Chapter Thirty-Two #2
“You want her too,” I say. “Ezra, I'm her scent match, I know what that pull feels like. But you and Kev and Lex, you act like she's yours as well. Like the bond is already there even if biology didn't hand it to you.”
Ezra goes quiet. A real quiet, not the kind where someone's waiting to speak. The kind where something landed.
Then he says, “You think so?”
He's asking me. Not to be polite. Not to manage me. He's actually asking, like my read on this matters, like I'm someone worth listening to. “Yeah,” I say. “I think so.”
He wraps both hands around his mug and looks at me with a steadiness that means he's about to say something he's been working up to.
“Your heat is coming soon.”
“I know.” There's no point pretending otherwise. My body's been telling me for days.
He takes a breath. “You're going to need Sera.
She's already eased a spike for you and that matters, that connection is real.” He pauses.
“But you might need a knot too.” He keeps his eyes on mine, calm and direct.
“I need you to know that we won't touch you without your agreement.
Not even in heat. There are other options.
Toys. Ways to get you through it that don't involve any of us if that's what you want.
I needed to say this before it hits, while you can hear me clearly.
Nothing happens to you that you don't choose.”
The ice in my gut fractures. Just enough to let a little warmth seep through.
“You mean that.”
“I've never meant anything more.”
My eyes sting. I blink, hard.
“Okay.”
The word comes out quiet. I mean it.
I look at his hands instead of his face. His hands are wrapped around his coffee mug now, his fingers gentle on the ceramic, unhurried.
The way Thomas used to hold his coffee. Gentle fingers. Unhurried. Like he had all the time in the world.
The breath goes out of me. He didn't have all the time. He didn't have any time at all.
“Thomas held his mug like that.”
Ezra sets down the coffee. His whole body goes still and listening. “What was he like?”
Ezra holds my gaze, open. Interested. I should talk about my first pack. They lived. We loved each other. Just because I have scent-matches doesn’t mean my first pack were any less important. If I’m honest, there’s a scar on my heart where they’ll always live. And I don’t want them to go.
“He wasn't my scent match. But he was my first.” I'm talking. I can't stop. “He taught me to drive. Laughed when I ground the gears, his whole face crinkling, and told me I was capable. That I mattered. I believed him.”
Ezra nods slowly.
“And Liam brought me paints. He saw me looking at them through a store window and just bought them. Didn't even ask. Just pressed the bag into my hands like it was nothing, like I was worth spending money on.”
“And Matteo?”
“He sang off-key while he cooked. Terrible at it. I loved listening to him.”
A ghost of a smile touches my mouth. Then it's gone.
“They were good to me.”
“That's what it should be like.”
“Then they died in a car accident that wasn’t an accident.”
My scent curdles. Cedar going sour.
“And then Axel.” I touch my throat, fingers finding the scar. “The collar. The crawling.” The words are coming out in chunks, like I'm pulling them up from somewhere deep. “Mick would tighten it when I didn't crawl fast enough. The auctions. They made me watch.”
Ezra sets his mug down. Carefully. Like he needs something to do with his hands.
“Gods, Aubrey.”
It's ironic. I didn't have my voice for years and now it's coming back with a vengeance. I can't stop. I feel like I’m watching from somewhere slightly outside my own body, watching the words come out, and I can't stop them.
“Made me kneel beside the stage while they sold omegas to the highest bidder. Numbers and holes. That's all we were to them.”
Ezra's scent shifts. The fresh linen goes sharp, the woodsmoke underneath turning acrid. Anger. Real anger, the kind that has nowhere to go. He's gripping his mug with both hands and his knuckles have gone pale.
“The alphas who bought them were scum. Every single one.”
“Kev helped stop them.”
Something moves through Ezra's scent then. The anger doesn't leave but grief spreads underneath it.
His voice comes out thick. “He was part of the team that took Axel down. He still has nightmares about what they found in those cells.”
I look out the window. Kev is still working on the frame.
Building something solid for me. For Espie.
His face brightens. A smile touches his lips.
My gaze drops to his hands. Hands helped carry me out of that cell.
Held me upright when my legs stopped working.
I'd forgotten that until now. I'd forgotten it was him.
Kev was there. The night it ended. He saw all of it.
“The night they came for Leah.” I can't stop. My voice has gone flat, disconnected, like it belongs to someone else. “Axel had a gun to my head. He was going to kill me.” I pause. “I was ready. I wasn't even scared. I was just ready.”
The flatness starts to crack. “I heard you in the dark. Heard you talking to me. And I didn't want to come back. It was too hard. There was an end right there and I wanted it. I wanted all of it to just… end. Gods, I wanted it all to end.”
The tears come before I can stop them. The grief is too big and too old and it breaks through all the places I've been holding it back.
The sobs come ugly. My chest seizes with each one, ribs aching, lungs grabbing for air between waves. My hands are shaking too hard to wipe my face. I'm a mess and I can't stop and the shame of it rises hot in my throat.
Ezra makes a sound of distress. “Can I hold you, Aubrey? Please. Let me take care of you.”
He's not asking me to stop. He's not uncomfortable. He just wants to help carry it. I nod.
He gathers me so carefully. One moment I'm on the chair, the next I'm against his chest, his arms around me, his scent wrapping close. He shifts us to the couch without rushing it. More space. Softer surface. He thinks about these things.
“I've got you. You're okay, my omega.”
I cry in his arms and the sounds that come out of me are ugly and I can't make them stop.
Ezra doesn't try to quiet me. Just holds me steady.
A purr starts low in his chest. The vibration moves through me, into my ribs, into my bones.
My heart rate drops. My shoulders unclench.
I stop fighting it and let my breath match his.
I sink back into his chest. Let the purr do what it's doing. Let myself be held. My tears slow eventually. My breathing evens out. I'm wrung out and hollow and somehow that feels cleaner than the way I woke up this morning.
I become aware of him slowly. The warmth of his chest under my cheek.
The steady rise and fall of his breathing.
The way his hand rests at my back, not moving, just present.
His scent has softened, the sharpness of his anger gone, just linen and woodsmoke and something warmer underneath that I don't have a name for yet.
My body registers all of it before my brain catches up.
Heat building slow and low. The awareness of how solid he is, how close.
My pulse ticks up for a different reason than grief and I notice it happening and I don't pull away.
“Aubrey.” My name in his mouth, soft and reverent.
Thomas used to touch me like I was worth something. Liam brushed my hair back just to see my face. Matteo kissed my forehead when I was half asleep, like it was the most natural thing. I know what this is supposed to feel like. My body remembers even when my head tries to forget.
I lift my head and find Ezra's eyes. Steady. No demand in them, nothing calculating, just him watching me.
“Kiss me,” I say.
He stares at me like I've said something in a language he's still translating. Like he's checking he heard right, like he can't quite believe his luck.
“Me?” he says.
I almost smile. “I don't see any other alpha in here.”
Something moves through his expression. Wonder, maybe. He swallows once. “It would be my honor.” His voice has gone low and careful, like the words mean more than they sound. “My honor, Aubrey.”
And then he leans in and takes my mouth with his.
I kiss him back because I want to, because I'm choosing to, because my body has been building toward this since he wrapped his arms around me and didn't let go when I fell apart.
Ezra makes a low sound against my lips, surprise bleeding into something hungrier, and his hand slides into my hair, palm cradling the back of my skull, holding me like I'm something to be careful with.
I open my mouth. He's there, his tongue sliding slow against mine, tasting me like he's got nowhere else to be.
His lips are warm and slightly chapped and real, and the scratch of his stubble rasps against my chin and jaw, and he tastes like coffee and a little like honey, and I can't think past it.
His chest is heaving against mine, the rise and fall gone uneven, his purr rumbling louder, and when I pull back just enough to look at him his mouth is slick and his eyes are dark and his cheeks are flushed.
He looks ruined and he's barely touched me.
Something low in my belly bunches at that. Something that is not dread.
I fist my hands in the front of his Henley and pull him back to me. The kiss goes deeper. I chase the taste of him, wanting more, wanting all of it, and a sound comes out of me that I don't plan. Low. Hungry.
Ezra curls his hand around my hip. Pulls me in until there's no gap left, chest to chest, his heartbeat hard and fast against mine, his thigh pressing between mine. I go willingly. More than willingly. I climb into his lap, straddling him, and he lets me, his hands steadying my hips as I settle.
I'm bare from the waist up. He's still fully dressed, the soft cotton of his Henley warm under my palms, and the difference registers everywhere our skin meets and doesn't. His hands slide under the waistband at my lower back, palms flat against bare skin, and I arch into it.
His fingers spread wide. Trace my spine. Count my ribs like he's learning me.
Slick gathers between my thighs, and the shame comes with it, automatic, six years of conditioning that says my body opening means something bad is coming.
I feel it rise. I breathe through it. Push past it.
Because this is mine. This wanting is mine.
I chose this man and he asked before he touched me and his hands have not taken a single thing I didn't offer.
The shame doesn't disappear. But it doesn't win either. The grief of that sits right next to the want, the two of them tangled together, and I don't try to separate them. I just let them both be there.
I’m hard. Throbbing and leaking slick. My scent plumes around us, mixing with his. It’s delicious. Intoxicating.
Ezra kisses my jaw. My throat. The soft skin below my ear. I tip my head back and give him access because I want to give it. His teeth scrape where my neck meets my shoulder.
My hips rock, seeking friction, seeking pressure. My cock glides against his chinos, the ridge of him pressing up where I need it.
“Touch me.” My voice cracks on it. “I want you to touch me, alpha.”
His hand slides from my hip. Traces down my stomach, stopping at the waistband of my sweats.
“Here?”
“Yes.” It comes out rough. Desperate. “Please, alpha. Your hand. Please.”
Ezra smiles against my throat. “I've got you.”
He slips his hand under the fabric, wrapping his fingers around my cock. My whole body jerks, a full-body jolt, hips stuttering forward into his grip. He strokes his thumb slow over the head and spreads the slick there and I whine into his shoulder.
“That's it.” His voice is low and reverent. “That’s it.”
He moves his hand. Slow at first, learning me, figuring out what makes my breath catch and my hips stutter, what makes me grip his Henley and hold on. His thumb circles the head on each upstroke and my thighs are trembling, my whole body shaking, the pleasure building past anywhere I can hold it.
“You're so good.” His mouth brushes my ear. “Choosing this. Letting me have this.”
Thomas said things like that. Quiet things. Things that meant you matter, you're worth something, I see you. I didn't know how much I'd missed being seen until right now with Ezra's hand on me and his mouth at my ear and his scent wrapped all the way around me.
The grief rises with the pleasure. I don't fight either one, because this is me now.
“Ezra.” My voice breaks. “I can't hold on.”
“Then don't.” He speeds up, his other hand cupping the back of my neck, holding me steady. “Let go. I'm right here.”
His purr rumbles through both of us. His want is thick in the air. He’s hard beneath me, and he hasn't asked for a single thing. He's just giving. All of it. Everything I asked for and nothing I didn't.
The orgasm gathers at the base of my spine, then crests.
“Come for me, Aubrey. Let go.”
The release rips through me, my body clenching and shuddering as I spill over his fist. I cry out against his shoulder, my whole body shaking with it. Pleasure and grief and relief, tangled together and wholly mine.
Ezra works me through it. Slower. Gentler. His hand doesn't stop until I'm gasping and oversensitive and boneless in his lap.
The tears come again. Different this time.
I can't name them exactly. Closer to gratitude than grief.
Closer to hope than either. He quickly cleans his hand on some tissues stored next to the couch, and then gently cleans me before gathering me against his chest. He strokes my hair, his purr settling around me like something I can rest inside.
“Let it out,” he says quietly. “I'm not going anywhere.”
Believing him breaks me open all the way.