2. Chapter 2 #3
I turn and find Deklan standing in the doorway of the kitchen, his dark hair disheveled, his glasses absent.
Without them, his face looks younger. More vulnerable.
He's wearing a faded t-shirt and plaid pajama pants, and he looks nothing like the razor-sharp strategist who runs our financial modeling.
"So are you," I say.
He crosses to the fridge, pulls out a water bottle, and leans against the counter.
For a moment, neither of us speaks. We don't need to.
We've known each other for twenty-five years, since a group home in South Boston where the beds were infested, and the food was moldy, and the only way to survive was to band together.
I was eight. Deklan was seven. Knox was six. Three unwanted boys with nothing but each other.
And then Mara came. Deklan's half-sister, born to a different father, dumped into the system when their mother overdosed. She was two years old, and Deklan, seven years old and already old beyond his years, took one look at her and decided she was his to protect.
We all did.
We raised her. In group homes, in foster placements, in the apartment we finally scraped together enough money to rent when I was eighteen and legal. Mara was our family. Our light. The reason any of us bothered to get up in the morning.
And six months ago, a drunk driver ran a red light.
Now she's gone. And Lily, her daughter, two years old, with Mara's dark eyes and Deklan's stubborn chin, is ours.
"You felt it," Deklan says. It's not a question.
"Of course I felt it."
"Knox too." He takes a drink of water. "All three of us."
"Yes."
He's quiet for a long time. "It's never been like this before. The other one, the agency's previous match… it was convenient. Comfortable. This is..." He trails off, searching for the word.
"Dangerous," I finish.
"Yeah." He sets the water bottle down. "She's going to want to leave. You saw her face. She's terrified."
"She said she wasn't leaving."
"She said that while her slick was soaking through her clothes. People say a lot of things when their biology is overriding their brain." His jaw tightens. "Mara said she'd never leave too. She said she'd always be there for Lily. She promised."
The grief in his voice is a living thing, raw, gnawing, and barely contained. I recognize it because I carry the same grief. We all do.
"This isn't the same," I say quietly.
"Isn't it?" He pushes off the counter. "We bring an omega into this house, into Lily's life, and what happens when it doesn't work?
What happens when the scent-match fades, or when she gets tired of being shared between three men, or when she decides small-town life wasn't so bad after all?
" His voice rises, sharp and bitter. "Lily's already lost her mother. You want her to lose another one?"
I don't have an answer. Because he's right. The risk is real. The match is real, but so is the danger. And if Willow gets close to Lily, becomes a mother figure, becomes family, and then leaves... It would destroy her. It would destroy all of us.
"Then we don't let her leave," I say.
Deklan's eyes snap to mine. "That sounds a hell of a lot like a cage."
"That's not what I mean." I set my jaw. "I mean we do this right. We give her a reason to stay. A real reason. Not just the match. Not just the biology. We make her want to be here."
"And if that's not enough?"
I think of Willow in the hallway, her eyes wide, her voice shaking but steady.
‘I'm not leaving’. I think of the way she looked at Deklan when he said Lily's name, soft, aching, and full of compassion that couldn't be faked.
I think of the way her scent shifted when she talked about the child, not less aroused, but deeper, richer, and layered with something that smelled like home.
"It will be," I say.
Deklan stares at me for a long moment. Then he shakes his head, the ghost of a bitter smile on his lips. "You've never been an optimist, JD."
"I've never had a reason to be."
He turns and walks out of the kitchen, his footsteps silent on the hardwood. I hear him pause in the hallway, outside Willow's door, I think, before continuing to his own room.
I stand alone in the dark kitchen, my water bottle forgotten, my knot still aching, and stare out the floor-to-ceiling windows at the city lights below.
Somewhere in this penthouse, an omega I just met is sleeping, or not sleeping, in a room that smells like my brother.
Somewhere, a two-year-old girl is dreaming without her mother.
And somewhere in my chest, in the place where I've kept everything locked away for thirty-four years, something is shifting. Something is opening.
Something that feels terrifyingly like hope.
I press my hand against the cold glass and close my eyes. Don't let this be another promise that breaks, I think. Don't let this be another thing that falls apart.
But her scent is still in the air, honey and vanilla, sweet and impossible, and despite everything, despite the grief and the fear and the years of learning that nothing good ever stays, I feel my mouth curve into the faintest shadow of a smile.
She stayed.
She didn't get back in the elevator.
And tomorrow, I'll find a way to make her glad she didn't.