Mia lunges for the carton, but he’s too fast.
“Later is now.” Eli heads for the door. “We’re taking everything, remember?”
“I don’t remember agreeing to that!”
“You did,” Knox calls from the driveway where he’s organizing the staging area. “When you said ‘okay’ to moving in with us. That was blanket consent for us to move you properly.”
“That’s not how consent works!”
“It is now!” Knox sounds far too cheerful about this.
I watch Mia look around her living room, at the dismantling of her space.
We’ve been at this for two hours, and the house is already half-empty.
Knox has labeled every box with his scrawl in marker.
Rhys has been making trips back and forth between the houses, carrying furniture like it’s weightless.
Eli has packed her kitchen, putting everything into a padded box until nothing has room to shift.
And I’ve been intercepting every single thing she tries to leave behind.
The “Donate” pile she keeps trying to build?
I’ve been secretly redistributing it into “Keep” boxes when she’s not looking.
The minimalist approach she keeps attempting?
Actively sabotaged. She wants to bring only the essentials and be a good houseguest. I want her to bring everything and be a permanent resident.
“Declan,” Mia says, catching me red-handed as I move a decorative throw pillow from her Donate pile into a Keep box. “That doesn’t even match your aesthetic!”
“Our aesthetic,” I correct. “And it does now.”
“It’s covered in sunflowers!”
“I like sunflowers.”
“You do not.”
“I like you,” I drop the pillow into the box with a deliberate pat. “And you like sunflowers. Therefore, I like sunflowers.”
She stares at me like I’ve lost my mind. “That’s not how preferences work.”
“Sure it is.” I cross my arms. “Everything you love, we love. Including the cheerful home décor.”
“It’s going to look hideous on your couch,” she mutters, but I can see her fighting a smile.
“This is good.” I can’t help but smile too. “Knox is paying people to deep-clean this place after we’re done. Fred gets his property back in pristine condition, you get all your stuff, Carol gets nothing. Everybody wins.”
“Except my security deposit.”
“Which Knox already told Fred to keep. Try to keep up, omega.”
She glares at me, but her scent is pure sugar. As if she’s been waiting for someone to give her permission to take up space, and we just did.
“Last box from the bedroom!” Knox shouts from the hallway. “Somebody grab the coffee maker before Mia has a breakdown!”
“Already got it!” Mia calls back, clutching the machine to her chest. “Nobody touches the coffee maker!”
“Noted!” Rhys yells from somewhere between the two houses.
I do one final sweep of the rooms, making sure we haven’t missed anything. The bathroom is empty. The bedroom is stripped. The kitchen is bare.
We’ve erased her from this house like she was never here, and we’re about to rebuild her existence thirty feet away where Carol Beechman can’t touch her.
I smile.
“Ready?” I ask, finding Mia standing in the empty living room, looking around at the blank walls and bare floors.
She takes a moment, still looking around. “It’s like I was never here at all.”
“Good,” I say, wrapping an arm around her waist and pulling her against my side. “That means you’re ready to actually live somewhere.”
She leans into me, her scent shifting to something softer. “Your place is really different from this.”
“Our place,” I correct again. “And yeah. It’s different. It’s better.”
“What if I don’t fit?”
I press a kiss to the top of her head. “Then we’ll change the place until you do. That’s the whole point of owning instead of renting, sweetheart. We control the space. Not Carol. Not Fred. Us.”
She’s quiet for a moment. Then: “You really meant it. About making room.”
“Every word.”
“Even if my stuff clashes with yours?”
“Especially if it clashes. I want to walk into our living room and see our chaos mixed with your order. I want evidence of you everywhere.”
“That’s…”
“Intense?” I supply. “Possessive? Territorial?”
“I was going to say ‘kind of hot,’” she whispers, her cheeks going pink.
I grin. “Even better. Now come on. Let’s go home and make Carol regret ever fucking with you.”
The rest of the move is a blur. We fill the living room with her books. We stack her throw blankets on our leather recliners. The house, which usually feels echoing and empty by midday, suddenly feels…full.
But there’s one room left. The big one.
“Upstairs,” I say, guiding her toward the staircase.
Knox and Rhys are already up there, hauling the last of her wardrobe boxes. Eli is carrying her bedding with the comforter she loves, her specific pillows, and a fluffy quilt.
Mia hesitates at the threshold of the nest.
It’s a massive space. And it smells overwhelmingly of us. Even though we have our separate rooms for storage and escaping each other’s snoring, this has been the pack’s sleeping quarters. And the lingering thread of her scent is still here too.
“Where am I sleeping?” she asks, looking at the nest like it’s a trap. “I mean… I know we’ve been sleeping together, but if this is your nest…”
“It’s not our nest anymore,” I say, stepping up behind her. “It’s yours.”
She turns to look at me, eyes wide. “Mine?”
“Yours,” Eli confirms from the foot of the nest, setting down a stack of pillows. “We sleep here by invitation only.”
We all go still.
Mia blinks. “But…you live here.”
“We do,” Rhys rumbles, leaning against the dresser. “But the nest belongs to the omega. That’s the law of the house.”
I step closer, crowding her space just enough to make her breath hitch. “This door has a lock,” I murmur, pitching my voice low. “You want space? You lock it. We don’t cross that threshold unless you say the word.”
Her pupils dilate. “You’d…stay out? Even if you wanted in?”
“We always want in,” Knox says, his voice rough. “That’s the point. We want in, but we wait until you open the door.”
The image hits me hard. Us pacing the hallway, desperate and waiting for her call. It’s a restraint play that makes my blood run hot. The absolute power she holds, and the pleasure of submitting to it.
Mia shivers, picking up on the sudden spike in the room’s temperature. The scent of arousal, both hers and ours, starts to thread through the air.
“I don’t want to lock you out,” she whispers.
“Good,” I growl. “Then let’s build.”
It starts organized. Knox strips our old sheets. Rhys brings in her duvet. Eli starts arranging the base layer of pillows. We’re building a foundation, merging her soft, floral-scented linens with our heavy, musk-soaked ones.
“Here,” I say, tossing one of my hoodies into the pile. “Base layer.”
Rhys adds a shirt. Knox adds a blanket from the closet.
We’re piling it up, creating a mountain of soft things, a chaotic mix of five lives colliding.
And then, Mia changes.
I see the exact moment the instinct hits her. She’s smoothing a sheet, her movements careful, until her hand brushes against Knox’s shirt. She freezes. Her nostrils flare.
The air in the room shifts.
She’s no longer Mia, the polite neighbor. She’s pure omega.
She snatches the shirt up, burying her face in it, inhaling deeply. Then she drops it, grabs a pillow, and shoves it aggressively against the headboard.
“No,” she mutters, eyes unfocused. “Wrong.”
She grabs the pillow back, punches it twice, and jams it into a different spot.
“Mia?” Eli asks softly.
“Quiet,” she snaps.
My eyebrows shoot up.
She scrambles into the center of the mattress, knees sinking into the layers we’ve built. She starts grabbing things. Shirts, blankets, shorts and drags them around her, weaving them into a tight, circular wall.
She’s frantic. Ferocious.
She rips a blanket out of Rhys’s hands before he can even set it down.
“Mine,” she hisses.
Rhys freezes, his hands empty in the air. A slow, dark flush creeps up his neck. He looks like he wants to fall to his knees right there.
“Fuck,” he breathes.
Mia ignores him. She’s busy constructing a fortress. She rubs her cheek against the fabric, scenting it, claiming it. Then she digs a burrow in the center, tossing out anything that doesn’t smell right, pulling the things that smell like us closer.
I watch, mesmerized.
It’s the most beautiful thing I’ve ever seen. Her hair is wild, her face flushed. She grabs the edge of the duvet and whips it over her head, creating a canopy, then pops back up, hair sticking up in every direction.
“More,” she demands, holding out a hand. “I need something heavy.”
I strip off my sweatpants without a second thought and hand them to her.
She snatches them, rubs them against her neck, and tucks them under her knee.
We stand around the perimeter of the nest, four grown men reduced to awe-struck statues, watching our omega build her kingdom out of our laundry.
Finally, she stops.
She looks around the nest, chest heaving. It’s a disaster of mixed fabrics and tangled sheets creating a massive, chaotic bowl of comfort.
She curls up in the center, sinking down until she’s half-hidden by the walls she built.
Then she looks at us. Her eyes are still wild, but the frantic energy has settled into something heavy and satisfied.
“Well?” she asks, voice raspy. “Are you coming in or not?”
I freeze. It takes every ounce of restraint I have not to dive in headfirst.
“You sure?” I manage to ask. “We don’t cross the line unless you want us.”
She reaches out, grabbing my arm and yanking. “Get. In.”
I don’t need to be told twice.
We climb in, careful not to disturb the walls she built. Knox settles on her left, Rhys on her right. Eli takes the foot of the bed, anchoring us. I slide in behind her, pulling her back against my chest until there’s no space left between us.
She melts. The tension drains out of her instantly, replaced by a deep, vibrating purr of contentment.
“This is mine,” she murmurs, sleepily running her hand over my arm where it’s wrapped around her waist.
“Yeah,” I whisper into her hair, pressing a kiss to her temple. “It is.”
“And you’re mine.”
“We are.”
She sighs, her eyes fluttering closed. “Good. Because I’m keeping you.”
I look at the others over her head. Rhys looks wrecked. Knox is grinning like an idiot. Eli looks like he’s finally stopped calculating the odds of disaster.
We didn’t just move her in. We just let the queen take the castle.
And I have never been happier to lose a war.