Chapter 28 Jennifer
JENNIFER
The guest house shower has excellent water pressure and I stand under it, letting the heat of it work through days of accumulated everything, and I think about nothing in particular and everything at once, which is what I do when I am processing something too large to approach directly.
The tiles are white. The towels are thick. Outside the small window the island is going about its morning business, the birds doing their thing in the herb garden, the water moving steadily beyond the hill.
I get out of the shower and wrap myself in one of the thick towels and sit on the edge of the bed. Is this what my future looks like? I should be grateful, I know that. I am going from doing too much to doing nothing, and somewhere in the gap between those two things I am supposed to find peace.
My mind reflects on the way Matteo reaches toward me without knowing he is doing it. Santos, already in the kitchen before I have thought about being hungry. Tomas, marking his page the moment he hears my footsteps.
My daughter, shifting low and rolling in the warm dark of me, having listened to everything and found it satisfactory.
I put my hand on my stomach.
I should be grateful. I am grateful, but I'm used to doing things for myself, not to have someone do things for me. There's only one person I want to speak to right now and that's sis.
Anna answers on the second ring. I think she permanently has her phone by her side.
"You're alive," she says. "How are you feeling?”
"Like something that went through a process and came out the other side of it," I say. "Good. Clean. Strange in a way that feels correct."
A pause. "And the three of them."
"Also alive," I say.
"Jennifer."
"They were good," I say. "They took care of me."
I hear her breathe in slowly, the particular breath she does when she is revising an assessment. "Okay," she says.
"Anna," I say. "They want to raise the baby, together. They want to bond."
The silence on the other end of the line is the productive kind, the kind Anna makes when she is thinking rather than reacting.
"And what do you want?" she says.
"The same I think," I say.
She is quiet for a moment. Then she says, "tell me everything."
Anna listens as I spill it all, even down to me coming into the guest house today.
"Okay," she says. "I want to meet them."
"You will. Come when the baby arrives. But that's if we'll still be here then. We may have to go to the city."
"It sounds like you've made up your mind," Anna says.
I guess she's right. I'm not thinking about bonding. I'm thinking about the future.
"Yes," I confess. "It's just that I don't want to hurt their business or anything else."
"Pack doesn't work that way. You'll be their omega. If you say to them stay here in paradise, they'll do that for you. The most important person in the relationship will be you. All they'll want to do is please you. Do you understand?"
I nod.
She laughs, warm and real, and the familiar sound of it moves through me like the first sip of something good on a cold morning. "Go," she says. "Tell them."
"I will."
"Jennifer."
"Yes."
"I'm glad," she says. Simple. Clean. The specific warmth of someone who has been worrying about you for a long time and has just set the worry down.
I end the call and sit for a moment with my hand on my stomach and feel the baby shift, the low rolling morning shift, the contented one, the one she does when things are as they should be.
"I know," I say, to her. "I know."
I put the phone down and sit for a moment with the quiet of it. I came here to cook. I'm leaving with a pack. I apply some make-up. I want to look like someone who meant for all of this to happen.
My omega agrees.
Santos is at the stove. Matteo is at the island with coffee. Tomas is at the table with his book and his glasses and he looks up when I walk in and the gray eyes go still and steady and he is already reading my face before I have said anything.
"I thought about it," I say.
Santos turns from the stove. Matteo sets his coffee down. Tomas closes his book, and this time he does not mark the page.
"Let's do it," I say.
Santos crosses the kitchen and takes my face in his hands and looks at me with those warm brown eyes and his saffron is bright and full in the air around us. "Sei sicura," he says.
"Yes," I say. "I'm sure."
He kisses me once, soft and certain, and steps back.
Matteo comes to my left, and traces one finger along my jaw with the deliberate patience he brings to everything that matters. His pale blue eyes are dark and steady and entirely unhidden.
Tomas comes to my right and takes my hand and holds it.
"We want to do this properly," Tomas says. "Just the four of us."
"Just us," I say. "That is exactly right."
"Santos's room," Santos says. "Fresh sheets. All of us together."
"Yes," I say.
They look at each other, something passing between them in the wordless way of people who have been a pack long enough that full sentences are often unnecessary, and then they look back at me.
"Where do you want it," Tomas says.
I consider this. I have given my neck to them before, in smaller ways, and I know what it means to have their mouths there, the warmth of it, the weight. But this is different. This is permanent. This is the mark that stays.
"Left side," I say. "All three of you. I want to be able to feel all three of them."
Santos makes a low sound.
Matteo reaches out and touches the left side of my neck very gently, two fingers at the specific place.
Tomas nods once. The nod of a man who has the result he calculated and is sitting in the certainty of it.
We go to Santos's room. Matteo changes the sheets with the focused efficient patience he brings to everything, tucking corners with geometric precision while Santos opens the window to let the morning air in and the island fills the room, salt and green and the particular warmth of late September.
Tomas stands by the door and watches me with the warm steady attention of a man who has been certain of this moment since a casino floor and is not going to waste a second of it being elsewhere.
I sit on the edge of the bed.
They come to me. Santos first, crouching in front of me, taking my face in his hands, looking at me with the full warm honesty of a man who has stopped performing anything. Matteo sits at my left. Tomas sits at my right, his silver musk settled and certain.
"Ready," Santos says. Checking, not assuming.
I tip my head.
Santos is in front of me, crouching at the edge of the bed, his hands warm at my jaw, his saffron bright and steady in the air. Matteo is at my left, his hand resting at my waist, present and certain. Tomas is at my right, his silver musk quiet and grounding, his hand over mine on the sheet.
For a moment nobody moves, and I feel all three of them pause, the particular quality of three people who care about doing this correctly taking one last breath before they do it.
Then Santos moves first.
His mouth finds the left side of my neck and his lips press warm against the skin there, and he stays like that for a moment, just the warmth of him, just the saffron flooding close, and my omega goes entirely still the way she goes still before something large happens.
The bite, when it comes, is not what I was expecting.
I thought that I would need to brace against someone or something. What arrives instead is a pressure, deep and immediate, and the sound that comes out of me is not a scream exactly but it is not nothing either, a sharp cry that fills the room and startles all three of them.
Santos lifts his head at once.
"Stop," Matteo says, and his hand at my waist has tightened.
"Jennifer." Santos's warm brown eyes are on my face, searching it, the saffron pulling back from bright to careful. "Talk to me."
“No need,” I say, which is true and also incomplete, there is a warmth running down my neck that I understand is blood and understanding it and being comfortable with it are two different things.
"You cried out," Tomas says. His voice is level and careful and his gray eyes are on my face with the particular focused attention of someone running a rapid assessment.
"It surprised me," I say. "I wasn't expecting the pressure. I thought it would be sharper."
"We can stop," Santos says immediately. "Jennifer, we can absolutely stop. This does not have to happen today or at all if you are not certain."
"I'm certain," I say.
"You're shaking," Matteo says.
"I know," I say. "I'm still certain."
The three of them look at each other over my head, the wordless pack communication, and I can feel the weight of it, the genuine question passing between them about whether to continue, whether I am truly all right, whether the wanting of this is enough.
"It was the surprise of it. The depth of it. I want you to continue."
Santos looks at me for a long moment. His thumb moves across my cheekbone, gentle and slow, and his saffron in the air settles from urgent back toward warm. "Tell us if you need us to stop," he says. "At any point. For any reason. We stop."
"I know," I say.
"We mean it," Matteo says, from my left.
"I know you mean it," I say. "Continue."
Tomas reaches past me to the nightstand and comes back with a folded cloth, warm and soft, and he presses it gently against the side of my neck where Santos has already bitten, careful and unhurried, and the warmth of his hands through the cloth is steadying in a way I had not known I needed.
“Okay?” he says.
“Yes,” I confirm.
Santos holds my gaze for one more moment and I look back at him with the particular directness I use for things I mean completely, and something in his face settles, and he nods once.
Matteo goes next.
He turns my head toward him slightly with two fingers at my jaw, the deliberate careful touch that is entirely Matteo, and his mouth finds the spot just beside Santos's mark.
Then, I let my body know what is coming this time, and the pressure arrives again, deep and total, and I make a sound but it is lower this time, less startled, more present, the sound of someone receiving something significant and choosing to stay open to it.
My hand finds Matteo's forearm and grips it. He lets me.
When he lifts his head his pale blue eyes are very dark and very close and entirely unhidden and he keeps his forehead against my temple for a moment.
Tomas presses the cloth gently against both marks, cleaning the skin with the quiet efficient care of a man who does everything with quiet efficient care, and I feel the slight sting of it and then the warmth of his hands and then his silver musk coming very close as he leans in.
His bite is the deepest.
I grip the sheet with one hand and Matteo's arm with the other and I make a sound that is not quite a word and Tomas holds the bite steady for a moment before he lifts his head and looks at me with those gray eyes and something in them that I will spend a considerable amount of time learning to read.
The room fills.
All our scents together, braided in the warm morning air, all of it permanent. The bonds sit in my chest like three things that were always supposed to be there and have simply, finally, arrived.
She kicks, probably because I’m so overwhelmed by what has happened the last few days.
Santos laughs, low and warm, and presses his forehead against mine.
Matteo's arms come around me from the left and he holds me with the steady unhurried certainty of someone who has been waiting for permission to do this and intends to do it properly.
Tomas takes the cloth and cleans the marks with careful gentle strokes, one after another, and the warmth of his hands is grounding in the specific way that Tomas is always grounding.
After a while I say, "I want to see."
Santos stands and offers me his hand and walks me to the mirror on the wall beside the window.
I look at my reflection.
The marks are three, close together on the left side of my neck, slightly raised, already beginning to settle into something permanent.
They sit against my skin with the particular presence of things that belong there.
My strawberry scent is warm and full in the air around me and underneath it their scents woven in, mine now, part of me now, the way the island is part of me, the way the kitchen at nine in the morning is part of me.
I put two fingers against them, very lightly.
"Does it hurt," Santos says, from behind me, his warm eyes finding mine in the mirror.
"No," I say.
I look at the marks for a long moment. The three of them are reflected behind me, Santos with his saffron warm and open, Matteo with his pale eyes steady, Tomas with his gray gaze quiet and certain.
I look at myself. At the marks. At what has just become permanent.
"I love it," I say.
And I mean it completely.
Tomas's mouth does the thing, brief and real, and in the mirror I watch it happen and file it in the place where I keep the things I intend to return to.
I've bonded with the three alphas that I lusted after, indulged and then hated in Vegas, yet nothing could be better or could I ask for more right now.
"Can we lie down for a while?" I ask them.
“Of course,” Matteo says.
I reflect on what Anna said, about them wanting to please and protect me.