Chapter 12
COREY
I’ve been awake since five, too wired to sleep, so I’ve spent the morning trying to outrun my thoughts in the gym at our new place.
I’m on the weight bench, the top of my back braced against the edge, hands over my head and gripping the bench beneath me, an exercise ball pinned between my calves, and I’m lifting it.
Hips driving upward, core locked so tight my abs are screaming, legs rising in a controlled arc that makes every muscle from my ribs to my ankles feel alive and furious.
The camera is recording from the floor in front of me, angled for my online followers, and I know exactly how this reverse plank position looks with me holding myself up just by my shoulders and hands. The workout matters, but so does the show.
I hold at the top. Three seconds. Five. My arms are trembling against the bench and my obliques are on fire, but I keep my hips raised and roll them in one slow, controlled circle before adding a deliberate thrust. It will destroy the comment section later, which is precisely why I do it.
This move requires every ounce of focus I have, which is the entire point, because if I’m not focused on holding this position, I’m distracted by Claire and the way she tasted when I kissed her last night, and that’s a road my body can’t afford to go down.
Cherry lips. Five feet, four inches of beauty. And beneath all of that, her scent has threaded so deep into my system that I still smell it twelve hours later.
I grunt through rep fourteen. My hip flexors are begging for mercy, but I give them nothing because that’s not how this works. Control. Precision. Every rep clean and earned.
The gym is half set up. Brody got the weight bench and cable machine in before he got distracted, which is Brody’s entire personality compressed into a single action. Boxes of dumbbells stacked against the wall. Thirty square feet of cleared space.
Every fiber in my core is engaged when a second ball slams into my stomach.
The air punches out of me. My legs drop, and the ball between my calves flings sideways and cracks off the cable machine. My feet hit the floor on instinct. I shove myself upright, heart hammering, and the laugh that tears out of me is loud enough to rattle the windows.
Brody. He steps into the room, damp hair falling across his forehead from a late shower, a smear of something on his chin he’s wiping away with his thumb. Crumbs. He’s been cooking. Of course he has. The man processes emotions through pastry.
I head over to switch the camera off.
“Morning, sunshine,” he says.
“You just torpedoed a perfect take, dickhead.”
“You’ve been down here for six hours. Pretty sure you’ve got enough footage to retire on.” He nods at the tripod. “How many videos?”
“Enough for a month and a half.” I grab my water bottle and drain half of it, letting the cold hit my chest. “Couldn’t switch off.”
“Yeah, me neither.” He folds his arms, leans against the wall, the tension in his jaw sharp beneath the easy grin. Brody hides it better than any of us, but I’ve known him long enough that I can read the tells.
I throw the towel over my shoulder and face him. “Fuck, man. You should’ve warned us about Claire.”
“I did. Every damn day for weeks.” He grins as though his mind is already with Claire.
“You told us how gone you were for her. Not that she’s our potential scent mate.”
Brody adjusts himself over his jeans with zero subtlety. “Could only confirm she was mine. Can’t speak for you two, but I told you she was incredible.”
“Fuck!” Jakob fills the doorway. Blond curls everywhere, black track pants, a T-shirt so crumpled he obviously slept in it.
Or didn’t sleep. His expression is the specific kind of wrecked I’ve never seen on him before.
Jakob is the wall, and right now the wall has cracks.
“You’re talking about Claire,” he says. “Good. I haven’t slept a single goddamn minute. ”
“Heard you last night, buddy,” I state. “Several times.”
He barks out a laugh as he drags both hands through his hair and drops onto the stack of mats against the wall. “How the hell have you survived weeks next door to her without losing your mind?” He’s staring at Brody.
“Who says I haven’t?” Brody picks a crumb off his shirt and flicks it away. “I’ve been hanging by a thread since she fogged up her window watching me bake.”
“And she’s my scent match,” Jakob declares like it’s news. “Pretty sure she’s all of ours from our reaction to her, but she’s definitely mine.”
“We’ve clocked it,” I say, Brody nodding.
“So what are we doing about it?” he pipes in.
I crack my knuckles. The energy in my body is electric. I want to pace, hit something. Maybe rush next door, cook her breakfast, and just ravage her. Instead, I plant my feet and channel it into stillness because that’s what Alphas do when the feral part of the brain starts running the show.
Sometimes, when an Alpha finds his true scent match, instinct stops asking permission.
The hunger turns wild, all teeth and possession, a brutal need to claim her, protect her, rut her until there’s no part of either of us left untouched by the other.
I used to think Alphas who talked like that were losing their minds.
Now Claire is buried in every one of my senses, and I understand the danger of wanting someone badly enough to let the primal, savage Alpha side of me take over.
“Not to mention,” I say, my jaw tight, “I need to track down that prick Louis from last night and teach him a lesson.”
“Should’ve dealt with him at the wedding for making her cry,” Brody states, and the grin is gone. What’s underneath is cold.
“Not the place.” Jakob’s hands are fists on his thighs. “Claire asked us not to. We respect that.”
Claire in that storage room, tears on her cheeks, shaking, because a man who promised her a future treated her like trash, and it fucking burns me up every time I think about it.
“So. Claire.” I pull us back. “What’s the play?”
“We don’t rush her.” Brody’s fingers tap against his folded arms. “She’s been shattered, and her anxiety runs deep. The wall she’s built is thick, so if we come at her with possessive Alpha bullshit demanding that she accept this, she’s gone.”
“We let her see the real us,” Jakob murmurs. “I was gone for her before I even caught her scent.”
Our scent match is undeniable. But what I felt when she laughed at my stupid joke, grabbed my shirt during the kiss, I knew I’d lose my mind.
“Shit.” Brody’s staring down at his cell phone in his hands. “That photo from the storage room.”
“Where?” I ask. “I mean, I’d love a copy so I can blow it up and hang it on my ceiling, then stare at her every night as I jerk off.”
“Fuck, man,” Jakob mocks, nudging me with a hand against my shoulder.
“Everywhere. It’s blown up. Massively.”
“That’s what she said,” I blurt out, laughing at my own joke.
“I’m serious,” Brody pushes, and I’m at his side in two strides, Jakob as well. The screen shows the image that makes me grin at how gorgeous Claire is. She’s pressed against the wall, flushed, glasses tilted, and around her, three of us. I need to frame this photo in my room.
The post already has hundreds of thousands of shares. And it’s not just one account. It’s everywhere as Brody scrolls. Reposted, screenshotted, captioned.
Then he pauses on a comment by Louis Deck.
That’s my ex-fiancée. Claire Darling. The TV disaster who said food bloggers can’t cook. Now she’s dating three? I call bull! She’s faking the whole thing for publicity because her book tanked. She’s always been performative, always needed an audience. Guys must be desperate.
My vision narrows, and I see red, hands clenching at my side.
“She stays off social media,” Brody explains, his voice tight. “She won’t have seen this. And I’m going to murder this prick!”
“But she will,” Jakob says. “Eventually, someone will send it to her.”
“Fuck that. We get ahead of it.” I’m already pulling up my account, thumb hovering.
My followers have grown fast this year, closing in on two million, and right now every single one of them is about to learn what happens when you go after someone I care about.
“This asshole doesn’t even know who we are. He’s punching blind.”
Brody nods once. “Do it.”
I type in response to Louis. My fingers are steady even though my blood is roaring.
@CoreyLockFit: Quick PSA. If your move after a breakup is lurking in comment sections to trash the Omega you left, you didn’t move on. You just got bitter. Claire Darling is a bestselling author and an incredible human being. The only person embarrassing themselves here is you.
Brody pulls up his own page with over ten million followers. He doesn’t comment on the thread. He makes a standalone post, pinned, with a photo of himself, direct to camera, and a caption.
@ManBaker: I will always speak up when someone is being bullied.
Publicly attacking an ex online isn’t honesty.
It’s harassment. When someone you once claimed to love is thriving without you, the answer isn’t to tear them down in front of millions.
Claire Darling is a talented chef and the most genuine person in any room she walks into.
She doesn’t need defending. But her ex commenting on a photo he wasn’t invited to be in?
That’s a special kind of sad. Do better, Louis.
Jakob posts from the ManBaker business account.
@ManBakerOfficial: We don’t typically respond to comments.
But when someone lies publicly about a person we care about, we make an exception.
The only thing staged here is Louis’s concern.
Legal counsel has been notified. We’d encourage the individual responsible to retract their statements while the option is still available.
Brody snorts. I grin, and we watch.
The tide turns in real time. Louis’s comment, which was sitting near the top with a few likes, starts drowning under replies.
Imagine being this pressed about your ex finding happiness. Therapy exists, mate.
She “tanked”? Her book has 4.8 stars and 60,000 reviews. What have you done lately?
Three gorgeous Alphas vs. one bitter ex in the comments. The universe has spoken and it’s not on your side.
More are piling in. Screenshots of Louis’s comment are spreading with reaction posts.
Someone finds the original interview clip and posts it with the caption Watched the full thing.
She clearly misspoke and was nervous. The internet owes her an apology.
It gets fifty thousand likes in twenty minutes.
My adrenaline spikes. This is the part of social media I understand intimately—the wave, the momentum, the way a narrative can shift in minutes when the right voices push it.
I refresh. Scroll. My post is climbing. Brody’s is already at a hundred thousand likes.
Jakob’s polite legal threat has been screenshotted and shared with She’s got lawyers and three Alphas, Louis. Read the room as the caption.
“Asshole’s just deleted his comment,” Brody states with a giddy grin, watching his screen.
“Too late. The internet screengrabs everything.”
“Couldn’t happen to a nicer guy,” Jakob sneers.
Brody claps his hands together. “Let him drown in it.” He nods at the gym floor, the cleared space, the sunlight streaming through the high windows. “Okay, film time. I need to move, or I’m going to spend the rest of the day refreshing that thread.”
“Same.” Jakob peels his shirt over his head with the reluctance of a man removing armor. I pull off my tank top. Brody’s now bare-chested too, rolling his shoulders, queuing a track on his phone.
I grab three jump ropes from the box by the wall and toss one to each of them.
“Standard formation?” Jakob takes the center position.
“Standard.” I find my mark on his left. Brody takes the right.
Jakob hits Play on the camera and jogs back. “Okay, let’s make this fun!” Bass drops. Heavy, grinding beat, and he nods once.
We jump.
Three ropes cutting the air, the crack of rubber on tile flooring syncing with the bass, our attention on the camera, smiling, showing off.
We flex our muscles at any chance we get, all while skipping.
It’s all about the movement, the muscles, the sweat.
And for Jakob, who clearly wore his sweatpants on purpose, it’s about the flip-flopping in his pants.
I grin, knowing people are going to love this.
Jakob sets the pace, steady, exact, blond curls bouncing. Brody matches from the right with that grace that makes everything appear effortless. I take the left, faster rotations, double unders, crossovers, because my body needs the punishment and my followers expect the showmanship.
The chorus hits. We sync. Three ropes, one rhythm, and for thirty seconds, my mind goes beautifully, blissfully empty. Nothing but the slap of rope, the burn in my forearms, and the sweat forming along my spine.
Then it floods back. Claire’s mouth under mine. The gasp she made when I pulled her close, her fingers twisted in my shirt, holding on as if letting go meant falling. The tears on her face in that storage room cracked me open.
I’m going to protect that woman. Not because she needs it, but because she deserves someone who shows up and stays and doesn’t make her earn it.
The track ends, and I catch the rope. My chest is heaving and my muscles are singing, and through the window, I spot the corner of her cottage. Her kitchen window is covered by curtains.
Jakob catches me staring. “You’re addicted.”
“Yeah. And I’m not stopping.”
He shakes his head. But the corner of his mouth twitches.
Brody queues the next track, and the bass drops. We go again, and the last thought in my head before the ropes start flying is the simplest one I’ve had all morning: She kissed all three of us last night, and none of us have recovered. That’s not a coincidence but a beginning.