Chapter 23
CLAIRE
Itold myself I wouldn’t go to the window, yet here I am.
My shower-damp hair drips onto the fabric of my oversized T-shirt, my glasses fogged at the edges from the steam of my quick shower, while my feet are bare on the cold kitchen tiles, and I’m gripping the windowsill as though it’s the only thing stopping me from marching straight out the door and demanding answers.
Their kitchen is lit up across the gap between our houses. Only Brody and Jakob are there, standing close, heads bent together in conversation, with no sign of Trudy or Corey. Somehow that makes it worse, because my mind immediately fills in the blanks with images of them together.
Trudy in one of their rooms, in Corey’s arms because maybe he missed her more than he ever admitted.
His mouth on hers the way it was on mine, hungry and familiar and relieved, like three days with me were nothing compared to two years of wanting her back.
The thought strikes a hot spike under my ribs, jealousy burning so fast and bright it almost scares me.
I picture them in his bed. His hands on her body, her tucked beneath him.
“God.” I’m breathing too quickly. “Okay, just calm down.”
I force air into my lungs because I’m building an entire betrayal out of a lit window and a woman who might only be crying into a mug of tea.
Their first Omega, first love.
The woman who slept in their beds and belonged to them in every way I’ve been trying not to want. Now, I might die if I lose them.
I tighten my hold on the frame until the edge bites into my palms, and I tell myself to stop. She probably came to them because she had nowhere else to go, and they are good men. Of course they’re helping her and wouldn’t leave her outside in the rain. This isn’t proof of anything except kindness.
This isn’t Louis all over again, choosing a different Omega while I stand on the edge with my chest split open, trying to understand how I misread every touch, every promise, every hungry look.
But my body doesn’t believe me.
I’m shaking so hard my teeth chatter, and there’s a horrible pressure building under my ribs, the old familiar kind that says Brace, brace, brace before the blow comes.
I try to breathe through it the way people say you’re supposed to.
In for four. Hold. Out for four. Calm the fuck down.
Be rational. Don’t make this about you and be the insecure woman staring through a curtain, inventing heartbreak out of silhouettes.
Except I remember what it felt like to be abandoned.
The bright, humiliating shock of realizing Louis had already moved on while I was still trying to fix what he’d broken.
I smiled through conversations while people looked at me with pity.
All those nights lying awake and replaying everything, searching for the exact moment I became too difficult and easy to replace.
And now my heart, stupid, hopeful thing, has already started building the worst version of the story.
The one where the mountain meant everything to me because I was in heat, and less to them because they were only doing what good Alphas do. They rut! Where three reckless days in a cabin made me forget myself, while they never forgot the woman who came first.
I press my hand to my mouth, breathing hard through my fingers.
“Stop it,” I whisper. “I’m not going over there.”
I force myself to step back from the window.
One step, then another, hating that my eyes sting with tears.
But I don’t make it to the hallway. My feet lock in place, and my gaze snaps back to their window as if the light itself has caught me by the throat and dragged me under.
The rain blurs the glass until they look distant and unreal, yet I keep watching anyway.
My hands are trembling, and my chest grows tight because the coping strategies my therapist gave me are somewhere in the fog of my skull.
I can’t access them when my body is still saturated with three Alpha scents and my instincts are shrieking at me that my pack is in another building with another Omega and I should be there, I should be there, I should be right there.
My phone buzzes. I hurry to the living room, where the phone rests on the coffee table.
It’s Katie, and she’s texted me about the timeline on book two so she can push the publisher for an answer, a question about the mountain retreat, and a winking emoji. But my brain is a mess right now, and I type three words.
Their Omega returned.
The phone rings before the screen dims.
“Explain.” Katie’s voice is sharp, alert, fully caffeinated.
“She turned up on their doorstep, soaking, shaking, gorgeous in a way that makes everyone want to rescue her. And now she’s inside with all three of them, and I’m over here spiraling.”
“Oh, shit, Claire. Okay, so why is she back? Did you find out?”
“She must need help or something. But I just had my heat with them, Katie. The most intense, consuming, bone-deep experience of my life, and now every inch of me craves them and I’m drowning in jealousy. I don’t want to be that person.”
“She showed up. That doesn’t mean anything’s changed.”
“You didn’t see the way they stood around her. All protective, the same way they stand around me.”
“That’s who they are, maybe. They’d stand that way around a stray cat.”
“They already have a cat. He’s excellent, and I don’t need another competitor.”
Katie laughs. “Just breathe, okay? She only just arrived, so don’t construct the worst-case scenario before you’ve got actual information. See what happens first.”
“What if they choose her?”
“Then I burn their house to the ground, and we move to Portugal.” She pauses. “Deep breaths. Give it a beat. And, Claire?”
“Yeah?”
“Call me the second anything changes. I mean it. I just gotta go, as I have a Zoom meeting.”
“Thanks, and you got it.” I hang up, set the phone down, then count backward from twenty because forward isn’t an option right now.
The doorbell rings.
My heart launches into my throat so fast I choke on it. I cross the living room, press my eye to the peephole, and my chest squeezes.
Brody. Duffel bag over one shoulder, Damien tucked under the other arm, golden eyes glowing in the porch light, one ear twitching. The pair of them standing on my doorstep in the evening drizzle.
I open the door.
“So,” Brody says, and the grin is there but softer than usual, less performance, more plea. “Room for a couple of strays?”
Damien trills, as if to confirm that he was consulted on this plan and approved it reluctantly.
My gaze traces Brody before I can stop myself, noticing that his blue eyes are scanning my face for damage, for tears, for the evidence of the spiral he already knows happened.
“Come in,” I say, stepping aside.
Damien wriggles free the second they’re through the door, drops to the hardwood, and strides toward the living room with the proprietary air of a creature who has already decided which cushion is his.
Brody sets the duffel down in the hallway. “Gave Trudy my room. She needs a few days, as her Alpha destroyed her. He isolated her, stripped her of everything. She’s been sleeping rough. She has nobody.”
“So you’re here because…”
“Because I’m not spending the night under a different roof from you.
” He says it flatly. “Told the guys the same. Corey wanted to come too, but someone needed to be there with Trudy. Jakob volunteered also, since it’s unfair for one of us to be lumped with her alone.
But don’t be surprised if they turn up randomly, as they’re extremely jealous of me right now. ”
“Right.” I fold my arms across my chest, gripping my own elbows. “Of course you’re taking care of her. You’re good men. It’s what you do.”
“Claire.”
“I’m fine.”
“You’re holding yourself together with your fingernails, and I can smell the stress coming off you from here. You’re not fine.”
“Okay, I’m not fine, but I’m handling it.”
He crosses the hallway in two strides to reach me at the corner leading into the living room, where Damien’s on the couch, settling his huge white body onto a cushion as a perfect loaf.
Brody’s hand finds the back of my neck, and the other grips my hip. Then he presses me against the wall, his body flush with mine, his scent engulfing me and sinking into every crack the jealousy carved open.
“You are our Omega.” His mouth hovers inches from mine, his voice stripped to gravel. “We told Trudy the second she stepped inside. We were clear and direct, with no room for misinterpretation. She knows that she is not coming back to us.”
“Yet she was yours first—”
“Trudy was a woman we loved but who abandoned us when we thought she loved us too. She destroyed us when she returned to the Alpha who’d marked her, and we grieved her loss, but that was two years ago, and we’re way past her.
She was never our scent match either. That’s the whole story.
There’s no unfinished chapter, no secret longing.
She’s broken, and we’re helping because that’s who we are, but she is not you.
” His thumb presses against the pulse point on my neck, feeling my heartbeat, and his jaw tightens. “Your heart is going insane right now.”
“Obviously.”
He leans closer, his lips brushing my ear, and the sensation spirals down my spine and pools low in my belly. “I came over because I thought of you being alone over here, believing you don’t matter to us, and I was close to tearing down every wall between our houses otherwise.”
My hands find his chest, where the cotton is warm beneath my fingers, his heartbeat strong and fast against my palms. His body against mine is solid and everything my instincts have been screaming for since I closed my front door.
“I’ve never felt this way about anyone,” I whisper, and my voice breaks because the admission costs me more than anything Louis ever took. “Not in the same universe, and it terrifies me because I’m in so deep that losing you would—”
“You’re not losing me.”
“You can’t promise—”
“Claire.” His forehead drops to mine, and his breath is warm against my mouth. “Shut up and let me kiss you.”