Chapter 20
TWENTY
HOLLY
I lock the door of the clinic with a satisfying click, the sound echoing in the empty parking lot. My shoulders sag with exhaustion as I turn the key twice, making sure it’s secure. The weight of the day—of the past several days—settles over me like a heavy blanket.
Just keep moving. One foot in front of the other.
Night has fallen early, probably normal for winter at this latitude. The streetlights cast pools of yellow light across the snow-covered ground, creating islands of visibility in the darkness. My breath forms clouds in the frigid air as I adjust my scarf and pull my hat lower over my ears.
The Frost twins’ lab results came back this morning. Inconclusive. After all the rush to get the samples to the university lab, after all the promises that they’d have better equipment, better specialists—nothing. Just more questions without answers.
And today saw another child, Maya Calloway, showing the same symptoms: fever, joint pain, the strange metallic taste in her mouth. Three cases might be more than a coincidence.
I dig through my bag for my car keys, my mind still working through possible diagnoses.
Environmental factors seem most likely, but Maya lives in a different part of town than the twins, and is homeschooled while the Frosts are enrolled at the local elementary school.
I can’t think of what environmental exposure site they’d have in common.
I’m so lost in thought that I don’t immediately notice the figure standing near my car. When I do, my heart leaps into my throat, and I freeze mid-step. The clinic parking lot suddenly feels very isolated, very dark.
As I watch someone tall and solid step forward into the pool of light from a nearby streetlamp, relief floods through me. The skull-patterned bandana is unmistakable.
“Grayson,” I breathe, my voice embarrassingly shaky. “Jesus, you scared me.”
He doesn’t apologize, just watches me with those intense gray eyes. After spending days of my heat with him, I’m now able to recognize the hint of amusement in his gaze. I notice his truck parked beside my sedan, engine still running, exhaust creating ghostly shapes in the cold air.
“What are you doing here?” I ask, moving closer, my fear replaced by curiosity.
Before Grayson can answer, assuming he’d even bother, the passenger door of his truck swings open, and Kai jumps out, his usual energy undimmed by the late hour or freezing temperature.
“Finally!” Kai bounds over, rubbing his gloved hands together. “We’ve been waiting for like an hour. Do you always work this late?”
“I had charts to catch up on,” I explain, glancing between them. “Is everything okay? Is Noah—“
“Noah’s fine,” Kai assures me quickly. “Still at the house, probably reorganizing my kitchen cabinets again. Man’s got a thing about alphabetizing spices.”
The casual mention of Noah sends a flutter through my chest, the bond responding to his name like a tuning fork. I push the sensation aside, focusing on the matter at hand.
Just like I try to ignore the fact that he is definitely avoiding me.
“So why are you here?” I ask again.
Grayson and Kai exchange a look that I can’t quite interpret. Then Kai slings an arm around my shoulders, guiding me toward Grayson’s truck.
“We’re your chauffeurs for the evening,” Kai explains cheerfully.
“When Ghost here drove your car back this morning, he nearly got stuck in a drift the size of Texas. Road to the cabins isn’t passable in that little tin can you drive.
You’d slide right back down the hill whenever you let off the gas.
Plus, the power is out. Mrs. Whitesong is still staying in town with her daughter. ”
I dig in my heels, stopping our progress toward the truck. “Wait, what? You’re chauffeuring me where, exactly?”
“To your cabin to pick up your stuff with Grayson’s truck and then back to my house,” Kai says, as if it’s the most obvious thing in the world. “Unless you’ve got a better idea of where to sleep tonight? ‘Cause your cabin’s basically an igloo right now.”
I blink, processing this information. My cabin is still uninhabitable. I hadn’t even considered that possibility when I left Kai’s house this morning. I feel uneasy at the thought of returning there, but where else am I supposed to go?
“It’s a little early to be suggesting I move in with you, isn’t it?” I quip, trying to lighten the sudden awkwardness I feel.
Grayson, who has been silent until now, makes a sound that is just barely made up of words. “Is it?”
Kai elbows him sharply. “Dude, not helpful.”
Heat rushes to my face as the implication sinks in. They know. Of course they know. About the bond bite. About what happened between Noah and me. How could they not? They all live together, and the bond mark isn’t exactly subtle.
God, what must they think of me?
“Look,” Kai says, his voice gentler now, “we’ll take you wherever you want to go. There’s a room for rent above the diner that you can probably have, if that’s what you’d prefer. But you’re also more than welcome to stay with us. No pressure, no expectations.”
I weigh my options, the practical part of my brain warring with the more reckless part that’s been grabbing for the wheel ever since I got here. The sensible choice would be to maintain some distance, to find neutral territory while I figure out what this bond with Noah means for my future.
But the thought of spending another night alone, in a strange room above a diner, makes something in me ache. I’ve been alone for so long, hiding who I am, keeping everyone at arm’s length. And it was so lonely up on that mountain, in that tiny cabin with only my secrets for company.
Maybe it’s time to stop running.
“Okay,” I say finally, the word feeling like a surrender and a beginning all at once. “I’ll stay at your house. Just until the roads are cleared.”
Kai’s face breaks into a wide grin, and even Grayson’s eyes seem to soften slightly behind his mask. Without another word, Grayson takes my medical bag from my shoulder, his fingers brushing mine in a gesture that feels oddly intimate.
As I climb into the back seat of Grayson’s truck, I can’t shake the feeling that I’m crossing a threshold I won’t be able to uncross. But for the first time in a long time, that doesn’t terrify me as much as it should.
After I pick up more of my clothes and belongings, the drive to Kai’s house—which I now realize is actually effectively Kai and Grayson’s house, possibly Noah’s too—is mostly silent.
Grayson focuses on navigating the treacherous roads, his hands steady on the wheel as we climb higher into the mountains.
Kai fiddles with the radio, eventually settling on a classic rock station that plays softly in the background.
I watch the snow-covered landscape pass by outside my window, trying to prepare myself for what comes next.
Living under the same roof as three alphas, one of whom I’m now bonded to.
It’s like the setup for a trashy alpha-omega romance novel, the kind Josie would leave lying around the apartment that I never admit to her I’d read in secret.
Except this is my life now. Not fiction.
By the time we pull up to the imposing structure I now recognize as Kai’s mountain mansion, my nerves are wound so tight I feel like I might snap.
I step out of the truck, my boots crunching in the fresh snow, and stare up at the house.
Last time I was here, I was in the throes of my heat, barely aware of my surroundings.
Now with a clear head, the place is even more impressive—all glass and timber and stone, perched on the mountainside like it grew there naturally.
Kai and Grayson lead the way up the cleared path to the front door, carrying my bags despite my protests. I follow behind, my shoulder bag clutched to my chest like a shield. The house looks different in the evening light, larger and grander, but also somehow more welcoming at the same time.
As we step inside, warm air envelops me, and I instinctively take a deep breath. The faint scent of them and the house immediately reminds me of being in the throes of heat. My omega responds to the combination, a sense of rightness settling over me that I quickly try to suppress.
This isn’t my home. This isn’t my pack. This is all just...temporary.
I stand awkwardly just inside the door, unsure where to go or what to do with myself. Kai and Grayson move with the easy familiarity of men who live here, setting my bags down and shrugging off their coats.
“Where’s Noah?” I ask before I can stop myself, the question slipping out unbidden.
Grayson makes a sound low in his throat that I’ve come to recognize as his version of annoyance. He moves toward the kitchen without answering, leaving Kai to deal with my question.
“Probably out for a walk,” Kai says, hanging his coat on a hook by the door. “He does that when he needs to think. Stomps around in the woods until he figures things out.”
“Oh.” The word comes out smaller than I intended. Even though I know it’s ridiculous, I can’t help but feel somewhat rejected. Noah is literally slogging through the remnants of a blizzard to avoid being in the same house as me.
Kai must read something in my expression because he quickly adds, “He’s been doing that since we were kids. It’s not about you. Well, not entirely about you.”
That doesn’t exactly make me feel much better.
“Come on,” Kai says, gesturing for me to follow him. “Let me show you where you can stay.”
I trail behind him through the great room and down a hallway lined with what looks like original artwork—landscapes of Heat Mountain in different seasons, portraits of people I don’t recognize, abstract pieces that add splashes of color to the otherwise neutral palette of the house.
We pass several closed doors before Kai stops in front of the one I recognize as the heat suite where I spent the last few days. I hesitate, memories flooding back—the desperate need, the relief when the alphas arrived, the things we did together...
Kai notices my hesitation. “You don’t have to stay in here if you don’t want to,” he says quickly. “There are other rooms. I just thought...you might want to be somewhere that was familiar. Everything is still the way you left it.”
I give him a wavering smile, touched by his attempt to be considerate. “No, this is fine. I don’t want to give your housekeeper any more work to do.”
Kai’s eyebrows shoot up in mock offense. “How do you know I have a housekeeper?”
I gesture around at the immaculate hallway, the perfectly dusted artwork, the gleaming hardwood floors. “It’s hard for me to imagine you scrubbing six thousand square feet worth of baseboards.”
He laughs, a warm sound that makes some of the tension in my shoulders ease. “The cleaning service only comes twice a week, thank you very much,” he says with exaggerated dignity. “And I do my own dishes.”
“If you keep making food as good as those crepes,” I say, surprising myself with the teasing note in my voice, “I’ll happily handle the kitchen cleanup.”
Kai’s eyes light up, and he winks at me, the gesture playful but with an undercurrent of something more. “The French aren’t always the best example, but they know how to keep a woman hooked. I’ll take whatever advantage I can get.”
Before I can formulate a response to that loaded statement, Kai turns and walks back down the hallway, leaving me blushing in the doorway of the heat suite.
What the hell did he mean by that?
I shake my head, trying to clear it enough to make sense of his demeanor.
I know I’m overthinking things, as usual, but the knowledge I’m doing it isn’t enough to get my brain to stop.
Kai obviously flirts like he breathes, automatically and as a necessary bodily function. It doesn’t have to mean anything.
I step into the heat suite, closing the door behind me.
The room doesn’t look any different—bed covered in a rumpled pile of sheets and blankets that looks like a nest built by an omega in the midst of a psychotic episode.
I’d be embarrassed if that particular feeling hadn’t already been wrung completely out of me.
I set my shoulder bag down on the bed and begin unpacking the few items I’d brought from my cabin—clean clothes, toiletries, my laptop, and the medical journals I’d been reading. As I move around the space, arranging my things, my mind wanders.
I’d just assumed that Kai, Grayson, and Noah were a pack, because three men living together in the city would absolutely be packed up.
But now I’m not so sure. There’s an ease between Kai and Grayson that speaks of a long friendship, but I haven’t seen the same level of comfort between either of them and Noah.
And if they were a formal pack, wouldn’t they have mentioned it?
Packs have pretty much become the norm for most alphas.
Too many omegas don’t want to mate a single alpha.
It makes the omega too vulnerable. There are too many women, especially, who end up mated to the wrong man and regret it, particularly when omegas are so much more limited by work restrictions and the burden of raising children.
Pack bonds create a safety net—multiple providers, multiple protectors, multiple sources of emotional support.
Not that I’m thinking about packs or bonds or anything.
But when I do, it’s amazing how quickly three familiar faces slot neatly onto what used to be faceless alphas in my imagination.
I sit on the edge of the bed, suddenly remembering my conversation with Aspen at the pharmacy.
She’d mentioned making friends in town, suggested that I’d need a support network beyond the clinic.
At the time, I’d dismissed her advice, too focused on maintaining my beta facade to consider building relationships.
But now that my secret is out—at least to the three alphas I’m currently living with—maybe it makes time to reconsider. Maybe I should try to make some connections in Heat Mountain, find some allies who can help me navigate this somewhere besides the chaos inside my own head.
I decide that’s exactly what I’m going to do with my next day off. Reach out to Aspen, maybe visit that heat supply store again now that I don’t have to pretend to be a beta. Take some small steps toward accepting who I really am.
A knock at the door interrupts my thoughts. “Holly?” Kai’s voice calls from the other side. “Dinner’s ready if you’re hungry.”
My stomach growls in response, despite the hearty lunch provided by Noah. I must have eaten basically nothing during my heat, though I vaguely recall Kai in the kitchen at certain points. “Coming,” I call back, rising from the bed.
And as much as I hate to admit it, I’m starving for more than just food at the moment.