Chapter Twenty-Three
Anathea
“Mate of mine, you’re starving.” Carter’s voice dragged me from the sleep of the dead.
No, not the dead. The well-mated and sated and wonderfully sore sleep.
Exhaustion took over somewhere after the third round of mating and, as I drifted to sleep, I could feel my wolf working her magic, healing the wounds on my shoulders that marked me as theirs.
Once my eyes fluttered open, I realized he was right.
With all the commotion of contracts and rights and freedom, I’d skipped eating. We shifted and mated well into the night and morning.
“What time is it?” I asked, trying and failing to untangle myself from the weight of arms and legs and bodies.
Carter tugged on my feet. “I’ve got you.” He pulled at my feet and then my hips and untangled me. Elias and Jayden groaned but soon fell back to sleep. “They’re grumpy in the morning anyway.”
As if on cue, Jayden growled a bit in his sleep.
“You just want me all to yourself.”
Carter lifted me and folded me over his shoulder. I covered my mouth with my hands to keep the squeal down. “You’ve got that right. The mornings will be ours.”
Downstairs, Carter put me on the counter and went to the laundry room and found a hoodie that went down to my thighs, or it would if I wasn’t on this counter. It smelled like him, and I already had plans on putting it in my nest.
“Coffee first or they will be demons all day.”
I snickered at him, and while he made coffee, we made plans. I had to get all my stuff from my apartment. Most of the furniture would go to Goodwill, or I would leave it for the next tenant, maybe an omega who would make the place hers.
He turned around and put his hands on my hips. “Elias can cook if necessary. Jayden, too. I’m more of a lover than a chef. I hope that doesn’t change your mind.”
“Nothing could change my mind about you. I can cook.”
“Not a chance.” Elias came down. No shirt. Only pants. I looked down at the floor; otherwise, I might vault myself at him and Carter and demand they ignore my hunger and continue loving me upstairs. “I’m on breakfast duty.”
“I thought you said he was grumpy in the mornings, Carter.”
Elias came over and kissed me. “Maybe you’ve changed my ways, omega.” He lightly touched his mark on my body, and I relished the shudder it caused.
“Or you’re just as hungry as me.”
“Or that.”
Elias went to work while Carter and I shared a cup of coffee. He took it like I did: obscene amounts of cream and one sugar.
“I have to go to work today. Our firehouse just adopted a new schedule. Four days on and four days off, but Elias and Jayden will be here.”
Elias turned. “I have a shift tonight but I can call in if you think your heat isn’t gone.”
Omegas’ heats usually lasted days, but this seemed to have been a mini one. Maybe it was biology signaling me, or kicking me in the pants, in the direction of choosing this pack. She knew what I needed.
“I think it’s over for now.”
They both nodded. Over breakfast, we made plans. I insisted on working still. Jayden stumbled in and put me on his lap while he ate breakfast.
My wolf was settled, maybe for the first time.
“I’d like to do some nest shopping if that’s okay?”
Carter groaned. “I’m going to miss the nest shopping. I’m gonna have to find a new job.”
“No, I can pay for my own things. A little.”
“You’ll do no such thing,” Jayden spoke for the first time that morning. “We have savings, and a lot of that was put away with the dream of an omega to spend it on. All the nest shopping without the pesky alpha.”
He was enjoying this.
Carter was not.
Elias was calm.
And I was one damned happy omega.