Chapter 17 #2
Bane next. From the tree line on the east side.
Quieter. I catch his scent before his shape—amber and sandalwood drifting through the evening air, warm and grounding.
He steps out of the shadows and stops ten feet away.
Close but not touching. Every line of his body says he wants to close the distance.
He doesn't.
He looks at me. The hazel eyes open and searching. Asking the question with his body that he won't ask with his mouth: are you okay? Do you need me? Can I come closer?
Atlas last.
He comes up the path from the house, still in the shirt he wore to dinner, sleeves rolled to the elbows. Slower than the others. More deliberate. He stops behind them. Arms at his sides. Gray eyes on me.
My chest tightens. Atlas has been the hardest to read since the night I told him about Bane.
The composure locked down tighter than before, the touches fewer, the conversations shorter.
He hasn't pulled away exactly—he's still there, still present, still the steady hand on the wheel.
But there's a distance that wasn't there before.
A coolness I can't tell is restraint or retreat.
And I've been lying awake at three in the morning wondering if I've already lost him. If my honesty cost me his affection.
He stands at the edge of the path and looks at me and I can't read his face. Can't tell if he came down here because he wants to be here or because the scent dragged him.
Both, maybe. Atlas has always been both.
The four of us. The pond. The last of the light. Three brothers in a line behind me, drawn to me just as fiercely as I’m drawn to each of them.
Zero breaks the silence.
“You stopped taking them."
His head tilts. And the words land differently with all three of them here—Atlas's chin lifting, Bane's posture going rigid, the shared understanding settling over them at once.
The omega's suppressants are in a dresser drawer. The omega chose this.
Nobody asks why. Nobody moves closer. They hold their positions—hill, tree line, path—and wait. Giving me the space I didn't ask for. The space that's harder to navigate than any of their hands ever were.
"I know what's been happening." My voice comes out rough. I clear my throat. Try again. "Between you three. I've seen it."
I run my fingers through my hair, trying to let out the nervous energy. It’s no use.
"I've seen the way you look at each other when you think I'm not paying attention. Bane's jaw when Zero gets close to me. Atlas going still when Bane makes me laugh. Zero watching both of you from doorways." I swallow. "I've been reading this room since the day I walked into it."
My hands are shaking. I press them against my thighs.
"I've been trying to choose." The words taste like ash. "I thought that's what I was supposed to do. Pick one. Let the others go. Be normal about it." A breath that shakes on the way out. "Whatever normal means when you're in love with your stepbrothers."
The word lands. Love. I didn't plan to say it. Didn't rehearse it. It just fell out, and now it's sitting in the air between us and I can't shove it back in. I clench my jaw.
Push through it.
"I tried. I've been lying in my room running the math, trying to figure out which one of you I could walk away from.
And I can't. I can't do it." I stop. Start over.
"Atlas, you—" I look at him on the path.
He's so still. "You're the only person who's ever made me believe that staying somewhere was worth the risk. "
His jaw tightens. Barely. But I see it. Hands clenched. Eyes burning.
"Zero." The silhouette on the hill. "You know me. The real version, not the one I show people. And you're still here."
Zero doesn't move. Doesn't blink. But his hands come out of his pockets. Slowly. Like he's deciding what to do with them.
"Bane." My voice cracks on his name. "You made me feel like I was worth being gentle with. Nobody ever—" I shake my head. Can't finish that sentence. Don't need to.
“Maybe it's fucked up—it is fucked up. You're brothers.
You're my stepbrothers. This isn't how any of this is supposed to work and I know that.
" My voice is climbing, getting ragged, the careful control I've spent my whole life building coming apart at the seams. "But I don't care.
I don't care because you came for me. All of you.
Different ways, different reasons, but all of you came.
And I've spent my entire life being nobody's. "
My hands are shaking. I bite the inside of my cheek. The light is dying. Three men I'm terrified of losing.
"I want all of you. Not because I'm omega. Not because of biology or heat or scent. Because you chose me. Before any of that. Before you knew what I was, I think. You all felt the same pull I did.”
The words leave my body and I feel them go—feel the weight lift and the terror rush in to fill the space.
Three brothers. Three stepbrothers. Standing at a pond while their stepbrother tells them he wants all of them. The wrongness of it should be enough to stop me. The sheer, obvious, undeniable wrongness.
Breathe.
My hands are fists at my sides and my eyes are wet and I can feel the warmth in my belly and the cold air on my skin and the weight of three gazes.
"I know what this sounds like. I know what this is. You're brothers. We're family. This is—" I laugh, and it comes out broken. "This is so fucked up. I get it. But I want to belong to all three of you"
Nobody speaks. Nobody moves. The evening cooling around us.
"But I need to know." My voice drops. Steadies.
The part underneath the panic, the bedrock part, the part that survived Linda and foster homes and a concrete cell.
"If this isn't—if you can't—if this is too much or too wrong or too complicated, I need you to tell me now.
Because I can't keep living in this house pretending I don't feel what I feel.
I can't do the dinners and the loaded glances and the almost-touches anymore. It's killing me."
Bane hasn't moved from the tree line. Atlas hasn't moved from the path. Zero on the hill.
I swallow. Look at each of them in turn.
"So either this is real. All of it, with all of you. Or I need to know it's not, and I need to figure out how to live with that."
The pond shines behind me. The last of the light on the water. My heart in my throat.
"Do you..." My voice falters. I swallow. Force it out. "Do all of you still want me?"
The silence holds.
And holds.
And holds.