Episode 11 Some Day My Pack Will Come
Florence
I wake up to a hard body pressed against mine, skin on skin, my back to their chiseled front, one arm stretched out under my head, the other wrapped around my waist. There’s someone in front of me too, one thick thigh between my legs, a hand on my hip.
Breath puffing on me from both directions and the sweetest fucking scent invading my lungs. Fresh cut grass and spiced cranberries.
I must be dreaming. Because the last thing I remember is feeling woozy and light-headed, then nausea like I’ve never felt before… and nothing else.
So this… waking up between two men who smell like home, like mine, it has to be a fever dream. It can’t possibly be real. They made it clear I wasn’t good enough for them. That they didn’t want me.
You are not our omega.
The words still sting.
The memory hurts. More now that I know I am, in fact, their mate. But I will never be their omega.
“Sunshine.” A shuddering, teary breath pushes from my lungs at the whisper. The body in front of me shifts closer. The hand on my hip tightens. And then lips meet my closed eyelids in a gentle kiss. “Ren, little bird,” he murmurs against my skin. “Don’t cry.”
“Impossible,” I croak out.
The arm around my waist tightens, tugging me back as a face nuzzles into my hair. “We’ve got you, Pix.”
But they don’t. They won’t.
I press my hands into Piers' chest and push him back, peering up at him and his soft eyes that I missed so much. “What are you doing here?”
“You collapsed on television, cor mea.”
The deep voice has me lifting my head and searching the dark room.
And there at the foot of my bed standing with his arms crossed is the Prince of Bravonne.
I give him a tight smile. “Too much excitement.” I shift, brushing Courtland’s hands off me, wiggling until I’m sitting up in bed. “I’m fine now. You can go.”
The last thing I want is for them to know just what happened, just how their rejection affected me. Court rolls onto his back and hooks an arm under his head, peering up at me with a sort of dopey look on his face, while Piers drags himself into a sitting position next to me.
“I suppose it’s too much to hope you were so entranced at seeing me on the screen that you didn’t hear what she asked me?”
A snort to my right draws my attention to where Thayer is lounging in my chair. “You fainted in the airport as soon as you got home and she wondered what might have caused it.”
“We’re curious too, bubbles. Why did you faint at the airport, on camera, and why the hell didn’t you tell us about it?”
I glance at Grieves, propped next to the door of my bedroom. The way he’s looking at me tells me he knows. They all know. I mean, how could they not when they’re standing in my bedroom thick with my scent? If they didn’t know before they set foot in my home, they sure as fuck know now.
Just like the knowledge that they are my mates settles against my skin with every inhale.
Their scents, carried into my lungs with every breath, soak into my veins along with oxygen.
Spiced cranberries. Fresh cut grass. The spark of a thunderstorm and oakmoss.
Coffee, paper and vetiver. Leather and honey-soaked whiskey.
It’s all so fucking good.
“When did you realize, Pixie? When did you know you’re our mate?”
I swallow and avoid looking at all of them, running a finger along a seam in my quilt. “When I woke up at the hospital and they informed me I had all the symptoms of RMD.”
I flick my gaze up and around the room, reading their expressions. Not a flicker of surprise on any of their faces. My shoulders slump. “When did you realize?”
There’s a long, drawn out pause. And then Grieves pushes off the wall and takes one hesitant step toward me. “I’ve known since the day of the finale. I went to the hotel you were in as soon as they released us from filming. You were already gone, but your scent…”
I nod slowly. “Right.” He would have known from the moment he stepped into that room. Even with the acrid tinge of my heartbreak clinging to my scent, he would have known. “Weeks? You’ve known for weeks? Why didn’t you say anything?”
His expression cracks and he runs a broad palm over his face. “I hoped…”
“You hoped I would never find out. That I wouldn’t realize what you did to me.”
The devastation in his eyes makes my breath catch. “I did. I never wanted this for you, Ren. I wanted… God, I bloody hoped that you’d be able to get over this, over us.”
I don’t know what to say to that so I stay silent, until I can’t anymore. “And the rest of you? Did you find out from the interview?”
Court shifts closer to me, pressing into my side like that will help soften the blow. “We’ve known for a few days.”
“A few days?” I repeat in a whisper. He nods and smooths my hair back from my face.
Piers shifts uncomfortably. “I suspected for a while longer. I called and Haven picked up. She and Tic said some things that made me think… I wanted to confirm it before I said anything to the pack.”
“In case it was a manipulation?” I say, sarcasm thick in my tone. “A way to get you to come crawling back to me?”
“No. No, of course not. I just… I needed to be sure. I didn’t want to worry them if I was wrong.”
There’s no use fighting against the bitter taste of his words, the swell of hurt and betrayal that accompanies them. Out of all of them I thought Piers would think better of me.
Thayer touches my shoulder to get my attention before he hands me an icy smoothie that I recognize all too well. Tic must have made it for me. He’s obsessed with the damn things. Packs them full of supplements and somehow they’re still delicious.
Condensation beads on the glass, wetting my hand as I take it from him, but I don’t drink it. I’m not sure I can stomach having anything in my belly at the moment.
“How long have I been out?” I ask instead, daring to flick a glance up and around the men gathered around me, then my room. The blackout curtains are drawn so I don’t know what time it is. My phone rests on the bedside table, and I just barely resist the urge to lean over Courtland and grab it.
“Nineteen hours.”
That has my stomach lurching. Nineteen hours is longer than I was out when I first got home.
Piers shuffles next to me before standing up. Thayer slips into the vacated space, his shoulder brushing mine. “Drink the smoothie, please, killer. You need the calories.”
Mechanically, I lift the straw to my lips and suck down the chocolate banana flavored drink. It's delicious, but it takes all of my concentration to actually swallow. Once I manage it, my stomach gives a gurgle of hunger and I suck down half of the smoothie.
The Ashbourne pack is silent as they watch every bob of my throat.
Court brushes a kiss to my temple as I pull the glass away from my mouth, then climbs out of the bed too.
He returns a moment later with a plate of buttered toast, drizzled with honey and slides it on the mattress next to my knee.
“In case you want something more solid.”
I stare at it, then at the smoothie still clutched in my hand.
It almost seems like they care. Like they want to take care of me, provide for me…
but that can’t be the case. They rejected me, sent me home and weren’t very kind while they did it.
Or Forsythe tried, he gave me soft smiles and held my hand like it was a precious breakable thing, but he still said the words that forever altered my life.
You are not our omega. Five words is all it took to lead to devastation.
I can’t give them the opportunity to do it again.
I grit my teeth and shake my head. “I’m fine.” The smoothie in my hand presses against Thayer’s stomach. “Can you take this, please?”
He does, which is good because if he hadn’t I might have just dropped it on his lap, and that would have been a mess I don’t want to clean up.
With a sigh, the professor pushes to his feet and slides the glass onto my dresser, while I huddle in the center of my bed with my blankets tucked around me. I suppose I should be glad they didn’t invite themselves into my nest, tucked away in my walk-in closet.
“Haven let you in?” I ask eventually, even though I know it must be the case. The Calloways would have stood between me and this pack until the end of time unless she told them otherwise.
Court gives a jerky nod of his head. “Yeah. By the time we got here you’d been out for ten hours, burning up with fever. She was worried about you. Knew we’d be able to help.”
Worried, but not enough to take me to the hospital. She’s been to all of my appointments with me, and so she knows the doctors warned of relapses like this. Moments where my body will just give out. Though… it was mentioned that it would happen more often the closer I get to my heat.
That sends a prickle of fear down my spine.
The idea of spending a heat alone, even on suppressants or drugged out of my mind in a clinic, is terrifying. I’ve done it before, and it was terrible. I can only imagine it’ll be worse with RMD.
“If she hadn’t let us in, we would have climbed the walls and torn everyone in them apart to get to you, though,” Grieves says, sounding like he means it.
“No,” Thayer’s quick to deny that. “No, we wouldn’t have done that, because these people are your family and we wouldn’t hurt them.”
“I’d grind them to dust if I had to,” Grieves mutters and for some reason that makes my lips twitch into the beginnings of a smile.
“Violence isn’t the answer, bruiser,” I remind him and his eyes slip closed, his expression melting into one of relief. Like my using his nickname is some kind of a sign that I forgive them. But I don’t. I can’t.
When he looks at me again with those dark gray eyes of his, I can see the hope in them.
And god, that kills me.
“I think I’ll need you to remind me of that, bubbles.” The way he says it, like I’ll be around to remind him, makes my heart flip in my chest and hope bloom in my stomach.