Chapter Thirty-Five #2
The warmth hits at the door. Humid and dense, the kind that sits in your lungs.
Then the scent. Wet soil and green things and underneath it all, layered and sweet, flowers.
Hundreds of them. Every surface crowded with color, terracotta and ceramic and plastic lining the shelves from floor to ceiling, a handwritten chalkboard at the far end listing what's in season.
Espie stops just inside the door and breathes it in slowly, her eyes closing.
“I love this smell,” she says. “So fresh. Untainted.”
I lean in and kiss her. “I like this scent next after yours.”
She ducks her head. A delicate flush creeps up her neck, pink against her skin.
The alphas are watching us instead of the exits now. Lex clears his throat. “Why don't we go this way?” He gestures toward a long row of flowering plants, purples and whites and deep reds crowding the shelves.
We follow him in. The place is full for a Tuesday. Baskets over arms, children underfoot, an older woman in an apron deadheading something at the end of the aisle who looks up and smiles when we pass.
Families move through the aisles around us. A small girl crouches in front of a display of succulents, poking at the fat leaves with one finger. Espie falters. A man laughs somewhere behind us. Loud. I close my eyes for a second and lean into Espie.
Kev moves to my left, his hand at my hip. Lex moves in at my right. Ezra pulls Espie properly into his side. They close around us, and I breathe inside the space they make until the tightness eases.
“What did you have in mind, Espie?” Lex asks, leaning down.
“Agapanthus,” she says. “For the pots on the patio. The blue ones. They'd come back every year.”
That's all our alphas need. They spread out through the aisle like it's the only thing that matters.
Ezra finds them first and calls Lex over.
Lex disagrees about something — the size of the pot, maybe, or the number of stems — and they have a low, serious argument about it while Kev retrieves a cart and begins loading plants into it.
Espie watches them with her lips pressed together.
“They're going to buy all of them,” she says.
“Yes,” I agree. “They need to do this for us. Let them buy whatever they want.”
We wander while the alphas work. Espie stops at a dwarf lemon tree and holds the pot up so I can smell the leaves.
We agree it belongs near the kitchen door.
She finds a climbing rose for the back fence and holds the tag toward me, and I nod, and it goes on the cart.
I suggest an apple tree for the corner of the garden where the afternoon sun sits longest, and she lights up, and that goes on a separate cart that Ezra retrieves.
Two carts, then a third.
Kev pulls a potted hydrangea off a shelf and holds it up at Lex.
Lex shakes his head. Kev puts it back. Kev doesn't have to ask.
Lex already knows what Kev's going to say.
Eight years together shows in the way they move around each other.
Ezra crouches to read a plant label. Lex argues about drainage. Kev gets soil on his sleeve.
My shoulders loosen. Then something deeper does too. Easy. Unclenched.
Espie crouches in front of a display of pots and stops at a row of violet ones with a fluted glaze edge. She picks one up and turns it in her hands, tilting it so the glaze catches the greenhouse light.
“Aubrey.” She holds it out to me. “These would look beautiful on the patio. With the agapanthus in them.”
“I agree. Let’s get ten of them,” I say.
She glances at the price tag and pulls back, just slightly. “I don't know. They're expensive.”
Lex eases the pot out of her hands. “Did you say our omega wanted ten of these?”
“Ten. With the agapanthus,” I confirm.
“On it. I saw more of those in the last row,” Kev says, and he's already gone.
Espie catches Lex's forearm. “You don't have to. Really. The price—”
“Doesn't factor.” He sets the pot on the cart and tucks a strand of hair behind her ear, easy and unhurried. “Not when it comes to you.”
I lean down to her ear while Lex moves off. “I told you so. It makes them feel good, doing things for their omegas. That's not manipulation. That's just how this works.”
Her eyes go wide. She darts a look at Kev returning with an armful of violet pots. “Is that actually true?”
I bump her shoulder. “Ask me again when you want the apple tree in a hand-thrown ceramic pot instead of plastic.”
She catches on a beat later and ducks her head, laughing quietly. I'm going to spend the rest of my life making her do that.
We drift further into the nursery, following the smell of cut greenery toward the herb section.
I smell the rosemary before I spot it. Sharp and resinous, cutting through all the sweetness.
Small starts in black plastic pots. I pick one up and press my fingers to the stem and the scent comes off it immediately.
“This reminds me of my kitchen,” I say. “Liam at the stove. Mateo with flour dusted up his forearms. He’d sing while he kneaded the bread. He was pretty tone deaf but I still liked hearing him…”
I keep holding the rosemary. The leaves are sharp under my thumb.
“You miss them,” Kev says.
He's beside me. I didn't hear him come. His voice is quiet and his eyes hold the grief.
“Every day,” I say.
“Shall we get this too, then?”
I hold the rosemary harder. My arms have gone heavy. “That would be nice.”
“It's tougher than it looks.” He touches a leaf and pulls me in with his other arm. “We’ll put it on the patio by the daybed, if that suits you. The sun will hit it in the mornings.”
I nod. There's something burning behind my eyes and I focus on the sharpness of the leaves under my thumb until it passes.
“Have you been to their graves?” he asks. He tries to gentle the question.
“I only knew they were dead when I overheard Axel's men talking about it.” The words come out flat. Far away. “They'd cut the brakes on their car. And they laughed when they said it. I heard them laugh.”
Kev wraps around me, hauling me tight against his chest. “Oh, love.” His hand cradles the back of my head, holding me there.
Lex and Ezra close in from either side until I’m surrounded by heat and scent and solid bodies, pinned safely at the center of them, and I bury myself against Kev’s shoulder and breathe.
“I will never take them from you,” he says into my hair. “Knowing we wouldn't have you if they'd lived — I hold both of those things. They were yours and they mattered and we will honor that. Always.” His lips press to my temple. “When you're ready, I'll take you to them.”
I press my eyes shut and nod and hold on.
“Aubrey?” Espie's voice, small. Lex and Ezra part and she comes through, her brows pinched. I open my arm and she tucks herself against my side and we hold each other.
“There's never a good time for these memories,” she says.
“No,” I say. “But they're ours.”
Lex cups the back of my neck. “Every part of you that loved them made you who you are now.” He says it quietly.
Espie is quiet for a moment. Then: “I wish Sera knew that too. That she doesn't have to earn her place with us.”
“She will,” Ezra says. “And when she comes home I'll make sure she hears it until it sticks.”
“We could keep her in the nest until she believes it,” Espie says.
“Indefinitely,” Kev agrees, and the word comes out so dry that Espie laughs, startled, and the air in the aisle shifts, just slightly.
We stay in the aisle, taking up the space. Nobody says anything. Nobody moves to leave.
But then cold moves down my spine, vertebra by vertebra.
The odor sticks in my throat, chemical and off, fake alpha wrapped around something that was never alpha to begin with.
My stomach twists hard. Espie presses against my side, tense enough to shake, a quiet whine rumbling deep in her throat while she scans the aisle in frantic sweeps.
Our scents spike copper. Saliva floods my mouth. I swallow it back. The floor feels wrong under my feet, like the tiles have shifted a fraction.
“What’s wrong?” Kev wraps around both of us.
I open my mouth. Nothing comes out. I try again. Cold slides down my spine.
Wrong.
Chemical alpha scent floods the aisle, sharp and synthetic under the flowers and damp soil. My stomach turns before my brain catches up.
Espie presses hard against my side.
Then I see them.
“Wallace's alphas.” The word tears out of me.
My gaze goes everywhere at once — the entrance, the aisle behind us, the couple browsing succulents, the woman with the stroller.
Anyone. Any of them. My lungs lock up. Espie's gardenia curdles through the bond and I can't pull a breath in around it, can't think past the chemical stench, can't — “They're here.”
Ezra and Lex are already moving, scanning the aisles.
Espie's grip clamps hard on my arm. Her breathing has gone shallow. She points — a small, controlled gesture, like she's afraid to move too much — toward the succulent display near the entrance.
Two of them. Standing still among the browsers. Big, the kind of big that comes from the drug rather than the body underneath it. Wrong-shaped, somehow. Watching us with flat attention.
I know their faces. The auction floor. The holding room doorways. Males who enjoyed what they saw and did. They chose the drug, the bulk, the borrowed authority. The one by the succulents holds my gaze and the corner of his mouth lifts.
A sound comes out of me, small and ruined.
“We need to get them out.” Ezra's voice. “Right now.”
Kev is already moving, turning his body to put himself between Espie and I and any danger. Lex grips my bicep and it's the only reason my legs work at all. Ezra has Espie flush against his side, his arm fully around her, moving her.
The exit is thirty feet. I count the steps.
One. Two. Three. I stumble and Lex gets an arm around me and takes my weight and we keep moving. One foot and then the other. We hit the door and cold air hits my face, cutting through the chemical still sitting in my nose.
The alphas bundle us into the car. Espie curls into me in the back seat. Lex shoves in on my other side, Ezra on Espie's, and it's too many bodies for the space and I don't care. I need all of them exactly where they are. Kev hits the front seat and the tires skid as we pull out.
The numbers surface and my voice stops being mine. The car goes distant, the sounds of traffic underwater, Espie's face too bright and too flat at the same time like something seen through glass.
“Forty-seven.” My voice is far away. “Fifty-three.”
“Aubrey.” Espie cups my face. “No. Stay here. Stay with me.”
“Fifty-three. Omega male. Twenty-two. Damaged goods. Sold as-is. Five. Five. Five.”
“You're not there anymore.” Lex, close at my ear. “You are here. That's gone and it's never coming back.”
Espie wraps around me and she's shaking, her whole body shaking. I grip her wrists and find her pulse. The pack is here. All of them except one.
“Sera.”
“I know.” Espie presses her forehead to mine. “I want her too.”
Kev curses as we swerve around traffic. Ezra and Lex curl over us, bodies folded over ours.
“I should have stopped her.” Kev's voice has gone rough. He doesn't look at either of us. He keeps his eyes on the road like if he looks away from it something worse will happen. “She walked out and I just stood there.”
“You couldn't have stopped her,” Lex says. “She didn't want to be stopped.”
Outside, the city doesn't know. It just keeps going. The gravel crunches under the tires as we turn into the drive. How did we get here so fast?
Nobody speaks getting out of the car. My legs carry me toward the door and I'm not entirely sure how. The sky is too wide. Espie has my hand and she doesn't look back, just pulls, and I follow.
She takes us straight through to the patio.
The chair. She doesn't ask, just tugs us toward it and we go, alphas included.
Espie drops into the blankets and pulls me with her.
Cedar and linen and oakwood and Earl Grey, all of it pressed into the fabric around us.
I push Kev to the left. Espie nudges Lex to the right and tips her head at Ezra until he moves in behind her.
None of them say a word. They just go where we put them.
It doesn't make sense. Our omega sides don't care.
Kev's shoulder rests against mine. Lex's legs tangle with mine. Ezra's purr starts low at Espie's back and works through all of us. I bury my face in Espie’s hair and drag in a breath. Gardenia. Still there. Still ours. Still real.
For a moment nobody asks anything of anyone. The purr moves through us all and I close my eyes.
Espie pulls her knees to her chest. “How did they find us?” Her voice is steady. Just. “How did they know we'd be there?”
Kev scrubs a hand over his eyes before pulling out his phone. “Ronan. I need a protection detail. Full perimeter guard at the very least.”
A pause.
“We encountered two hostiles at the nursery on Ferris.”
Another pause.
“And I need a flag.”
His voice drops. We all hear it anyway.
“Seraphine Vidal. Whereabouts unknown. Possibly compromised.”
Silence lands heavy over the patio.
“They weren’t trying to take us,” I say quietly.
Everyone looks at me.
“They were confirming we were there.”