Room for One More
Nico
The pipes knock once in the walls, and then the shower kicks on down the hall.
I stand in the middle of the living room, staring at where Owen led Lyra. I can't make myself sit down.
Every muscle in me is drawn tight, humming with the need to go out to the truck, drive to wherever she came from, and put my hands on the bastard who did this to her.
I breathe through it, trying to shut the urge down.
There's no need to do anything stupid, I tell myself. This girl isn't mine to protect. She has her own family to make it right.
But my body won't hear it. My feet keep drifting a half step toward that hallway before I catch them. What the fuck?
Stop it, I command myself, forcing my feet to plant on the carpet.
Across the room, Adrian hasn't moved off the wall. His arms are crossed and his jaw is set hard. A muscle keeps jumping under his left ear. The alpha is staring at the mouth of the hallway where Owen took her, his face especially pale.
I’m sure he’s feeling the same thing I am right now. It’s just hitting him harder because Adrian feels everything so much deeper.
He grew up knowing what it was like to be at someone else’s mercy. It left him gentle where the rest of us went hard. He’s my tender-hearted mate. The one who pulls over for every damn stray dog, and worries when a kid is crying in the checkout line.
It’s one of the things I love the most about him.
"Adrian,” I say. "You okay?"
He slowly turns to look at me. "No."
He pushes off the wall and crosses to me, closer than he needs to stand. He cuts a look toward the hall before saying anything, checking the water's still running.
"When I scented her," he whispers. "In the library, before I even got a look at her face. Something in me locked onto her."
"I know,” I say, trying to reassure him "She's an omega and she's hurt. We're wired to protect. It’s understandable that you’d lock in."
He shakes his head like I’m not understanding.
"No. I got—" His throat works as he swallows.
"I got hard, Nico." Shame makes his whole face tight.
"She was hurt. Shaking. Scared out of her mind.
And I wanted—" His teeth click shut. He forces the rest through them.
"The urge to pin her down and fuck her hard, to claim her—" He sucks in a harsh breath.
"It was the strongest thing I have ever felt.
I have never in my life wanted anything the way I wanted her right then. "
That stops me cold.
I open my mouth to give him an easy answer again. That a protective drive can cross its wires sometimes. But Adrian sees my argument coming and shuts it down.
"Don't." His blue-gray eyes stay on mine, steady and wrecked at the same time.
"It had nothing to do with protecting her.
I know the difference. I've been around hurt omegas before, and it never once felt like this.
" He drops his head, too ashamed to look me in the eye. "This was for me. I wanted her for me."
I've got nothing.
I’m too stunned.
Adrian isn’t this kind of alpha. He’s soft, and sweet, and charming as all hell. There’s not an aggressive bone in the man’s body.
The shower’s still running when Owen’s footsteps move down the hall, and I feel him before he clears the corner.
Our bond snaps taut and pours everything he's carrying straight into me. His rush of emotions drop low in my gut, cold, all of it pointed at the girl in the bathroom.
Grief, helplessness, and deep fear for Lyra.
A second later, the beta comes around the corner with his glasses already off, hooked in two fingers. His eyes pull down at the corners. He crosses to the couch, sits, then scrubs one hand down his face.
"Owen." I go to him. "Talk to me."
He pinches the bridge of his nose where the frames usually sit.
"Give me a second." His voice comes out thick. "I just need a second."
I crouch in front of him and set a hand on his knee. Through our bond, I feel him fighting to gather himself back up for my sake, and he’s losing.
"Nico," my sweet beta whispers. "She…I can’t—"
The front door swings open.
"Honey, I'm home." Mack backs through it with a pink bakery box balanced flat on one broad palm, bumping the door shut with his heel. "Snagged the last of the good ones, so everybody mind your manners or I'm eatin' the maple bar my own damn self—"
He stops inside the door.
His eyes track across the room. Owen folded over on the couch with his glasses in his fist. Adrian rigid and pale in the center of the room. Me down on the floor at Owen's knees.
His grin holds one more second, then slides clean off his face.
"Y'all are home mighty early," he says. "Thought Owen would be hunkered down at the library all day."
Nobody answers him.
Owen keeps his eyes on the floor. Adrian hasn't moved. I stay where I am, crouched at Owen's knees.
Mack looks around at all of us as the quiet scratches on.
"Alright. Who died?" He holds out his hands, balancing the donuts on one flat palm. "Somebody tell me, 'cause I got maybe four good jokes loaded up, and I'd hate to waste 'em on the wrong funeral."
"Nobody died," I say.
Owen lifts his head. His voice scrapes thin. "Lyra's here."
Mack's brows shoot up.
"Lyra?" A grin breaks across his face. "The Lyra?" He points at Owen. "You finally reeled in the Billionaire bookworm?" He lets out a laugh. "Hell, I owe Adrian twenty bucks—"
"Mack." Adrian's voice cuts flat across the room. "She was attacked."
Mack's grin instantly dies. His mouth pulls down and he grimaces, one hand shoving back through his dark blond hair. "Ah, hell."
He glances down at the pink box still balanced on his palm, almost like he’s trying to figure out what to say next.
"Sorry." He sets the donuts on the loveseat then crosses to Owen, lowering himself into a crouch beside me, forearms braced on his knees. "Okay." The joking's gone out of his voice. "How bad is she?"
Owen's jaw flexes. "I guess she's okay? She wouldn't let me take her to the hospital. I tried. She just kept saying no, kept saying she couldn't—" He stops and pulls a breath. "She's cleaning up now."
"She wouldn't go to the hospital." Mack nods, working it over. His southern drawl thickens the way it always does when he's worried, vowels going long and slow. "She got anything broke? Ribs, bones, anything need settin'?"
Owen opens his mouth, but nothing comes out.
Through our bond his feelings swell and turn. The helplessness in him drops away, and what floods up to take its place is worse, a raw, clawing sense that he has already failed her and there is nothing left to do about it. It pours into me until my own throat goes tight with it.
Adrian shifts a half-step closer to Owen. His brow is furrowed and jaw tight. I wonder if he's catching the edge of Owen’s emotions.
"It's okay," Adrian says softly, before looking at Mack. "I don't think she has any broken bones. She's banged up. She’s—" He stops. His throat works, as he drags a hand down his mouth like he can wipe the words off before they come. "There's blood all down the insides of her thighs."
Cold shoots through me, and my hands snap into fists.
I didn't know she was hurt like that. I thought it was bruises and a bad limp, but it's so much worse.
Next to Owen, Mack goes rigid at the exact same second I do.
A sound tears out of him, low, more growl than word, and his hands close hard around nothing. His head turns toward the hallway, toward the sound of the water, and holds there.
I keep my eyes locked on Owen. I make myself do it, because if I so much as glance down that hall I'll be up and pounding on that bathroom door, demanding she tell me who fucking hurt her.
And the last thing that terrified girl needs is some strange alpha roaring outside the door while she's trying to wash an assault off her skin.
So I stay on my knees. I stay looking at my beta. And I breathe.
"I hate how useless I feel." Owen sniffs, loud and wet, as he drops his head into his hands. His glasses slip from his fingers and clatter to the floor.
Mack quickly scoops the thin frames up off the boards, careful with them in those big hands, and sets them down on Owen's knee. The alpha doesn't say a word. His jaw keeps working like he's chewing on something he can't get down.
"Nico." Owen lifts his head. His eyes are wet with tears. "She can stay, right?"
"Of course," I say without hesitating, because it's true, and because he needs to hear it out loud. But he needs the truth too. "But Owen." I cup his cheek. "She's an unmated omega. And you know what that means."
His face crumples once again.
"If her family comes looking for her," I go on, keeping it gentle but honest, "I can't stop them from taking her. We've got no claim to her. In the eyes of the law, she belongs to her parents. Not to us."
Owen's throat works. He already knows this, which is probably the reason his hands won't stop shaking.
The quiet gets heavy again.
Then Mack claps his hands once, soft, and pushes to his feet.
"Right. So she takes my room,” he says the words fast, like it's already decided and he'd rather nobody argue.
"She'll feel safer in a room that has a lock.
I'll blow up the air mattress for Adrian, and I'll take the couch.
" He looks down at the couch and nods at it, almost fond, like he's sizing up an old friend.
"Which, for the record, is the best seat in this house.
Sleeping out here'll be like the good old days, back when I was couch surfin' my way across the state. "
"You sure?" I ask him. He's giving up his bed for a girl he hasn't met yet, without a second's pause.
The alpha grins. "Trust me, I've slept on a lot worse than this beauty."
Adrian huffs. It's not quite a laugh, but it's close, the first crack of light on his face since he got back home.
"There he is." Mack points at the alpha, satisfied.
Then he twists toward the loveseat and jabs a finger at the box of donuts.
"And hey. We got a lady under this roof now, so I don't want to hear about anybody inhalin' that whole box before she's out of the shower.
We share. Civilized." He stops. "I'll even let her have the maple bar. "