Chapter 23
twenty-three
STETSON
The soft click of the Omega suite’s lock sounded louder than a gunshot and hurt twice as bad.
I stood in the third-floor hallway, staring at the closed door, her quiet “I know” still ringing in my ears.
She’d barely looked at me on the stairs, hadn’t yelled or cried or slammed anything.
She’d just walked past me like I was furniture, and somehow that was infinitely worse.
I’d fucked up. Royally. Completely. And she had every reason, every right, to shut me out.
But I also couldn’t leave.
So I stayed. I stood there until my legs stopped working and my knees gave out, then slid down the wall to sit on the hallway floor. I pulled my hat off and gripped the worn felt brim between my hands before I dropped my head back against the wall.
I’m falling for you. The echo of her cracking voice scraped against the inside of my skull.
Every defensive wall I’d ever built caved in under the weight of my own stupidity.
I’d been so damn convinced history was repeating itself that I’d punished her for trying to stay on her own terms. She hadn’t been plotting an escape.
She had been taking on the entire goddamn world just to carve out a place for herself and others like her, and I had looked her right in the eye and called her a flight risk.
The punishment was immediate. The protective instincts that had been running hot for days suddenly crashed, leaving a hollow ache in the center of my chest. My body reacted violently to the devastation I’d just caused, incinerating my usual cedar scent into the harsh reek of burnt wood—a constant reminder that I had fundamentally failed my mate.
Footsteps sounded on the stairs an hour later.
Gideon appeared at the top of the landing, took one look at me on the floor, and didn’t ask a single question.
The acrid stench rolling off my skin gave him all the answers he needed.
Stepping neatly over my outstretched boots, my Beta tapped his knuckles lightly against her door.
“Jules?” Gideon kept his voice low and steady. “You need anything?”
A long beat of dead air stretched out before a muffled response came through the heavy wood. “I’m okay, Gid.” She sounded exhausted, her throat thick with the tears she wouldn’t shed in front of me. “Just... need tonight.”
Gideon rested his palm flat against the door for a moment, a quiet offer of support I had forfeited the right to give her myself.
He dropped his hand, turned, and looked down at me.
The flat, silent judgment in his eyes hit harder than if he’d punched me in the face.
He walked back toward the stairs, leaving me alone outside her door to serve my penance.
I didn’t move. For hours, the only thread connecting me to the world was the muffled sounds bleeding through the door. The creak of the bed frame. The soft thud of pillows being rearranged. She was in her nest, and every rustle of fabric reminded me that I wasn’t welcome in it.
Below me, the house slowly settled into its evening routine.
I heard the low rumble of River’s voice drifting up from the second floor, followed by Ransom’s sharper, angry cadence.
At some point, Boone’s heavy boots announced his climb up the stairs.
He set a mug of tea and a plate outside her door without a word, gave me a long, unreadable look, and went back down.
Usually, my brothers would have hauled me up by the collar to hash out whatever was eating at me, but not tonight.
Tonight, they knew exactly what I broke, and they were letting me sit in the wreckage.
Midnight came and went. The ambient temperature in the hallway plummeted, the Wyoming chill seeping through the windows to bite into my stiff muscles.
I welcomed the ache. It was exactly what I deserved.
I stretched my legs out, crossed my boots at the ankles, and kept my vigil in the pitch black.
I didn’t know if she would walk right past me or tell me she was ready to pack her bags when the sun came up, but I wasn’t moving a single inch until I could see her.
Until I could apologize. For real this time.
By the time the first rays of dawn started bleeding through the hallway windows, my body felt like one solid bruise. I was still awake, staring at the exact same spot on the ceiling with my head tipped back against the wall.
The restless movement inside the suite finally went quiet sometime around four.
I listened to the silence, counting her breaths through the wall, noting every restless toss and turn.
She’d barely slept, but the lock clicked shortly after eight.
The door opened slowly, hinges whispering in the early morning stillness.
I didn’t scramble to my feet or try to arrange my expression into some tough, unaffected mask.
My spine ached, my joints stiff from sitting so long, but I stayed firmly planted on the hardwood.
I was an Alpha. The pack leader. Normally, every instinct I had would’ve screamed at me to stand, to meet her at eye level, to take control of this conversation the way I took control of everything else.
But I didn’t deserve that position right now.
This conversation was about groveling, apologizing.
Hell, if I thought getting on my knees and begging for her to forgive me would do any good, I’d have done it in a heartbeat.
Julia stood in the doorway. The pale light spilling through the windows caught the dark shadows beneath her eyes.
Her hair was twisted into a messy knot, and her over-sized shirt looked bed-rumpled as it hung to mid-thigh.
She peered down at me, but the furious edge was gone, replaced by bone-deep fatigue.
She took in my wrecked posture, the dark circles I knew were carved under my eyes, and my hat discarded on the floor. Her fingers tightened on the doorhandle, her knuckles turning white.
“I’m sorry,” I said, though the sentiment was wholly inadequate.
The words scraped out of my throat, a gravelly, ruined sound that barely carried past my dry throat. But it was the truth, stripped of any excuses or defensive backpedaling. I’d been in the wrong, and I needed her to know how much I regretted it.
So I met her red-rimmed gaze head-on and laid the ugly truth bare. “I was waiting for you to run. To decide you didn’t want this life after all and leave.”
Julia blinked, her jaw tightening, but she didn’t shut the door.
“Ever since you stepped onto this ranch,” I continued, forcing myself to hold her exhausted stare, “I’ve been guarded.
I kept waiting for you to pack your bags and walk away like Wyatt’s mother did.
She just woke up one morning and decided playing house wasn’t fun anymore, packed her shit, and was gone before breakfast. Worse, I didn’t see it coming.
She seemed perfectly happy right up until the second she put the truck in drive. ”
I pushed my palms flat against my thighs, needing the rough bite of the denim to keep them steady.
“When you started pulling away this week... making those phone calls, losing yourself in your work...” I trailed off, my voice failing me.
“I panicked. I convinced myself you were done with us. Then I overheard that phone call—heard what I wanted to hear, I guess. I shouldn’t have jumped to conclusions.
” I fought against the heavy knot of shame lodged in my throat.
“I’ve never been this terrified of wanting something in my entire life, Julia.
I was so scared of letting myself believe you were actually choosing us, I took the first piece of evidence I found and used it to burn our house down myself.
” I dropped my hands, leaving myself undefended.
“Fear made me cruel. And I am so damn sorry.”
Julia didn’t immediately respond. She just stood there, the silence stretching tight between us. For a long, agonizing minute, I thought she was going to tell me it was too late. That an apology couldn’t fix the damage I’d done to our foundation.
Instead, her shoulders dropped, the last of the rigid tension draining out of her frame. She stepped forward and held out her hand to help me up.
I took it immediately, forcing my stiff, aching legs to work, pushing myself up from the floorboards.
I ignored the dull throb in my joints. Behind her, the Omega suite was dim and warm, the heavy curtains still drawn.
Her nest was a tangle of blankets and pillows and the shirts she’d collected from some of my packmates.
The scent hit me like a wall, all that fruity sweetness blending with our signatures.
It was her haven, and yet I could smell the faded, burnt-sugar edge of her distress threaded through it all.
Me. I’d done that to her.
Julia wrapped her arms around her middle, leaning her hips back against the doorframe. “Under current OMA regulations,” she started, her voice stripped of its usual edge, “an unbonded Omega cannot legally register a business. It requires a bonded Alpha’s signature as a guarantor.”
She dropped her gaze to the floorboards. “I’ve been fighting Chaddrick for an exemption. I told him I wouldn’t do it. I refuse to use a bond with this pack as a transactional loophole just to get my LLC approved. You all deserve better than being a box I check on a government form.”
The words settled heavy and hot in my chest. The ice that had been freezing my blood for days thawed, leaving humiliation burning in its wake, because she hadn’t been trying to hurt us. She’d been trying her damndest to protect us.
“The scent formula,” I rasped, taking a slow step closer to her. “Why the sudden rush?”