Chapter 4 #2
“I want to misplace his fucking teeth,” I mutter, tearing off a bite of crust like it’s his face.
A Honda sedan pulls up outside her building, and I instantly recognize it as Harper’s from when we followed her and Cindy after the Harvest Dance. Harper who gets out, purple-tipped black hair glinting in the streetlight, overnight bag in hand.
“Smart,” Holt approves. “Numbers are good. Harder to grab someone when there’s a witness.”
“Think they’re having a girls’ night?” Luke asks. “Doing each other’s nails, talking about feelings and shit?”
“I think they’re probably figuring out how to deal with a stalker ex-fiancé who won’t take no for an answer,” I say, eyeing the lights still glowing from Cindy’s place. One of the shadows moves—nothing distinct. Just enough to make my jaw tighten.
“We could get closer,” Luke suggests, already reaching for the door handle like that’s a normal thing to say. “Make sure they’re actually safe.”
“And what, peek in their windows?” Holt says. “That crosses from protective to restraining order real fucking quick.”
“When did you become the voice of reason?” Luke mutters.
“When you started thinking with your knot instead of your brain.”
Luke snorts but doesn’t deny it.
We all go quiet again, chewing through the last of the pizzas, eyes fixed on the soft light behind those second-floor curtains. No movement now. Just the hum of the streetlamp and the low rumble of Holt’s engine.
Then my phone rings.
The screen lights up with a name that turns my good mood to ash.
Mack.
I sigh like I’ve just been handed a live grenade. “What?” I answer, already bracing for chaos.
“Big brother!” Mack crows. “How’s my favorite Alpha doing?”
His voice has that manic edge, the one that usually means he’s high, drunk, or standing on the edge of a very bad idea. With Mack, it’s usually all three, plus a flare gun and a questionable tattoo artist.
“I’m your only Alpha brother,” I remind him, because God forbid he ever forget it. “What do you want?”
“Can’t a Beta check in on his successful, restaurant-owning, uptight older brother without wanting something?”
“Not in this lifetime,” I mutter, already checking the time and wondering if I’m about to have to post bail. Again.
Luke leans over to read the name on my screen and grins. “Oh, good, it’s the family disaster.”
“I heard that!” Mack yells through the phone like he’s on speaker. He’s not. His volume just comes with the personality.
“You could, but you don’t. It’s been almost a year since you called, and that was because you needed bail money after that bar fight where you nearly killed someone.”
Luke and Holt exchange glances. They know my family history, know how fucked up it all is.
Parents who tried to pray the Alpha out of me, literally.
Starvation, isolation, conversion therapy that was basically torture with a religious soundtrack.
And Mack, my baby brother, who stayed even after I begged him to run with me.
He was barely thirteen when I left. Just a kid. And he stayed.
“That was a misunderstanding,” Mack says, and I can practically hear his shrug through the phone. “Guy shouldn’t have looked at me like that.”
“The guy was the bartender. He looked at you because you were destroying his bar.”
“Details,” he says, like we’re talking about a parking ticket. “Anyway, I’m back in town. Staying at the motel by the highway. Thought maybe we could grab a beer, catch up. I miss my big brother.”
He doesn’t miss me. He misses having someone to bail him out. Someone to absorb the blame, like a sponge for his craziness. In Mack’s world, everything wrong in his life is somehow my fault—for leaving, for being born an Alpha, for not dragging him out when I escaped that goddamn house.
“I’m busy. Halloween festival, restaurant stuff.”
“Right. Your fancy place.” His voice sharpens, just a little. “Heard you’re doing real well. Making bank. Good for you, Arrow. Real good.”
Here it comes. The ask. It always does. It’s like he physically can’t help himself.
“I gotta go,” I say. “Maybe we can meet up in a few weeks.”
“Few weeks. Sure. Whatever, man.” He pauses for just long enough to twist the knife. “Room twelve, if you change your mind. You know… if you remember you’ve got a brother who spent three years in trauma recovery therapy after I left home.”
The guilt hits like it always does. Sharp, familiar, useless. A punch to the gut I’ve already taken a thousand times.
He hangs up before I can respond, which is probably for the best. Nothing I say ever helps anyway. Not where Mack is concerned. There’s no fixing a wound when the person keeps picking it open just to feel something.
“You good?” Luke asks, real concern cutting through the usual sarcasm.
“Peachy.” I let the phone drop into the cup holder like it’s burned me and drag a hand through my hair. “My psycho brother is back, probably broke, definitely about to cause problems.”
Luke doesn’t say anything. Just offers me one of the last cream puff things Tim made, like sugar might soften the edges of old wounds.
I take it and eat it in one bite.
“Want us to handle it?” Holt offers, and by handle , he means everything from a talking-to to making him disappear.
There’s no smile on his face when he says it.
Just the calm, bone-deep loyalty of someone who’s already decided who matters and what he’s willing to do about it.
“No. He’s still my brother. Despite everything, he’s family.”
“Family’s who you choose,” Luke says. “We’re your family. That guy’s just someone you share DNA with.”
He’s right, but it doesn’t make the guilt easier.
“Can we talk about something else?” I ask. “Like… are we really doing this?”
Luke pauses mid-chew. “Doing what exactly?”
“This,” I say, gesturing toward Cindy’s apartment. “Sitting out here like guard dogs with snack packs. Talking about scent matches and bonds and, hell, Omega shit. Are we really ready for what comes next?”
Holt glances over, one hand draped casually over the wheel. “You mean the part where claiming her changes everything?”
“Yeah,” I admit. “The part where it’s not just instinct anymore. It’s a life. ”
Luke makes a face when I glance over my shoulder at him. “Don’t say it like that. You sound like you’re about to buy a minivan and wear a tool belt.”
“I’m serious,” I state. “You bond an Omega, you don’t just get heat and sex and domestic bliss. You get need. You get responsibility. You get… babies.”
Luke chokes on a pecan. “Jesus, say that again but slower.”
“ Babies, ” I repeat, watching him gag dramatically. “Tiny, screaming, half-feral versions of us. Covered in drool and teeth.”
“I’d be the fun one,” Luke says, recovering. “I’d teach ’em to cuss in four languages and throw knives.”
“You’re not helping your case,” Holt mutters.
But I see the flicker in his expression. The stillness. Because he’s thinking it too—what it would mean to really settle down. To be chosen and not just taken seriously… but completely.
“I always thought we’d burn out before we got this far,” I admit. “Either the law would catch up, or someone would put a bullet between our eyes. But now we’ve got a legitimate business. A town that doesn’t hate us. And… her.”
Luke shifts in his seat, quieter now. “You think she wants that? The white-picket-fence shit? With us?”
“She wants safety. Stability. A future,” Holt says. “Things we never had. Things we’ve never really been good at offering.”
“Doesn’t mean we can’t try,” I add. “But we don’t get to go at this half-assed. Not with her. If she chooses us, we owe her everything.”
The silence that follows isn’t heavy—it’s solid. Like something slotting into place.
The lights in her townhouse start going off one by one. Bedroom last.
“She’s in for the night,” Holt says, adjusting his seat.
Luke yawns. “Do we get to sleep, or is this a twenty-four-seven babysitting gig?”
“We watch a little longer,” I say. “Just in case.”
And we do. We stay. We wait. Not just for danger.
But for her.
Because for once, that’s something we don’t want to steal.
We want to deserve it.