Chapter 39
39
JASPER
Having Briar back in my arms is like breathing freely after having a bag over my head.
I inhale her lemon shortbread scent and hum in satisfaction as she hugs me tight and nuzzles her head beneath my chin.
Ronan watches us with a sharp longing in his eyes despite just having her smothering him with love a moment ago.
I can’t judge him for that.
I’m pretty sure separation anxiety is a struggle in all scent-matched packs.
The only thing that might help is a set of mating bites imprinted on her skin.
Alongside her bite on ours, hopefully.
If that’s something she’d be interested in.
I can’t even think about it without my dick throbbing.
The possibility of that kind of connection threatens to unravel me thread by thread.
Before my scent can betray where my thoughts have gone, I kiss the top of Briar’s head and inch her back enough for our eyes to meet.
I’ve never loved the colour blue as much as I do the pale shade of hers.
“It seems you have plenty to talk to us about,” I murmur.
“Are you upset?”
Ronan’s the one who speaks, but I’m sure my confused expression says enough.
“Why would we be upset?”
She rolls her lip between her teeth.
“I’m assuming Landon did leave practice early, even though he said he didn’t. I don’t want anyone to get in trouble because of me or anything like that. It was just instinct to call him.”
“No, love, we’re not upset. I don’t know what happened yet, but if you called him, I’m glad he left. Landon’s priorities were right.”
“So he did leave early,” she says, latching onto that tiny tidbit of information.
“Yes and no. He was cleared to leave so he could go see the team’s physio. That’s where we thought he was before we realized he was gone,” I explain.
“For his knee? He told me he couldn’t feel it earlier.”
Ronan clears his throat and swoops in to drop an arm around her shoulders.
His mouth moves to her temple before he says, “He was lying, Petal.”
She lurches forward, knocking his arm off before Ronan moves with her, leaving me to catch up behind them.
“I’m going to go ask him about that. If he’s injured, he needs to be taking his recovery seriously and not being so careless.”
“I’ve been trying to get that into his head since he hurt himself. Maybe he’ll listen to you,” I say.
“He won’t have a choice.”
Amusement sparks in Ronan’s eyes when he glances at me.
His smirk is dangerous, betraying how much he loves our omega’s fire.
The flames lie dormant behind the veil of sweetness and thoughtful instincts, but they’re constantly on the prowl, waiting to be stoked.
Landon seems to be the one who lights them up faster than anything else we’ve seen.
“By the way, Ronan, your mother is amazing,” she pipes up before slipping fully out from beneath his arm and speeding out of the room.
Ronan’s steps stutter.
“What?”
She’s already disappeared, leaving his question unanswered.
My packmate turns to me dumbstruck and blinks.
“Don’t look at me. I have no idea what went on today,” I defend myself.
“Are we about to be completely fucking railroaded here?”
I debate the question.
“I’m going to assume yes.”
“Great,” he huffs.
When we enter the living room, everyone else has already taken their preferred spots.
The sectional that eats up most of the space in here is huge.
It’s a full U with cushions big enough to fit two grown men on each one, yet as I stare at it today, it feels even bigger.
On the rare occasion that we’re all home and together long enough to sit and watch a game, there’s always so much space between us, both physically and emotionally.
Today, Dash, Briar, and Landon have squished themselves on a cushion and a half, and by the look on Landon’s face as he ignores our entry and watches Briar with a desperation that I recognize immediately, I feel the dwindling hope in my chest take flight.
We could leave this room today as a healing pack.
“We haven’t missed the discussion, have we?” I ask.
The closest spot to Briar is on Landon’s side, so I snag it before Ronan can.
The broody alpha rolls his eyes at me and, instead of taking the spot beside me like I expect, drops to the floor in front of her.
He presses his toes to the bottom of the couch and his knees against the cushion while leaning forward and palming her thighs.
His gaze is intense, but it doesn’t seem to bother her.
She covers his hands and squeezes.
“And here I thought pack meetings involved everyone.”
“They do. Which is why you just used their absence to lay into me about my knee instead of something more serious,” Landon drawls.
His body language is odd, a mix between uneasy and confident.
Like he knows what he has to say but is nervous about how we’ll react.
“We haven’t had a real pack meeting in a long time. I wouldn’t be surprised if none of us remembered how they worked.”
“We have time to fix that,” I offer.
Ronan isn’t as forgiving.
“Not sure that’s anyone’s fault but yours, Pack Leader.”
“Don’t, Ro. Not right now,” Dash says with a heavy exhale.
Landon slowly peels his eyes from Briar and settles them on each of us, lingering longer on the pack member who’s had the biggest issues with him recently.
Ronan’s pride goes toe to toe with his, and it’s kept them in a constant power struggle.
That, and the kind of alpha energy that can turn every room into a battleground.
I don’t think Landon’s ever taken for granted that he has Ronan’s approval to be pack leader.
If he ever changed his mind, the foundation of our pack would be forever shifted.
It’s some higher power that’s responsible for their ability to overlook their battling dominance and love each other the way we all do.
We’re better off together than apart, and that’s been obvious from the moment we met.
“No, get it out of your system, Ronan,” Landon encourages.
Ronan wets his lips and holds Briar’s thighs tighter.
“We’re pack. One person’s selfishness isn’t supposed to threaten the happiness of everyone else. Yet you let that happen without a care for how the rest of us would feel.”
“Just because you’ve never had a reason not to trust Briar doesn’t mean that I haven’t, either. You can’t begin to understand why I made the choices I did,” Landon explains tightly.
Dash leans past Briar to stare at Landon.
“So explain to us why. We’ve been ready to listen for weeks, Lan.”
“I’d like to know as well.” Briar releases one of Ronan’s hands to steal Landon’s.
Finger by finger, she uncurls his fist until she can bring his palm to her lips.
I feel at peace watching her kiss his hand and bring it to rest against her chest.
Landon gazes at her, his expression wavering slightly.
“I have never trusted an omega. My mother ruined that for me.”
“She’s been out of your life for a decade now. You can’t let her ruin your life now the way she tried to ruin your father’s,” Dash says.
Landon keeps his eyes on Briar.
“My father met my mother when he was twenty and new to the NHL. He hadn’t met his packmates when he was a kid like I did and had only started getting to know them. They met when he entered the league, and only two weeks later, my mom came around.
“It was impossible not to know who my father was if you were a hockey fan, and while she wasn’t a fan, she did know who he was.
When they met, my dad explained it as being a miracle.
He took one look at her, and he swore something awoke inside of him.
Once he smelled her, he swore she was his scent match, and the entire pack agreed.
Two months later, she was bonded to them and pregnant with me.
”
A dull ache grows behind my ribs as I listen and watch Briar lean her head on his shoulder, keeping their hands against her chest.
Landon buries his face in her hair and inhales, his throat bobbing.
When he pulls back, he sets his chin on her head.
“When I was old enough to go to school, she started disappearing for long periods of time. Dad always told me she needed “Mommy break time,” and I believed him.
Every time she’d come home, I would smell her and get this churning sensation in my stomach like I knew something wasn’t right.
That was when I realized I had an ultra-sensitive sense of smell.
It turns out that every time she was off on one of her breaks, she was running off to her real scent match.
When I was seven, I smelled him on her for the first time.
”
Nobody speaks when he halts his explanation, working through a lifetime of betrayal that he’s never actually completely dealt with.
It’s not just him, either.
His father hasn’t bothered helping himself or his son at all.
They’ve let their relationship fall apart instead, an intimidating distance between them that they don’t know how to close.
Ronan shifts his hand from Briar’s leg to Landon’s knee, giving it a firm pat.
“Your mother was cruel, Lan.”
“She was. Briar, you have to understand that it was never about you,” Landon chokes out, pale and frazzled.
She strokes the back of his hand with her thumb.
“Keep explaining it to me so I can understand.”
“I tried to hide what I’d learned, but there were three alphas in our house, which meant once they picked up on my new discomfort around her, they didn’t let it go. Stubborn as fuck, they demanded I tell them what was wrong, and once I did, they called a pack meeting and asked her about it. She denied it, but I think they already knew. I remember watching them spend less and less time with her and wondered how that was even possible if they were bonded scent matches. The emotional distance should have been killing them, but instead, they were happier when she wasn’t around.”
He swallows loud enough for all of us to hear, and I touch his shoulder before Dash reaches behind Briar to do the same with his other one.
The joint connection with each of us soothes him enough that he can continue.
“When you’re bonded to an omega . . .” he starts.
“You share one soul. Their emotions are yours, and you have access to every nook and cranny of their mind,” Briar finishes.
When his lips part on a silent question, she smiles softly before answering, “I grew up in a pack. My mom has three bites on her neck.”
It’s both a reminder that we still have so much to learn about her and a reassurance I didn’t know I needed from her.
“Yes, you all but share a soul. Even after they kicked her out of the pack, she still wore those bites, and the pain that followed tore them apart piece by piece. My childhood home heard more fights than it did anything else, and it wasn’t long after the divorce was finished that the pack broke apart. They lost half of everything to her when she left, and my father spent every spare minute he had at the arena. I always say I grew up in a pack, but the truth is that I didn’t. Not even close.”
“I forgot about some of that,” Ronan says.
Landon winces. “I wish I did too.”
“How did she manage to pull off that good of a performance? Pretending to be someone’s scent match? That’s—well, that’s insane,” Briar whispers.
I nod, understanding where she’s coming from.
“Scent masking was only just becoming a more known thing back then, but it was also a lot easier to pull it off before more and more scent matches started finding one another. There’s been a twenty percent jump in successful pairings over the last ten years alone.”
“Okay, Mr. History,” Dash teases.
It’s the lighthearted comment that slices through the heavy energy around us.
Briar giggles and in turn brings some light back to Landon’s expression.
Ronan kisses both of her knees, unabashedly obsessed with her.
I watch them all in awe.
“It’s true. My mom waltzed into my father’s life with a dream and came out on the other end successful. The rest of the pack and me? We were just casualties on her stride for a big payout.”
“Have you seen her since?” Briar asks.
“No. And some days, I forget I knew her at all. I don’t miss her, even if I should.”
Emotion wets Briar’s eyes.
Landon’s thumb is sweeping beneath them to dry each tear before it can get beyond her lower lashes.
“Are you trying to say that you want to move past what happened with your mother? To accept Briar?” Dash asks.
Landon keeps his thumb on her skin but soon adds the entirety of his hand to cup her cheek softly.
For a man who’s been so afraid of the complications that come with intimacy for so long .
. . these soft touches say more than words could.
I hope Briar knows exactly that.
“It’s not that simple. We still need to court her properly. Spoil her and finish the nest that’s been sitting incomplete for years. We haven’t earned her as our omega yet,” he declares.
Ronan makes a deep sound in his chest. “Some of us have been courting her for a while now.”
“So keep going.” Landon speaks to Briar now.
“We have more to show you than we have so far. Our pack has been balancing one-legged on a tightrope for a while, but if you’ll give us a shot—a real one—we’ll do right by you. I’ll do right by you. Even if I’m not perfect.”
Briar’s lips quirk at the corner as she looks at each of us.
“I’ve never needed perfect. Just contentment and happiness. Support from those who I’m meant to spend forever with. Being courted is the norm, but I just want to see that you can give me all of those things. Gifts have never been all that important to me.”
“You’ll get gifts,” Ronan states bluntly.
“A fuck ton of them.”
Her cheeks warm.
“I won’t say no to that.”
Landon releases her face and straightens, speaking to every member of our pack.
“So? What do you say? Are we doing this?”
“We’ve been waiting for you to catch on,” I say with a bump of our shoulders.
Ronan agrees, and Dash .
. . he simply nods.
I eye him a bit longer than I do everyone else, but soon enough, he’s grinning and joining the new conversation.
It’s all very lighthearted for a change, all of us finally on the same page.
Landon clears his throat after a few minutes, suddenly serious.
I tense up, a bad feeling?—
“Now, who wants to tell me why Briar’s apartment was broken into and why everyone seems to know who’s responsible for it but me?”