Chapter Thirty-One
Lex
The join holds. I run my thumb along the weld, pressing into the metal until it bites back cold against my skin. Solid. Good. Yesterday I wasn't sure it would be.
I've been out here since three.
Sleep stopped being an option around two-forty. I stared at the ceiling for twenty minutes before I gave up and came outside.
My shoulders burn. My coffee went cold on the railing hours ago.
Doesn't matter.
I need something to do, and this was the thing.
The expense of spirit in a waste of shame. Shakespeare. Not helping. I press my palm flat against the beam.
Espie kissed my cheek yesterday.
I still feel it. The soft press of her lips. I haven't rubbed my cheek once. Part of me is afraid to. Like if I touch the spot I might smear it out of existence somehow, and I'm not ready to lose it yet. I tell myself not to read too much into it. I'm not managing that.
I look toward the greenhouse. They're both in there, surrounded by pots — terra cotta, ceramic, plastic, all different sizes.
They came to me for those. Tentatively, Espie had said, quietly, like they expected me to say no or attach a condition to yes.
I didn't. I took the laptop in that night and we sat in the living room while they scrolled through options, pointing at things they liked.
I sat with Kev and Ezra and tried to look like I wasn't holding my breath every time one of them pointed at something.
They chose. I keep coming back to that. They asked for what they wanted, trusted us to provide it, and then chose what they liked from the options. That's the whole of it and it's enormous and I don't know how to hold it so I just keep picking it up and putting it down.
Aubrey hands Espie a pot and she says something that makes him smile. His whole face changes when he does that. Six months of nothing, and now this — this person inside him who comes out when she says the right thing. I want to know what she said. I want to stand close enough to hear it.
The hook behind my sternum pulls toward them.
I want to go in there. Stand close enough to scent them both, hand them things, hear what Espie says that makes Aubrey's face go soft like that.
Mine, some stupid animal part of me insists.
I breathe through it. They're not mine. They're ours.
And right now they're choosing to be in the greenhouse together and not with me, and that's fine.
That's good. That's what healing looks like.
I look back at the metal beam.
Sera was outside earlier. I thought she'd stay, work beside me the way she does sometimes without either of us needing to say much.
Her phone rang, she went inside, and she hasn't come back.
She's still in her head. The claim didn't fix it and neither did talking to her and some days I don't know what will.
I'm watching through the kitchen window when she stops pacing. Her phone drops to her side. She casts a long gaze out of the window to our omegas, then she stalks out of the kitchen.
I set down my wrench. “I'm going to talk to her.”
Kev looks at me then. A long look, the kind that isn't a question so much as a calculation running behind his eyes. Then he sighs. “I’m worried, Lex. I thought I’d gotten through to her the other day, but…”
He looks deflated. Buckling with the weight of our pack on his shoulders. “Anything worth it isn’t easy. Let me try. A consolidated front is better than one person alone.”
Kev sends me a tight smile, but he nods. “I hope you can make her understand how important she is.”
I slide the door open.
“And don't make it weird,” Ezra says.
“I make nothing weird.”
“You quote Keats at people.”
“Keats is not weird, Keats is—” I stop. They're both looking at me. “I'll go.” I leave them to it.
Her scent leads me to the end of the hallway and the study beyond, and my cock swells as I take the hit of orange. It's been catching me off guard for days. More addictive by the second. I take a steadying breath, press two fingers against the study door and push it open.
She's standing at the window with her phone to her ear and her back to me. Her shoulders pull in by half an inch when she hears the door. “I'll call you back,” she says into the phone, and hangs up.
I close the door behind me. The room carries her scent, concentrated, nowhere for it to go, and my cock takes this as a wake up call. I’m going to have a zipper imprint on the underside for hours.
“Important call?” I ask.
She turns and crosses her arms over her chest, eyes flashing. “Chasing down leads.”
Her arms push her breasts up and I notice, which is inconvenient, and she can probably tell, which is worse. “You're always chasing down leads.” I hold her gaze. “There's more though, isn't there. More you’re not telling us.”
She uncrosses her arms and shoves her phone into her back pocket “I have a solid lead. Which I'm going to follow through when the time comes.”
Did I hear her right? That she thinks she’s still not a part of this pack? “Not alone you're not.”
“That's not your call.” Her lips thin, taking this for the challenge it is.
“You're pack,” I say. “That makes it exactly my call. Your problems are our problems. That's how this works. We’ve told you this.”
She shakes her head. “Not this time.”
She’s used that tone on Kev. And at breakfast three days ago when she chose the chair instead of the couch and sat angled away from all of us with her coffee.
She's good at this, the controlled redirect, but her scent is doing something her face isn't. It's gone thicker in the last thirty seconds. Warmer.
“Your scent has changed,” I say.
A line forms between her brows. She’s probably wondering where this is going to go. “That's not a conversation I'm having.”
“It's not a conversation. It's an observation.” I lean against the door at my back, give her space, give her the whole room if she wants it.
“It changed since what we did in the kitchen, which it seems you’ve forgotten about.
It's been building since then. It's not subtle anymore, and I think you know that.”
The muscle in her jaw moves.
“Your presence in this house matters the same way Espie does,” I say. “The same way Aubrey does.”
She shakes her head. “I’m not the same.”
“You’re exactly the same.” I study her face.
“You've seen how Espie is with you. And Aubrey.” I pause.
“The way he settles when you walk into a room.
His shoulders dropping. The way he tracks you without meaning to, and he doesn't do that with everyone.
You're not Espie's handler and you're not a guest in this house.
You're their alpha. And we want you with the same intensity as we do them.”
Something crosses her face that she doesn't manage to hide in time.
“That's not about me,” she says. “That's about what I represent to them. Safety. Structure. I'm familiar.”
I push off the door, standing tall. “Then tell me how I can tell which room you’re in from the backyard, the same as our omegas can. That's not something I can argue myself out of.”
She says nothing. In fact, she looks startled. As though this is fresh news to her. She says nothing.
“You don't believe it,” I say. “I see you running the argument against it right now.”
Her chin lifts. “You don't know what I'm thinking.”
“I know you well enough.” I take a step toward her. “You don't believe any of us actually want you. Not for yourself. Not for who you are outside of what you do for this pack.”
She goes very still. She doesn't deny it. That's the thing. She stands there and she doesn't deny it.
I cross the room. Slow enough that she has time to take a step back. She does none of those things, but her scent goes warm and urgent and I stop close enough to feel the heat off her skin.
“Why do you stay in prison when the door is so wide open?” I told Ezra I wouldn’t quote Keats. I said nothing about Rumi.
She scoffs. “You and your poetry.”
“And you are the universe in ecstatic motion.” I trace her cheek. So warm. So smooth “Poetry says what normal words can’t. I didn't peg you for stupid, Sera.”
Her eyes flare wide. Spark. She fists my shirt and walks me back a step, hard, and I let her because she's an alpha and she's magnificent and I would let her do this all day.
She's breathing fast, chest rising and falling, breasts pushed against my chest, her face inches from mine, fury in every line of her.
I can’t help my happy sound of surprise.
She pulls up short, shocked. Stares up at me. “What are you smiling about?”
I shake my head. Can’t get enough of her looking at me with those sparks. I say the simplest and most powerful word. “You.”
Her fury cracks, just at the edges, and underneath it is something raw and unguarded and terrified, and she looks at me for one more second like she's trying to find the catch.
“You won’t be able to handle me.”
I will covet her scent. Her fury. Everything about her. “I already am.”
She makes a sound in her throat. Frustrated.
Furious. Like she's arguing with herself and losing, then her mouth is on mine like she's settling this argument.
I get an arm around her waist and pull her in hard because I have been thinking about nothing else since the last time she let me put my mouth on her.
She's warm and solid and her scent up close is extraordinary. It sinks under my skin, becoming me. I welcome it because I want everything she’ll give.
She parts her lips and I sweep my tongue into her mouth. Spiced orange explodes on my tongue. She nips me with sharp teeth and I smile against her mouth. She makes another one of those furious sounds that shoots straight to my cock.
Her hand slides between us and finds me through my jeans and I groan against her mouth. I press into her palm and she grips me, deliberate, exploratory, like she's taking inventory of exactly what she does to me. The answer is everything, the answer has always been everything.
I grip her waist, trace the curve of her hip, beneath the hem of her shirt where it's come untucked, and then skin, warm and smooth under my palms. She pulls in a breath through her nose and there’s no hiding her shudder.
I walk her back two steps until her shoulders meet the bookcase and she goes with it, arching into me, her hand still working me through the denim.
I get my mouth on her throat. She tips her head back, allowing me access to the slender curve and soft skin. She grips my hair. I slide my hand up her ribcage and over her breast. She presses into me, her nipple diamond hard.
“Fuck, Sera. How can you deny this,” I groan.
Then she goes still and I know I’ve gone too far.
She flattens her hands on my chest and pushes me back. She's flushed. Her shirt is untucked on one side and her mouth is swollen and she's breathing hard.
“No.” She clears her throat. “No. I'm not—” She smooths her shirt down with hands that aren't steady. “This isn’t happening.”
“Sera.”
“Don’t try to talk me into anything.” She glares at me, furious. But it’s not directed at me. She’s furious at herself. For wanting me. “There are lines I won't cross. Putting you in danger is one of them.”
I'm still trying to remember how to breathe normally. “I think the line has been crossed.”
“The omegas are starting to— I have to do this before—” She stops. “I won't put them in any jeopardy.”
“What jeopardy, Sera?” I say.
She stalks to the door, puts her hand on the handle.
“I'm not bringing that into this house. Not now.
Not while they're in the greenhouse planting things and starting to be okay.” She finally looks at me, and what's in her face is not the professional mask.
It's something that costs her. “I won't take that away from them.”
There's nothing I can say that she'd hear right now.
“I'm sorry.” She opens the door. Doesn’t look back.
I stay in the study after she leaves.
Her scent clings to the room. My cock throbs behind my zipper and every instinct in me is still reaching for her.
She won’t let us in.
She’s carrying something enormous on her own.
And somehow she still thinks protecting us matters more than letting us protect her.