12. Shepherd
Shepherd
Her scent was changing.
I noticed it first thing in the morning, when she emerged from her nest of blankets and limped toward the kitchen.
Something had changed overnight. The air seemed thicker when she passed, her scent leaving trails I could almost see.
That familiar base of rain and honeysuckle had deepened into something more complex, more urgent.
Like a storm building on the horizon, all pressure and electricity and the promise of release.
Heat was coming. Not today, probably not tomorrow, but soon.
Her body was preparing itself, chemistry shifting, pheromones building toward something inevitable.
I wondered if she could feel it yet. If she knew how different she smelled to us, how hard it was becoming to be in the same room with her and pretend everything was normal.
I made tea and tried to focus on the book in my lap.
Philosophy of mind, a subject I'd once found endlessly fascinating.
Now the words blurred together, meaningless, while my attention kept drifting to the sounds from the kitchen.
The soft pad of her footsteps. The clink of a mug being set down.
The quiet hum she made when she was thinking, a sound I'd come to recognize over the past two weeks.
Two weeks. That was all it had been. Fourteen days since she'd fallen through our door half-dead and frozen. It felt longer. It felt like she'd always been here, filling spaces I hadn't known were empty.
That was dangerous thinking. The kind of thinking that led to attachment, to expectation, to the inevitable disappointment when she left and things went back to the way they'd been.
I'd spent four years learning not to need anyone, not to want anything I couldn't have.
I wasn't about to throw that away for an omega who'd made it very clear she didn't want to be here.
Except she didn't seem so clear about that anymore.
Calder had gone out early to check on the animals, and Bo was somewhere in the back of the property, doing whatever Bo did when he needed space to think.
That left the cabin quiet in a way it rarely was.
Just me and my book and Noa in the kitchen, the two of us sharing space without the buffer of the others.
I heard a sound from the kitchen. A frustrated noise, followed by the scrape of a chair being dragged across the floor. I set down my book and went to investigate.
She was standing on her toes, one hand braced against the counter for balance, reaching for something on the top shelf of the cabinet.
Her injured ankle was barely touching the ground, all her weight on her good foot, and even so she couldn't quite reach whatever she was after.
She was wearing one of Calder's old flannels over her borrowed clothes, the sleeves rolled up to her elbows, and her hair was sticking up at odd angles from sleep.
She looked rumpled and frustrated and devastatingly beautiful.
“What are you doing?”
She startled at my voice, wobbling dangerously before catching herself on the counter. “There's honey up here. I can see it. I just can't...” She stretched again, fingers brushing the edge of the jar but not quite grasping it.
“Let me.” I crossed the kitchen without thinking, coming up behind her, reaching over her head to grab the honey jar from the shelf. It was easy for me. A few inches of extra height made all the difference.
I had the jar in my hand before I realized how close we were.
She'd turned when I reached past her, and now we were facing each other, barely a foot apart.
I could see the flecks of gold in her amber eyes, could count the faint freckles scattered across the bridge of her nose.
Her lips were slightly parted, her breath coming faster than it should have been for someone who'd just been reaching for a jar of honey.
I was close enough that her scent wrapped around me like a physical thing, sweet and warm and utterly intoxicating. Close enough that I could see her pulse jumping in her throat, quick and light and completely hypnotic.
Close enough that I could feel the warmth radiating off her skin.
“Thank you,” she said. Her voice was slightly breathless.
“You're welcome.” I should step back. Should put distance between us, give her the honey, return to my book and my pretense of normalcy. That was the smart thing to do. The safe thing. Every rational part of my brain was screaming at me to move away before I did something I couldn't take back.
I didn't move.
Neither did she.
The moment stretched between us, elastic and charged. The clock on the wall ticked. The fire crackled in the other room. Outside, a bird called, muffled and distant. But here, in this kitchen, time seemed to have stopped entirely.
“Shepherd.” She said my name like a question, like she was testing how it felt in her mouth. The sound of it in her voice did something to me, something warm and aching that I felt all the way down to my bones.
“Hmm?”
“Why haven't any of you tried to kiss me?”
The question hit me like a splash of cold water. I blinked, trying to parse it, trying to figure out if I'd heard her correctly. Of all the things I'd expected her to say, that wasn't even on the list.
“What?”
“You heard me.” She held my gaze, steady and challenging despite the blush creeping up her neck.
Her chin lifted slightly, that stubborn set to her jaw that I'd come to recognize as her armor, the face she wore when she was feeling vulnerable and didn't want anyone to know.
“It's been two weeks. You've all admitted you want me. But none of you have made a move. Why?”
I had to think about it. Had to sort through all the reasons, the justifications, the careful logic I'd constructed to explain why keeping my distance was the right choice.
But with her standing so close, with her scent filling my lungs and her eyes searching my face, all that careful logic seemed very far away.
“Because you haven't asked us to,” I said finally.
Something flickered in her expression. Surprise, maybe. Or confusion. “That's it? I have to ask?”
“You've spent your whole life having people assume they know what you want,” I said slowly, working through the thought as I spoke it.
“Alphas who thought they had the right to pursue you, court you, touch you without permission.
Your family who decided what was best for you without bothering to consult you.
Everyone treating you like your desires didn't matter, like your choices weren't yours to make.”
She was very still, listening. The blush had spread from her neck to her cheeks now, a soft pink that made her freckles stand out.
“We're not doing that,” I continued. “If something happens between us, it happens because you choose it. Not because we assume. Not because we push. Because you decide, clearly and explicitly, that it's what you want.”
“So you've just been... waiting? This whole time?”
“Yes.”
“Even though you wanted to?”
“Even though I wanted to.” The admission came easier than I expected.
“Every day. Every hour. Every time you walked into a room or laughed at something or fell asleep by the fire looking more peaceful than you ever do when you're awake.
I've wanted to kiss you since the first morning you woke up and looked at me with those sharp eyes and immediately started arguing.”
Her breath caught. I watched her throat move as she swallowed.
“That's...” She shook her head slowly, something softening in her expression. “That's not how alphas usually work.”
“We're not usual alphas.”
“No.” A small smile tugged at the corner of her mouth, tentative and real in a way that made my chest ache. “You're really not.”
The kitchen was very quiet. Just the tick of the clock on the wall, the distant crackle of the fire in the other room.
Her scent seemed to intensify in the silence, wrapping around me, making it hard to think about anything except how close she was.
How easy it would be to lean forward and close the distance between us.
How much I wanted to, with an intensity that frightened me.
I didn't. The choice had to be hers.
But god, I wanted to.
“Shepherd.” She said my name again, and this time it wasn't a question. It was a decision. I could hear it in her voice, see it in the way her eyes darkened, feel it in the shift of the air between us. Something had changed. Something had clicked into place.
“Yes?”
“I'm choosing.” She reached up and wrapped her hand around my wrist, the one still holding the honey jar. Her fingers were warm against my skin, sending sparks up my arm that I felt in every nerve ending. “Right now. I'm choosing.”
The jar slipped from my fingers. I heard it hit the counter with a distant thunk, but I couldn't look away from her face. From her eyes, bright and determined. From her lips, slightly parted. From the pulse fluttering wildly in her throat.
“Kiss me,” she said.
For one suspended moment, I didn't move. Couldn't move. Couldn't quite believe that this was happening, that she was asking for what I'd been wanting for two weeks, that the walls between us were finally coming down.
Then she made a small sound of impatience, rose up on her toes, and pressed her mouth to mine.
The first touch of her lips was soft. Tentative. A question more than a statement, asking if this was okay, if this was what I wanted, if I was going to meet her halfway.
I answered by sliding my hand into her hair and pulling her closer.
She gasped against my mouth, and I swallowed the sound, taking advantage of her parted lips to deepen the kiss.
She tasted like everything I'd been denying myself, and underneath that something that was purely her.
Something I'd been craving without knowing it, something I'd been starving for without realizing I was hungry.