Valek
It's four in the fucking morning and I haven't slept.
I know what's waiting behind my eyelids.
I've been staring at the ceiling for hours, forcing myself to count fucking sheep out of desperation. My hand keeps curling around nothing. Opening, closing, the tendons pulling beneath scars that predate this country, this name, this life.
Fuck this.
I throw the sheets off and swing my legs over the edge of the bed. I pull on a black t-shirt and don't bother with shoes. The cold floor feels good under my bare feet.
The pack's all in the loft, in whatever nest they assembled on the floor up there after coming home from the hospital visit. They left the ladder down and Ivy reminded me I was welcome to join them.
Maybe I'd fucking sleep if I did.
I take the stairs down to the kitchen without making a sound, skipping the third step because it creaks. It's empty, the countertops clean, the lights out. I leave them off. My eyes are already adjusted to the dark.
I fill the tea kettle from the tap, set it on the stove, and turn the flame to low. Plague's private stash of loose-leaf is in the cabinet behind the protein powder, where he thinks nobody can find it.
I know where everything is in this house.
And then… footsteps.
Soft and small. Bare feet on hardwood, barely audible, and if I weren't me, I wouldn't have caught them at all.
Ivy rounds the corner in one of Thane's oversized shirts, the hem hitting her mid-thigh. It hangs off one shoulder, baring the cluster of three silver healed marks layered over the old burn scar. Her dark hair is a sleep-rumpled mess, her eyes are half-shut and partially glued by sleep.
She stops when she sees me.
"Hey," she says.
"It's four in the morning."
"I know." She pads to the counter and hoists herself up onto it, her bare feet dangling. She stretches her arms above her head with a squeaky yawn, the shirt pulling up over her pale stomach, and I force my eyes away. "Couldn't sleep."
I lean against the opposite counter and cross my arms. The kettle ticks softly behind me.
She wasn't tossing and turning up there. She was lying still and breathing evenly when I passed the loft ladder. I would have heard.
She heard me leave and followed.
I don't call her on it.
"Tea?" I ask instead.
"Please."
I pull a second mug from the cabinet. Her favorite is shaped like a moose head. It's Whiskey's, which is why it's glued together and chipped. She always reaches for it anyway.
The kitchen is quiet except for the low hiss of the flame and the faint settling sounds of the house. Ivy draws her knees up and wraps her arms around them, resting her chin on top.
"You mentioned a bad dream earlier," she says.
My jaw tightens. "Did I."
"You did."
"Hm."
She watches me. I can feel it without looking, the way she studies people. Studies me like I'm a strange, rare creature she has no idea what to make of.
"Must've been a rough one," she says.
"They usually are."
She nods and doesn't push. Just sits there on the counter with her knees pulled up and her cheek resting against them now, watching the blue flame under the kettle.
The silence between us is different than silence with other people. With most people, silence is a hostage negotiation. Someone will break first. Someone always wants something.
Ivy just exists next to me.
It used to be infuriating. Now, I draw a disconcerting comfort from it.
The kettle starts to whisper. I pull it off the flame before it screams and pour both mugs, dropping the loose-leaf strainer into hers and a bag of the cheap shit I bought for myself into mine.
I set her mug beside her on the counter.
"Thank you," she says, wrapping both hands around it.
I take a sip of mine. Too hot. Burns the roof of my mouth. I drink more anyway.
"Can I ask you something?" I say.
She looks up.
"What did you see when you first looked at me?" I set my mug down. "In the tunnels."
She hums thoughtfully, blowing on her tea to cool it. Her ocean eyes are dark in the unlit kitchen, the faint glow from the stove's pilot light making them look more blue than green. The same glow shines on the iridescent marks over her scar.
"Honestly?" she asks.
"I wouldn't ask otherwise."
"I saw a threat." She takes a sip. "An unknown alpha who appeared out of nowhere while I was wet, naked, and vulnerable. So I hit you with a fire extinguisher."
"Fair."
"Very fair. You went down like a sack of bricks, by the way."
"I'm aware." My fingers drift to the thin scar on my temple, a smirk tugging at my lips. "You have excellent aim."
"Thank you." She grins into her mug. "I practiced on Whiskey next. With a hockey stick."
"He mentioned."
The grin fades into an actual smile that sets me on edge.
Why is she smiling at me?
She sets her tea down and looks at me, lips pursed the way she always does when she wants to think about what she's saying next. When she wants to say something she means, and it's probably going to cut straight to the marrow.
"That's not what I see now," she says.
Here it is.
"What do you see now?"
"Someone who's down here at four in the morning because he can't close his eyes without seeing something terrible."
My throat tightens.
"I don't think you're a threat to me, Valek."
"You're wrong."
She holds my gaze. "A threat wouldn't tell me that."
I let out a long, low sigh. "I'm not safe, Ivy."
She shrugs. "Dangerous doesn't scare me. Cruel scares me. And you're not cruel."
I set my mug down harder than I mean to. "You don't know what I am."
"Then tell me."
"No."
"Then I'll work with what I have." She picks her tea back up, unbothered. "Which is a guy who steals Plague's fancy tea, threatens my abuser in a hospital, and can't figure out how to accept that people like him."
I exhale through my nose and stare at the ceiling, my teeth grinding together.
"So," she says, her voice shifting into a lighter, almost chipper register at an hour that would be ungodly for any other omega. "What are you planning for our date?"
"Date?" I ask flatly, blinking at her.
She grins, nodding.
She knows.
She knows I've been thinking about it. She knows I've been relentlessly turning it over and over in my head, rejecting every option, and circling back to the same handful and discarding those too.
I'm supposed to show her what's underneath all of this. The deal I made with myself that when I take her out, I tell her everything.
Every rotten, blood-soaked piece of it.
And then she decides if I stay or go.
"Nothing," I say.
"Nothing?" she repeats, delighted.
She's impossible.
"How adventurous are you?" I ask, pivoting hard.
"Pretty fucking adventurous." She leans forward on the counter, her bare feet swinging, heels bumping the cabinet. "Anyway, if you tried anything, I'd knock you out again. And I have four alphas as backup." She takes a sip of tea. "And you wouldn't try anything. I trust you."
She shouldn't.
I killed a boy when I was twelve. Felt the shiv go in and the fight leave his body and the wet heat of his blood on my hands, and the worst part is, I wanted more.
Needed more.
And I got what I needed.
I always do.
There is nothing good at the center of me. I peeled back every layer looking for something worth keeping and found only rot and violence and a talent for hurting people before they ever get the chance to hurt me.
I'm fundamentally broken to the core.
And yet Ivy kissed me, and I kissed her back and I wanted it, wanted her, and wanting is the most dangerous thing that's happened to me in my entire life.
Because wanting means losing.
And I don't lose well.
She sets her moose mug down on the counter with a clunk and slides off the edge. I catch her just before her bare feet hit the floor.
"See?" she says, pointedly, grinning again. "You caught me."
I narrow my eyes at her. Hm.
"Come up to the loft," she says, tugging on my hand. "Sleep with us."
I set my mug in the sink, opening my mouth to say no.
She's already pulling me toward the stairs.
Or rather, I'm letting her. She can't physically move me, but I go with her anyway, because what the fuck else am I supposed to do?
Say no?
"I'm not going to sleep," I warn her as she leads me up to the hall.
She shrugs. "You don't have to. It'll still be nice."
I sigh, shadowing her to where the hatch to the dark loft hangs open. I hear Whiskey snoring and almost use that to give myself an excuse to have second thoughts, but Ivy's already halfway up the ladder, looking back at me with that sweet, cute smile.
"Valek," she says softly. "It's just sleep."
It isn't.
It isn't just anything with her.
Nothing is just anything anymore.
But I grab the rung above her hand and pull myself up.
The loft smells like all of them. Honeysuckle and winter-sharp snow and cinnamon-bourbon and woods, all kinds of alpha scents, all mingled together and stronger now with a marked omega among them.
Wraith's wild and dark scent is harder to pin down, weakened by his physical state, but it's threaded through everything up here because this is his space.
I know the plan. He's the last to mark her.
Which means I'm supposed to be next.
The nest takes up most of the floor now.
I heard chaos unfolding earlier while I was trying to read and now I know why.
They managed to get every single mattress up here, and what appears to be every pillow and throw blanket as well.
Whiskey's cape even managed to get into the nest, and Plague is wrapped in it, his version of a mark on display on the side of his neck.
Incredible Whiskey didn't bite through to the spine.
Wraith is on the far side, his massive frame curled protectively around the empty space where Ivy must have been. Even asleep, he's a barricade. His scarf is off and his scarred face rests against the pillow, jaw slack. His breathing is slow and deep.
The first real sleep he's gotten in days, maybe.
That makes one of us.
Ivy settles into the empty space beside Wraith, who shifts in his sleep and pulls her against his chest without waking. His massive arm drapes over her.
She looks back at me.
Pats the nest.
I lower myself to the edge, keeping my back against the wall. The pillow beneath me is warm from someone else's body heat. Plague's clean scent clings to it.
Ivy reaches over and tugs my wrist.
I let her make me lie down, following her movements as she arranges me like I'm part of the fucking nest. Plague rolls closer to me in his sleep with a soft growl, burrowing into my ribs, his dark hair spilling across my chest.
This is fucking terrifying.
I do nothing to stop any of it.
Ivy's fingers lace through mine and she pulls my hand against her sternum, tucking it beneath her chin. Her heartbeat thumps steadily against my knuckles.
"Close your eyes," she whispers.
I do, because this omega owns me, apparently.
And I catch myself drifting off a moment too late.