Chapter 24 #2
I drive down the mountain with the windows open, letting the cool air clear my head.
The closer I get to town, to Holly, the stronger our connection feels.
The rubber band relaxes, the tension easing as the distance between us shrinks.
I can sense her more clearly now—she’s not at the clinic, but at the house.
She feels... content. Happy, even. The realization brings both relief and an unexpected twinge of something darker.
Has she already moved past the confusion and decided that she’s better off without me?
I park in the driveway beside Grayson’s truck and Kai’s ridiculous sports car. Holly’s sensible sedan is there too, confirming she’s here. For a moment, I sit in the silence of my car, gathering courage. Then, before I can talk myself out of it, I get out and walk to the door.
The house is quiet as I enter, but not silent. The faint strains of the Star Wars theme song drift from somewhere deeper inside. I follow the sound to the den, where I find a scene that stops me in my tracks.
The room has been transformed into an elaborate pillow fort, sheets draped over furniture to create a tent-like structure illuminated by string lights.
The remains of what looks like a feast are scattered across the coffee table—pizza crusts, empty beer bottles, bowls with dried sauce residue.
And in the middle of it all, Kai lies sprawled on his back, one arm flung dramatically over his eyes, snoring softly.
Something twists in my chest—a complicated emotion I can’t immediately name. While I’ve been brooding on a mountainside, they’ve been…what? Having a pizza party?
I step back into the hallway, intending to search for Holly, when movement catches my eye.
A door opens further down the corridor—Grayson’s door—and Holly emerges, wearing nothing but an oversized t-shirt that barely reaches mid-thigh.
Her hair is tousled, her lips swollen, and there’s a pink mark on her neck that can only be one thing.
Our eyes meet, and she freezes like a deer in headlights.
“Noah,” she breathes, her scent spiking with surprise and something else—guilt? Defiance? “Hi.”
I feel as if I’ve been punched in the gut. The bond flares between us, hot and painful, as my brain processes what I’m seeing. While I’ve been agonizing over how to approach our accidental connection, Holly has already moved on.
Grayson appears in the doorway behind her, shirtless and watchful. His hand comes to rest possessively on Holly’s shoulder, and something primal rises in me at the sight—my inner alpha wanting to see his mere presence as a challenge.
“You okay?” he asks Holly, his eyes never leaving mine.
She nods, but her scent betrays her distress. Through our bond, I feel her confusion, her hurt, and beneath it all, a stubborn determination that I’m beginning to recognize as quintessentially Holly.
“I see you’re otherwise occupied,” I say, the words coming out more distant than I intended. If I let slip even an ounce of what I’m feeling it will turn into a deluge. “Have a good night, guys.”
She made her choice.
“Noah, wait! Are you angry…” she gestures lamely between Grayson and herself. “…about this?”
I might try gently shaking some sense into her if I didn’t think Grayson would attempt to murder me. “I’m not angry, sweetheart. Just thought I’d have a little more time to figure you and me out.”
“But you do have time. You have all the time,” she insists, sounding devastatingly confused. “You guys are a pack, right?”
I blink, understanding each word even if I can’t make sense of them together. “What?”
“A pack,” she repeats, gesturing between the three of us and toward the den where Kai still sleeps. “You, Grayson, Kai. I thought that’s what was happening here.”
“We’re not a pack,” I say automatically, though even as the words leave my mouth, I’m not entirely sure why I’m so certain. “We’re just friends who...”
“Who live together, support each other and helped an omega through her heat without killing each other,” Holly finishes for me. “Where I come from, that’s the literal definition of a pack.”
“We should be a pack,” Grayson’s deep voice rumbling through the hallway. “Noah is the one who struck out on his own.”
I stare at them both, trying to process this shift in perspective. “I was giving Jamie what she wanted.”
Grayson sighs. If I could see his mouth, I know his lips would be twisted into a frown, even as his eyes remain gentle, clearly conveying he is about to tell me something I might not be ready to hear. “And how well did that turn out?”
I open my mouth to argue further, but the words die on my tongue as realization dawns. She’s right. The three of us—Grayson, Kai, and I—have functioned as a unit for months now, ever since I came back to town. We share resources, protect each other, bicker like an old married throuple.
We’re a pack. We’ve been a pack this entire time, and I just wasn’t paying enough attention to acknowledge it.
“Noah?” Holly’s voice pulls me from my thoughts. She’s watching me carefully, her expression softening. “I didn’t mean to upset you. I thought...I thought this was what you wanted, for me to put some distance between us.”
Nope, I realize. That’s the last fucking thing that I want.
Before I can respond, a sleepy voice calls from behind me. “What’s with all the serious talking in hallways?” Kai appears, hair sticking up in all directions, eyes still heavy with sleep. “Some of us are trying to recover from a Star Wars marathon here.”
“Apparently, we’re a pack,” I inform him, fully expecting a surprised reaction.
“Oh good, Noah’s finally figured out we’re a pack,” he says instead, as casually as if commenting on the weather. “Took you long enough. You’re literally the only person in town who didn’t know.”
I turn to him, incredulous. “I’m sorry, what?”
Kai gives me a look of patient exasperation. “Dude. We live together. We eat together. We share food. Grayson literally growls at any other alphas who get too close. What did you think was happening?”
Put that way, it does seem obvious. I run a hand through my hair, trying to realign my understanding of the past several years in light of this revelation.
But that doesn’t mean some clarity isn’t still needed here.
“I need to know what you think us being a pack means
Her gaze settles on me, the question in her eyes unmistakable. The bond between us pulses, alive with aching possibility.
Holly takes a deep breath, her shoulders straightening as she gathers her thoughts. “I think it means I’m sorry for bonding you without your consent. And that I won’t take any more decisions away from you going forward. So it’s up to you, Noah. What do you want this to be?”
I feel the weight of three pairs of eyes on me, waiting. The silence goes on for long enough that I sense Holly’s anxiety spike through our bond.
Her expression falls. “Or maybe I should just go back to the cabin. The roads must be okay by now…”
“You don’t need to be sorry,” I interrupt, finally putting into words the feeling that has been pinging through my chest for days.
“If you hadn’t bonded me during your heat, there’s an excellent chance I would have bonded you instead.
I’ve been fighting the urge to do just that since your first day at the clinic. ”
Her eyes widen, her cheeks turning a pretty pink. “Really?”
I nod, taking a step closer to her. “Really. But I need to know if you’re actually okay with a pack arrangement. Most of the omegas around here wouldn’t ever dream of bonding multiple alphas.”
“I never dreamed of bonding at all,” she admits. “I was too busy trying to pretend I wasn’t an omega. But now that it’s happened...” She looks around at the three of us, a small smile playing at her lips. “It’s hard to imagine changing any of this.”
“We can try to keep this under wraps for awhile, but I don’t need to remind you how small this town is. Are you sure we’re worth putting your career at risk?”
Her response is immediate. “Only one way to figure that out.”
I want to ask more questions, be more insistent so she recognizes the risk she’s taking. We haven’t even discussed what happens after her rotation is over in a month. Will she stay here? Will we try to follow her?
But those questions fade into the background of my mind as I stare down at her beautiful face. “I don’t want to see you get hurt. I might not be your direct supervisor anymore, but dating an attending is…”
“Technically not against the rules?” she suggests. “A foregone conclusion at this point? Potentially scandalous, but also super hot?”
“All the above,” I agree with a laugh.
“I’ve been hiding who I am my entire life,” Holly says, her voice growing stronger.
“I’m tired of making decisions based on what other people might think.
For once, I want to choose what makes me happy.
We’ll figure out the details later. And if you decide that things aren’t working then we’ll figure out how to break the bond. ”
That bond will be broken over my dead body, but I don’t want to scare with her too much intensity when we’re finally on the same page of this very messy story.
“And this would make you happy?” I gesture between the four of us. “Us?”
“I think it could,” she says simply. “If you want it as much as I do.”
I look at Grayson, who gives me a slight nod, and then at Kai, who grins and gives me an enthusiastic thumbs up. The decision, it seems, rests with me.
This is where I could leave things, but Holly’s easy manner makes it too easy to reveal myself to her. And I feel like I owe her the entire truth.
“I wanted a pack with Jamie,” I confess, her name catching in my throat as I wait for the wave of emotion that doesn’t come.
Her specter feels distant, finally laid to rest in a place of honor in my soul but no longer a part of my heart.
“She wanted the traditional alpha-omega pairing, so I tried to give her that. I thought I was respecting her wishes, but really, I was denying who I am.”
“And who are you?” Holly asks gently.
“Part of this pack,” I answer, the truth of it settling into my bones. “Always have been, apparently. Just took me a while to see it.”
“But you’re okay with sharing me?” Holly presses, her scent betraying her nervousness despite her steady voice. “Because I’m really trying not to blow up any more of your boundaries here.”
I see the uncertainty on her face, feel through the bond her fears that she’ll never be able to take the place of a dead woman that she’ll never be able to live up to the idea of someone who only exists as a memory.
“Jamie and I weren’t compatible,” I tell her, the admission still painful after all this time.
“I only realized it later after I got the grief and the guilt under control. We were trying to force something that wasn’t there.
That day on the mountain...we were only there because she was trying so hard to like the things I liked.
We had less and less in common with each other every day we were together. ”
She gently touches the back of my hand. “Noah…”
I take a deep breath, forcing myself to continue. “If we hadn’t been out there alone, if I’d had help getting her out of that ravine, we might have gotten down the mountain faster. She probably would have survived.”
Holly’s compassion flows through our bond, warming me from the inside. “You can’t know that for sure.”
“Maybe, maybe not. I do know that the only thing I regret more than Jamie’s death is that I wasn’t honest with her sooner. If I had told her things weren’t working between us, she wouldn’t have been on that mountain at all.”
The confession hangs in the air between us, heavy with implication. I’ve never said these words aloud to anyone, not even to myself in the privacy of my own thoughts.
“So you see,” I continue, my voice rougher than I’d like, “I’m done hiding from the truth, too. And the truth is, I want this. I want you, with our pack.”
Holly’s relief and joy flood through our bond, so intense it nearly brings me to my knees. She steps forward, closing the distance between us, and reaches up to touch my face.
“I want that too,” she whispers.
I lean down, drawn to her like gravity, and press my lips to hers.
The kiss is gentle at first, a question and an answer all at once.
Then she sighs against my mouth, and something inside me breaks loose.
I deepen the kiss, pulling her against me, breathing in her scent that now carries notes of Grayson along with her own sweet fragrance.
Surprisingly, the combination doesn’t bother me—it smells right, like pack.
When we finally break apart, both breathing heavily, I’m aware of Kai slow-clapping behind me and Grayson’s satisfied rumble.
“Well, that was hot,” Kai announces cheerfully. “Who’s hungry? I feel like this calls for pancakes.”
Holly laughs, the sound bright and unrestrained. “It’s four in the afternoon.”
“Breakfast for dinner is a time-honored tradition,” Kai insists, already heading toward the kitchen. “Especially after life-changing relationship discussions in hallways.”
Grayson follows him, pausing briefly to squeeze my shoulder in a gesture of solidarity before continuing on. The touch says more than words ever could—we’re good, we’re pack, this works.
And anyone who tries to get in the way of this will have to deal with all four of us.