35. Sterling
STERLING
I wake slowly. My limbs are heavy, my brain molasses-thick with the lingering haze of heat. But something is different.
I’m me again.
Still soft around the edges, still sore in the best and worst ways—but my thoughts are unclouded by the usual lens of insecurity.
I blink against the sunlight leaking through the windows, squinting at the bright unfiltered light.
My body feels like I ran a marathon. Or five.
Every inch of me aches in ways I didn’t know were possible.
I stretch a little and immediately regret it. Every part of me protests, my thighs trembling, my core pulsing with overstimulation. My breasts are tender, my skin still tingling with memory. My scent—our scent—lingers heavy in the room. Sex and Alpha and slick. I could drown in it.
And still…I feel good. Not just physically, though that’s part of it. It’s deeper than that. Emotional, maybe. Something soft and fluttery and terrifying is taking root in my chest. A little promise begging to grow wings and take flight.
I roll over slowly, remembering all the ways we were in this nest over the last few hours? Days? I think it’s been a couple days. The sudden confusion over how much time has actually passed sinks into my sex-addled brain. There’s something I’m supposed to be doing…something important…
But then my thoughts drift right back to how they touched me. Where they touched me. How many times I’d been knotted.
That thought curls warm in my chest like an ember. I let myself bask in it—for just a second—before reality kicks it out like a vagrant.
School.
I sit up way too fast. A wave of dizziness crashes over me, followed by the very real, very sudden memory that I haven’t shown up to work in days. Right in the middle of the damn work week, and I haven’t contacted anyone.
Shit. Shit. Shit.
The realization sends me panic-scrambling out of the nest, my hands clawing for my phone.
“Shit,” I curse aloud, again.
I ignore the twinge of soreness between my legs and the sharp protest of my thighs as I lurch toward the nightstand. There it is—my phone, mercifully charged. The screen lights up with a flurry of missed messages and notifications, and my stomach plummets.
I’m going to get fired. Oh my God, I no-showed an entire kindergarten classroom for three…no, four full days, counting today. What kind of person does that? Just disappears for days without a word?
My heart pounds as I swipe through the texts—some from Daisy, a few from Quinn and Cass…Then I find the thread with my principal. I start mentally crafting the world’s most humble apology text, fully prepared to throw myself at his mercy…when I freeze.
I was expecting a series of increasingly irate messages ending in ‘You’re fired,’ not… this :
Sterling: Hi, this is Quinn Shawnacee. Miss Hart will be indisposed for the rest of this week. Her leave falls under the Omega Clause, and you should expect to see the paperwork in your inbox within the hour.
(Tuesday evening.)
Mr. Hayfield: Thank you, Mr. Shawnacee, for letting us know. Please forward any paperwork she has on to HR…and please take care of her.
I laugh, imagining what Quinn would think if he knew I call my principal Captain Cardigan in my head. I’m also more than a little surprised by the not-so-business-centered request to take care of me. But the laugh quickly turns into a groan when I see Quinn’s response.
Sterling:
An embarrassing number of emojis…to my straight-laced principal.
As expected, Mr. Hayfield does not respond to that.
I don’t even know how to respond to that, but the absurdity of it fills my heart with warmth.
I blink at the screen. Then again. Then one more time for good measure.
He texted my principal and—I’m assuming—submitted the HR paperwork I hadn’t gotten to yet, granting leave for needs tied to Omega biology. For me. He would have had to go to the district site and find those documents…He would have had to know that those documents exist.
I let out a long, shuddering breath and sag back onto the mattress, heart pounding for a whole new reason.
He didn’t just brush off my career or life as frivolous—he handled it.
I stare at the message for a minute longer before setting the phone back down. My fingers tremble as I lift it again to reread the text like it might disappear. It doesn’t. He really did that for me. No hesitation. No asking. Just…took care of it.
I’m not used to that.
Not from anyone.
Swallowing thickly, I glance around the room. The scent of sex and Alphas and home is everywhere. Water waits on the nightstand and what is clearly a small dish of half-eaten strawberries—another small kindness I didn’t ask for but was quietly given. My heart stutters again.
They didn’t just fuck me and vanish. They cared. They stayed. They…nested with me.
Okay, technically, they’re not Omegas, so maybe “nested” isn’t the right word, but the meaning is the same. They made this space feel safe. Protected. Full of warmth and attention.
Full of them.
A smile tugs at the corners of my mouth.
Okay. Okay.
I still have a million tangled feelings about all of this—about them, about what I’m becoming—but one thing is clear…I’m not alone. They chose me, even if it’s only for a little while. No strings. No expectations. The little phrase that started it all.
I slide slowly out of bed. My body groans in protest, my legs shaky and sore, my whole system still humming with aftershocks. I wrap one of the extra blankets around myself and pad quietly to the bathroom.
The shower is calling my name like a siren. I toss off the blanket and step under the hot spray, bracing myself against the wall as water sluices over me. It stings in places. Tender skin, love bites, the too-muchness of it all.
But I don’t mind.
The heat melts the last dregs of fog from my brain, and by the time I step out, I feel almost human again.
Almost.
I dry off and wrap a towel around myself. My gaze flicks to the tiny pile of clothes they must’ve brought from the laundry—folded neatly on the edge of the vanity. But it’s the shirt crumpled on the floor that I grab.
I make sure it’s free of anything other than Alpha scent before holding it up for inspection. It’s soft, worn, far too large, and has some faded baseball team logo on the front.
Cass’s.
I hold it up to my nose and inhale deeply.
It smells like fir trees and sea breezes.
I tug it over my head without a second thought. The hem hits my mid-thigh, and I don’t bother with pants or underwear, still feeling hypersensitive in the lady bits. And I don’t want to cover their scent with anything. Not yet.
Padding into the living room, I follow the smell of coffee and something vaguely like pancakes. I stop in the hallway, watching them for a moment before announcing myself.
Cass is poking at a pan on the stove like it should be doing the work for him. Quinn is pouring syrup over a very sad-looking—but honestly kind of delicious looking—stack of pancakes.
JP is hovering by the open dishwasher, trying to clean up the mess as fast as they’re making it. And it makes me smile. The way these wildly different men have come together…it gives me hope.
It’s so utterly absurd and sweet and intimate that I choke on a laugh.
“Hey,” I say softly, my voice rasping from disuse.
Three heads snap toward me. Quinn nearly drops the syrup. But his face lights up. Cass blinks at me, looking tired and unsure of how to be. JP doesn’t move at all—but his eyes burn into mine, bright and unreadable.
“Sweetheart,” Cass says, stepping forward. “You should be in your nest.”
“She should be drinking water,” Quinn adds, already reaching for a glass.
“She should be eating,” JP mutters, still watching me like I might fall over any second.
I laugh—because it’s too much and exactly what I need—and their faces soften in unison.
“I’m fine,” I say. “I promise. Just sore. And starving.”
Cass pulls me into his arms first, catching me around the waist with that big bear-like strength and kissing the top of my head. “You should be in bed but I’m happy you’re up,” he rumbles, like it’s both a miracle and a reward. “You look good, songbird.”
I flush and try to wiggle away, but Quinn’s right there, wrapping his arms around both of us and nuzzling my cheek. “You smell even better,” he murmurs, voice rich with approval. “We missed you.”
“You were literally here in bed with me an hour ago, and probably in my house for the last three days,” I laugh, caught between them.
“Not the same,” Quinn says, pressing a lingering kiss to the corner of my mouth. “You were high on heat hormones and barely coherent. And now I know what it feels like to be inside you, beautiful girl.”
Cass growls softly at the word “inside” and nips at my neck like he’s already considering round two.
I swat at him, blushing hard. “Easy, Alpha. I’m still sore. Like, absolutely-no-more-knotting sore.”
“Not even a little?” Quinn teases, rocking against me slightly. “We can be gentle.”
“Oh my God,” I groan, laughing and smacking his chest. “You’re insatiable.”
He grins, completely unrepentant. “You bring it out in us.”
JP is standing at the kitchen counter, watching everything with a stormy sort of focus. It’s not cold, not distant—but it’s guarded. Like he’s still holding himself apart because he doesn’t trust what he wants.
I catch his eye. He doesn’t look away.
My heart does something ridiculous.
“JP,” I say softly. “You want breakfast?”
Cass and Quinn both pull back at that, letting me slip from their embrace. JP’s gaze drops to the floor for a moment, then back to me.
“I already ate,” he says.
It’s an answer, but not the one I asked for.
Quinn makes a sound and heads to the fridge, pulling out the eggs. “We were trying to make pancakes,” he explains, shooting a look at Cass. “But someone used the last of the mix on those.” He points to the stack of three sad little pancakes.