Chapter 16
Breakfast tastes like potential disaster.
Also cinnamon, but mostly disaster.
I'm back at the table.
That still feels new enough to notice. Weeks of exile at the kitchen bar carved a groove into my routine; sitting in my old seat now feels like sneaking into someone else's life.
Ragon at the head, Eli to his right, Drake to his left. Marie on Drake's other side, shoulders brushed against his. I'm at the far end with Jasper beside me, quiet as always, eating like he's filing data about toast.
The table smells like food and coffee and the faint tension of too many unspoken things.
Marie is practically vibrating.
I notice it around the third bite of French toast. The way she keeps glancing at Ragon, each look a little more charged. The way her fingers worry the edge of her napkin.
Finally she can't hold it in.
"So..." she says, bright, casual. Not casual at all. "About the bonding."
Ragon's fork pauses halfway to his mouth.
Here we go.
"You said soon. How soon is soon?"
My stomach tightens.
Eli's knee bumps mine under the table, deliberate. I don't look at him. If I do, my face will give away how hard my heart is pounding.
Ragon sets his fork down carefully.
"A couple of weeks."
The words have the weight of something official. Already decided.
Marie gasps. "Really?"
"Yes. Assuming there are no complications, we'll sign and file the paperwork next week. As soon as it's processed, I'll claim you."
My pulse spikes so hard I feel it in my fingertips.
Marie lights up, eyes shining. "You've already started the paperwork?"
"I've been drawing it up for the last week. For all three of you."
The table goes still.
Even Jasper's chewing stops.
"Three of us?" Marie repeats slowly.
Her gaze flicks from Ragon to Drake, then—like she just remembered I exist—to me.
My fork is suddenly very interesting.
"Yes. You. Jasper. Vee."
Heat rushes up my neck.
Me.
Included like it's obvious.
He continues, voice matter-of-fact. "We'll do it in stages. Marie first. Then Jasper. Then Vee, right after."
"Why that order?" Eli asks quietly, curiosity not challenge.
Ragon's attention slides to Jasper for a beat.
"Because once Marie's bonded, I want Jasper stabilized in the structure.
The scent chemistry works in sequence—if Jasper bonds before Marie, her signature will imprint on him too.
But if we wait until after she's already claimed, the bond won't transfer her scent to him.
It'll make it more even when Vee is marked.
She'll have one alpha not scent-matched to Marie. "
The words are a series of small detonations.
When Vee is marked.
It's not a hypothetical anymore.
He planned for this. Thought about the scent math. Considered how to make the structure less lopsided for me.
Something in my chest unfurls so fast it hurts.
He's keeping me.
Not conditionally, not as a spare, not "as long as this works."
He's literally designed the paperwork around making sure I don't end up the odd one out.
"I—" I start, and stop, because my throat has decided emotions are a choking hazard.
Jasper nods once, as if the explanation matches exactly what he'd expected. "It's cleaner. Even distribution of obligations and anchors. Less risk of one omega being structurally sidelined."
The phrase structurally sidelined makes my insides flinch.
Eli's hand finds my thigh under the table, squeezing gently. I grab his fingers like a lifeline.
I am floating.
I am also terrified I'm about to crash into something sharp.
Marie does the crashing for me.
Her expression goes from stunned to furious in a heartbeat. "Why does she need to be bonded at all?"
The temperature in the room drops ten degrees.
"Marie," Drake warns, low.
"No, I want to know. You're my alphas. I'm your scent match. That's supposed to mean something. Bonding another omega—marking another omega—on top of that? It feels—"
"Careful," Ragon says softly.
"—disrespectful. To me. To what we are. Vee doesn't have to be bonded to stay. Plenty of packs keep spare omegas without marking them. It doesn't mean they're loved any less."
My stomach turns.
Spare omegas.
Loved any less.
My fingers tighten around Eli's hand until my knuckles ache.
"Marie," Eli says quietly. "Don't."
She barrels on, maybe because she's too upset to stop, maybe because the part of her that is still scared and hungry doesn't know how not to bite.
"I'm not saying kick her out. I'm just saying there are other options. She's been here, she fits, fine. But if you mark her, if you give her the same status as me, what does that say about the importance of a scent match? About what you and I have?"
"That it's not a throne you sit on alone," Jasper says mildly.
She shoots him a look. "You could be my scent match too. You should understand."
"I understand scarcity. I don't endorse hoarding. You’re trying to hoard the alphas of this pack. Including me."
Ragon's patience snaps like a dry twig.
"Stop it," he says, and the words carry command.
Marie's mouth clicks shut, but the anger is still in her eyes, bright and wounded.
"You're being territorial. And jealous. And unfair."
Her scent spikes with protest. "I'm being honest. No one else is saying it: she doesn't have to be bonded. You chose me knowing she was here. That should have meant—"
"I chose you knowing she was here. And I told her from the beginning that she would be bonded in whether we ever found our scent match or not. I also told you before you came that we would all be bonding. Including Vee. I am not going back on that."
My lungs forget their job.
He told her that?
He told her up front?
Marie's lower lip trembles. "You'd mark her. Even if I said it makes me uncomfortable."
"Yes. Because I'm not going to build stability for you by tearing it out from under her.
You are not a queen claiming a harem. You're one omega in a pack that existed before you and will exist if you leave.
You matter. You don't get to rewrite the terms of everyone else's lives because you're scared. "
The room crackles.
Her eyes fill with tears—furious, hurt. "I thought I mattered more."
It's a knife to the chest, the way she says it.
Ragon's face softens a fraction. "You matter differently. Not more. Not less. Differently. And I am not discussing this further."
She shoves her chair back so hard it scrapes a gouge in the floor.
"Fine. Do whatever you want. I'll get used to it. Like I always do."
She storms down the hall, blanket of vanilla and hurt trailing after her.
Drake hesitates just long enough for my traitorous heart to hope.
Then he goes after her.
Of course he does.
Their scents disappear behind the bedroom door with a dull click.
Silence rushes in.
I stare at my plate.
The syrup has run into a sticky puddle.
I feel like I'm watching a fire from across the street—close enough to feel the heat, far enough no one thinks to hand me a hose.
"I shouldn't have said anything," I murmur.
All three remaining alphas look at me like I've started speaking another language.
"You didn't say anything," Eli says.
"That doesn't mean—"
His free hand slides over mine on the table, covering it entirely. "You are not wrong for existing. You're not wrong for wanting what you were promised."
My throat burns.
"I don't want to be the thing she blames. The reason she feels less."
"She felt less long before you," Jasper says, matter-of-fact. "From the way she talks, scarcity is the only environment she understands."
"She'll adjust," Ragon says.
His voice has gone from alpha-hard to something else. Tired. Stubborn. "She'll be angry, and then she'll be resigned, and then she'll find her footing. But I am not building this pack on the idea that you're optional, Vee."
The words land deep.
Optional.
Spare.
All the things I've quietly believed about myself for years.
"What if she doesn't adjust?"
"Then she leaves," Jasper says calmly. "Or we revisit structure. But we still don't unclaim you to make room."
Ragon nods once. "We'll cross that bridge if we come to it. For now, the plan stands."
My heart is doing strange gymnastics.
Fear for Marie's stability.
Guilt for being part of the thing that shook it.
And under all of it, fierce, shaking relief.
He's keeping me.
Even if it costs him.
Eli squeezes my hand, drawing little circles on my knuckles with his thumb. "It will be all right. Messy. But all right."
I want to believe him so bad it aches.
***
Ragon suggests the zoo a few days later like he's offering a ceasefire.
"We could use neutral ground. Fresh air. Distractions that aren't each other's terrible communication skills."
Drake snorts. "Are you including yourself in that critique?"
"Obviously."
Marie doesn't say yes.
She doesn't say no either.
She stares at her plate for a long time and then shrugs. "Fine. Whatever."
So we go.
The zoo used to be my place.
Back when I was the only omega, the only one whose delight was being curated.
The first time they took me, I'd practically vibrated out of my skin—Eli gently narrating facts, Drake making up rude backstories for the monkeys, Ragon buying me ice cream and watching quietly while I held my face up to the sun.
This place feels less like mine now.
In the truck, she wedges herself between Drake and Ragon on the backseat, one hand in each of theirs, head tipped onto Ragon's shoulder like it belongs there.
I sit in the front with Eli, hands folded in my lap, watching trees flick past.
When we arrive, the air smells like popcorn and children and animal musk.
"At least the smells will cover our mess," Drake says.
"Nothing covers you," Eli replies dryly. "You're a walking citrus bomb."
Marie loops her arm through Drake's and tugs him toward the entrance. "Come on. I want to see the giraffes first."
"The map clearly states we should start with the reptile house," I say, pointing to the sign.
"Hard pass. Last time you made me read plaque facts for two hours."
"That was enriching."