Almost Ordinary
Lyra
It's been about a month since Adrian carried me out of that library closet. Somewhere in those weeks, this house stopped being a place I was hiding and started feeling like an actual home.
A few weeks ago, I started trying to help out around the house. I’ve actually learned how to work the washer and dryer. And it turns out I am excellent at making beds. I had no idea.
To be fair, I simply never tried before.
At my parent’s home, there was a sweet beta named Marta who came through every morning. She left the corners so sharp you could've served dinner off the duvet. When I was little, I would watch her from the doorway, until my mother caught me and explained that staring at the staff was rude.
And now I’m the one making the beds. The corners aren’t near as perfect as Marta’s but they’re good enough.
I smooth my hands over the comforter one more time, then step back to admire my work.
It's easily the best one so far. The pillows are stacked, the blanket hangs even on both sides, and I did the whole thing with my own two hands. I don't care that it's a little lopsided near the foot. I made it. Me.
Look at you, Lyra Van Houten. A regular little homemaker.
With the beds done and the kitchen counters wiped down, there's nothing left to do but wait for the boys to get home. Owen's back at work now, which means the house is mine until the boy’s boots hit the porch after five.
I drop onto the couch, tuck my feet up under Adrian's borrowed flannel, and click the TV on.
The first week I was here, I sat glued to the TV from morning to dark, thumbing through channel after channel, bracing for my own face to come sliding across the screen. Missing. Runaway. If found, contact Aldric Van Houten.
But I haven’t seen any stories about me running away.
Which makes no sense, because Crispin's family owns half the stations in this city. If he wanted my face on every screen from here to the coast, it would be done. So either Crispin doesn't care that I ran, or my father would rather die than let the world know his daughter bolted before the wedding.
It’s probably the second one.
I flip through the channels again. Cooking show. Weather. A man selling knives to nobody. Nothing about me.
So far so good.
Then I glance at the clock next to the TV. It’s just past ten in the morning. Too early for a nap.
The last few days, Renata’s been coming by to hang out for an hour or so before going to work.
I think Owen asked her so I wouldn’t be alone all day long.
I like being around the she-alpha. She’s fun and tells the best stories about Owen and the boys.
But she’s not coming by today. She had errands to run.
On screen, a woman with television-teeth beams into the camera. "When we come back, the summer trend everyone's talking about. Stay with us."
A commercial fades up in soft gold light. A bride in white, glowing, radiant, her new alpha's hand splayed over her hip. A gentle voice pours over the top of it:
"Every omega dreams of a perfect wedding night. With HeatWell, you can make certain your body is ready for your most important moments. Ask your alpha if timed induction is right for your special day."
I stare at the happy bride without blinking until the commercial ends, and a car dealership ad blares on in its place, some man in a cowboy hat hollering about zero down and no payments till spring over a wall of honking horns.
Only then do I notice my hands are squeezed into fists.
Your special day….
My "special day" with Crispin has long since come and gone.
An image of the asshole folded up on my father's rug, both hands cupped between his legs, flashes through my mind, and I can't help but smile.
It's the nicest thought I've had all week.
My eyes drift to the carpet as I think about that moment. I should have finished the job in my father's office. Crispin was in such a vulnerable position with both hands cupped around what was left of his dignity. I should have found something sharp and cracked it over his head.
Next time, aim higher.
I turn the TV off.
The screen goes black, and the quiet rushes back in.
I drop my arms and pull the collar of the flannel up over my nose, breathing in.
Crisp pine and fresh air.
I don't know when it happened, but somewhere in the last few weeks Adrian's scent stopped being a stranger's and started being something else. Something that settles me. When I'm wrapped up in it like this, I feel loose and relaxed, like I could sleep the whole day away.
In fact, their scents seem to all do something to me.
Owen soothes me. His clean sage and lemon smooths all my sharp edges down until I can breathe evenly again.
Mack makes no sense at all. His hazelnut shouldn't do anything, but every time it drifts past me I feel my mouth wanting to curve up into a smile. It’s like there’s some dumb, involuntary happiness rising in my chest for no reason.
It also doesn't help that the massive alpha walks around half-naked most of the time.
But Nico is a different problem entirely. One lungful of his dark, worn leather, and my whole body goes warm and stupid, heat curling low in my belly whether I want it there or not. I actually spend most of my day trying not to think about it.
My eyes drift down the hall toward the guest room and the big, soft bed I just finished making.
A nap would be so lovely right now.
"Screw it."
I push off the couch and head toward the guest room, already picturing the way that comforter's going to feel on my skin.
I make it three steps into the room before stopping.
The bed is perfect. The corners are smooth, the pillows stacked, everything crisp and even. And if I crawl into it, I'll wrinkle the whole thing, and there's something about undoing my own work I can't quite stomach.
But if I get a blanket, then I could lie on top of it and not mess it up.
I pad back out and down the hall to the primary bedroom, where I draped a quilt over the foot of the bed.
The second I open the door, I’m hit with the full force of Nico’s scent. It makes my toes tingle with each step.
He’s married to Owen, I chant over and over and over.
The big green quilt is right where I left it. I pick it up and hug it to my chest, then snuggle my face right into the worn, soft material. It's warm from the sun coming through the window, with a faint trace of Owen’s lemon and sage.
He’s married to Nico, I chant again and again.
I turn to leave, but stop, because one blanket doesn't seem like nearly enough all of a sudden.
Glancing around the room, I see a heavier blanket folded over a small chair in the corner. I grab that one too, then scan the bed one more time.
The bed has so many pillows.
Nobody needs this many pillows.
Surely they won't miss one or two. I tuck one under my arms, then decide the big one against the headboard is better, softer, so I take that instead. Then I snatch the first back, because now that I'm holding them, I can't figure out which I'd rather do without.
My arms are stacked so high I can't see over the top of them. I shift my feet forward, and one of the pillows slips free, hitting the floor. I readjust, clamp everything tighter to my chest, and make it two more steps before a second pillow slides loose and flops at my feet.
"Oh, for the love of—"
I give up and just dump the whole armload on the floor in the middle of the room, blankets and pillows spilling out across the carpet in a soft heap.
There. Much better.
I'm crouched over the pile, refolding the blankets, when I notice the closet door standing ajar across from me.
A dark navy hoodie hangs half off a hook. It looks soft.
I move and snatch it as fast as I can, then inhale it deeply.
Worn leather and dark amber. Nico.
It matches a shirt already draped over my shoulders, and some part of me decides, with total certainty, that I need more.
I snatch the gray shirt that was hanging beside it, because it's soft and it's Owen’s and it smells like warmth.
Then a pair of sweats off the floor that's so worn it's practically felt.
I don't remember deciding to gather all of this. My hands have simply been doing it while I wasn't paying attention.
By the time I make it back to the guest room with all my treasures, I can barely see over the top of my armload.
But I don't put any of it on the bed.
I don't know why, but the bed feels wrong. Too high, too open, too exposed on all sides. Looking around the room, my eyes pull to the walk-in closet. Its door is standing open, the space inside small and dim.
There.
I carry everything inside and sink down onto the closet floor, and something in my chest eases the second the walls come up around me. Adrian and Mack's clothes hang above me in two rows, pine and toasted hazelnut settling over me like a hand on the back of my neck.
But it isn't quite right yet.
Something's missing, and I'm moving before I've named it, padding back down the hall to the primary bedroom, gathering a rumpled sage-and-lemon henley of Owen's from the laundry chair as well as a few undershirts from the laundry basket.
I hug them to my chest on the way back, like someone might snatch them away any second.
My arms relax once I've carried them into the closet where they belong.
Now I have everything.
And then I start to build.
I don't think about it. My hands just know.
The heavy blanket goes down first, folded double against the hard floor.
The quilt banks up the wall at my back. I wedge the biggest pillow into the corner and pack the smaller ones around it in a curve, tucking, adjusting, pressing them in tight until there are no gaps, until the whole thing curls around me like a cupped palm.
Their clothes I layer through it last, Adrian's flannel and Mack's worn hoodie and Nico's gray shirt and Owen's henley, threading all four scents into the walls of the little den until every breath I take is pine and hazelnut and leather and sage.
When it's done, I crawl into the middle of it and pull the last blanket over my legs.
Oh.