Chapter 33
CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE
AVA
I woke up terrified.
Not of them, of myself. Of what I'd said. Of the words that had poured out of me like blood from a wound, impossible to take back, impossible to unsay. I love you. I'd said it to all of them. Over and over. Like a prayer. Like a confession. Like the most dangerous truth I'd ever spoken.
The morning light filtered through the curtains, soft and gray, and I lay perfectly still in the nest I'd rebuilt, surrounded by warmth and the mingled scents of four Alphas.
Leo was pressed against my back, his arm heavy across my waist. Caleb's massive form was curled at my feet, one hand wrapped around my ankle like he was afraid I'd disappear.
Ethan sat propped against the headboard, awake and watching me with those sharp green eyes behind his glasses. And Mason...
Mason was right in front of me. Watching. Waiting.
"You're awake," Mason said quietly, his honey-brown eyes searching my face, reading every microexpression like a book he'd memorized. "How do you feel?"
Terrified. Exposed. Like I'd handed them a weapon and was waiting for them to use it.
"Fine," I lied, my voice rough with sleep. "I'm fine." His jaw tightened almost imperceptibly. I watched as his scent change, the warm honey darkening, smoke and pine intensifying until it filled my lungs with every breath.
"Don't lie to me, Avalon," Mason said, his voice dropping into something rougher, more Alpha.
"I can smell your fear. I can feel it through the bond.
" The bond. That was the problem, wasn't it?
I could feel them too. All of them. Four distinct presences in my chest, four threads connecting me to four men I'd never asked for and couldn't seem to escape.
I sat up slowly, pulling away from Leo's arm, putting distance between myself and Mason.
I needed space. Needed to think to figure out how to take back what I'd said.
"Last night," I started, my voice carefully controlled, my hands twisting in my lap. "I was overwhelmed. The breakdown, everything with Leo, I didn't mean what I said. It was just... emotion. Heat of the moment."
Silence. Mason's eyes went flat. Behind me, I felt Leo tense, his body going rigid against my back. Caleb's hand tightened around my ankle, not painful, but present. Claiming.
"You didn't mean it," Mason repeated, his voice dangerously soft, each word precisely clipped. "When you said you loved us. When you said you were ours. You didn't mean it."
"I was upset. I wasn't thinking clearly—"
"You meant every word," Mason cut me off, his voice hard now, sharp as a blade. "We felt it through the bond, Avalon. All of us. Your walls came down and we felt the truth. You can't take that back."
"I can feel whatever I want," I snapped, the old defiance surging up, familiar and comfortable. "You don't get to tell me what I feel." I pulled away from Caleb's grip on my ankle, scooting backward in the nest, trying to create distance. Trying to rebuild the walls I'd let crumble.
Bad idea. Mason moved so fast I didn't see it coming. One moment he was sitting across from me, the next he was right there, his hand on my throat, not squeezing, not hurting, just present. Claiming. His eyes had gone dark, pupils blown wide, and a low growl rumbled from his chest.
"Don't," Mason growled, the sound vibrating through his palm into my skin, making something deep in my hindbrain go still and quiet.
"Don't pull away from me." I froze. Every muscle in my body locked up, my Omega instincts screaming at me to submit, to bare my throat, to yield to the Alpha in front of me.
"Mason—" I started, but my voice came out breathy, weak.
"You keep doing this," Mason said, his thumb stroking along my pulse point, feeling it race beneath my skin.
"You let us in, and then you try to run.
You say you love us, and then you try to take it back.
Do you have any idea what that does to us?
" I didn't answer. Couldn't answer. His hand on my throat was scrambling my thoughts, making it hard to think about anything except how much I wanted to lean into his touch.
"Our Alphas can't handle it," Ethan said quietly from behind Mason.
He'd moved closer, his hand coming to rest on my knee, warm through the thin fabric of my sleep pants.
"When you reject the bond, when you pull away, our instincts go into overdrive.
We can't help it, Ava. The need to claim you, to prove ourselves worthy, to make you stay — it's overwhelming. "
"So it's my fault?" I managed, some spark of defiance still flickering. "Your possessiveness is my fault?"
"It's biology," Ethan said simply, his green eyes holding mine behind his glasses, his fingers tightening slightly on my knee. "You're our Omega. We're your Alphas. The bond exists whether you acknowledge it or not. When you fight it, we all suffer."
Leo pressed against my back, his chest warm and solid, his breath hot against my ear.
"We're not trying to control you, Red," Leo murmured, his voice rough with something that sounded like pain.
"But every time you pull away, something in here—" He took my hand, pressed it to his chest, let me feel his heart pounding.
"Something in here goes crazy. Like you're dying. Like we're losing you."
Caleb had moved too, his massive form settling beside me, one huge hand coming up to cup my face with impossible gentleness. His ice-blue eyes were soft, pleading.
"Please," Caleb said quietly, his deep voice barely above a whisper, his scarred face open and vulnerable in a way I'd rarely seen. "Please don't take it back. Even if you didn't mean it — let us pretend. Let us have this."
Something cracked in my chest. They weren't angry. They were desperate. Scared. The big bad Alphas who had kidnapped me, claimed me, refused to let me go, they were terrified that I didn't love them back.
Mason's hand was still on my throat, but the grip had softened, his thumb tracing gentle circles on my skin. "I'm not trying to control you," Mason said, echoing Leo's words, his voice rough with emotion he rarely showed. "I'm trying to hold onto you. There's a difference."
I looked at him, really looked. At the tension in his jaw, the fear in his eyes, the way his hand trembled slightly against my throat. He was afraid. Mason Harper, the leader, the controlled one, the man who had orchestrated my kidnapping with cold precision — he was afraid of losing me.
They all were.
"The more you fight, the more our Alphas surge," Ethan said quietly, his hand sliding up my thigh in a touch that was more grounding than sexual. "It's a cycle. You resist, we respond. You pull away, we pull closer. The only way to break it is..."
"To stop fighting," I finished, the words tasting like surrender on my tongue.
"To stop running," Mason corrected, his hand sliding from my throat to cup my face, tilting my head so I had to meet his eyes.
"There's a difference. We don't want a puppet, Avalon.
We don't want you broken and compliant. We want you — fierce and stubborn and ours.
We just need you to stop trying to escape every time you feel something real. "
I didn't know what to say. Didn't know how to process the raw need in his voice, the desperate hope in all their eyes.
I tried something different. Instead of pulling away, instead of rebuilding my walls, I.
.. let go. I relaxed into Mason's touch.
Let my body soften against Leo's chest. Didn't flinch when Caleb's massive hand stroked through my hair. Let Ethan's grip on my thigh anchor me.
The effect was immediate. The tension drained out of Mason's shoulders. The growl in his chest shifted into something softer, not quite a purr, but close. His hand on my face became a caress instead of a claim.
"There," Mason murmured, his honey-brown eyes warming, the fear receding like a tide going out. "That's better. Just let us have you, sweetheart. Stop fighting."
I didn't trust my voice, so I just nodded. Leo buried his face in my neck, inhaling deeply, scenting me. His arms wrapped tighter around my waist, but it didn't feel suffocating anymore. It felt like being held.
"Fuck, Red," Leo breathed against my skin, his voice shaky with relief. "Do you have any idea how good you smell right now? When you relax, when you let us in — it's like sunshine. Like home."
Caleb was purring. The deep rumble vibrated through his massive chest, through the hand in my hair, through every point where his body touched mine. He didn't say anything — he didn't need to. The sound said everything.
Ethan's grip on my thigh loosened, his thumb rubbing soothing circles through the fabric.
"There you go," Ethan murmured, and there was warmth in his voice now, something soft beneath his usual composure.
"Your heart rate's already coming down. This is what your body needs, Ava. This is what the bond needs."
I should have hated it, should have resented the fact that my own biology was being used against me, that my body responded to their touch whether I wanted it to or not.
I was so tired of fighting. They kept touching me.
All morning, all afternoon — someone was always there.
A hand on my back while I ate breakfast. Fingers tangled in my hair while we sat on the couch.
A warm body pressed against mine wherever I went.
At first it felt like surveillance. Like possession. But as the hours passed and I stopped flinching away from every touch, something shifted. It started to feel like care.
Mason fed me pieces of fruit from his fingers during lunch, his eyes soft as he watched me accept each bite. "Good girl," he murmured when I didn't pull away, and the praise sent warmth flooding through my chest despite my best efforts to remain unaffected.
Caleb carried me from the couch to the kitchen when I mentioned I was thirsty, ignoring my protests that I could walk perfectly fine. "I know you can," Caleb rumbled, his deep voice vibrating through my body as he held me against his chest. "I like carrying you. Let me."
Leo kept up a running commentary of terrible jokes and worse puns, making me laugh despite myself, his hand never leaving mine. Every time I laughed, his eyes lit up like I'd given him a gift.
Ethan kept track of everything — how much I ate, how much water I drank, when I started to tense up — but his touch was gentle when he checked my pulse, when he brushed hair from my face, when he pulled me against his side while he read.
By evening, I was overwhelmed in a different way.
Not by fear or anger or the desperate need to escape.
Overwhelmed by tenderness. By care. By four men who looked at me like I was the most precious thing in the world.
We ended up in my nest as the sun set, the four of them arranging themselves around me like a protective wall.
Mason at my front, Leo at my back, Caleb at my feet, Ethan at my head.
Touching me constantly. Surrounding me completely.
"I still don't understand," I whispered into the dimness, my voice small. "Why me? Why go through all of this for me?"
Mason's hand found mine in the darkness, his fingers interlacing with mine. "Because you're ours," Mason said simply, like it was the most obvious thing in the world. "We knew it the moment you presented. You were always meant to be ours, Avalon. We just had to wait for you to be ready."
"And when I wasn't ready, you took me anyway."
"Yes." No apology. No justification. Just truth.
"I should hate you for that."
"Do you?" Leo asked against my neck, his voice careful, vulnerable.
I thought about it. Really thought about it.
"I don't know," I admitted finally. "I don't know what I feel anymore. Everything's tangled up — anger and fear and something else I don't have a name for. When I'm fighting you, I feel like myself. When I'm not fighting..." I trailed off.
"When you're not fighting?" Mason prompted.
"I feel like I'm disappearing," I whispered. "Like I'm becoming someone else. Someone who purrs and submits and needs you. And that terrifies me."
Silence. Then Caleb's deep voice: "Maybe you're not disappearing. Maybe you're becoming who you were always meant to be."
"A kept Omega? A possession?"
"Pack," Caleb corrected gently, his hand tightening around my ankle. "Family. Ours."
I didn't have an answer for that.
We lay there in the darkness, the five of us tangled together in my nest, and I let myself feel them through the bond. Mason's steady certainty. Caleb's quiet devotion. Leo's chaotic affection. Ethan's quiet care.
They weren't trying to break me. They were trying to keep me. I still wasn't sure if there was a difference.
Sometime in the night, I started to purr.
I tried to stop it, clenched my jaw, held my breath, anything to silence the traitorous sound. But it kept coming, a low rumble in my chest that seemed to have a mind of its own.
Leo made a sound against my neck, something between a groan and a laugh. "There it is," Leo breathed, his arms tightening around me. "God, I love that sound."
Mason's purr joined mine, deep and resonant. Then Caleb's, so low I felt it more than heard it. Then Ethan's, precise and controlled like everything else about him.
Five purrs, harmonizing in the darkness. Pack. I should have been horrified. Should have fought it, resisted it, refused to let my body betray me so completely.
I was so tired. And for the first time in longer than I could remember, I felt... safe. That was the most terrifying thing of all. I fell asleep to the sound of our mingled purrs, surrounded by my Alphas, held and claimed and kept.