Chapter six
Willow
The problem with being shown you matter is that it makes the possibility of not mattering so much worse.
Deklan knelt on that floor. Deklan Kros, the grumpy, spreadsheet-obsessed Beta who hides behind his laptop and speaks in clipped sentences and pretends he doesn't feel anything, pressed his mouth between my thighs and showed me exactly how much I matter.
And for one perfect, shattering afternoon, I believed him.
I believed all of it.
But hours pass. And in the dark, when the penthouse goes quiet, and Lily's breathing evens out, and the men retreat to their separate rooms, Serena's voice creeps back in.
You're not a person to them. You're a function.
I lie in the cedar-scented sheets, Deklan's scent woven into the fabric like a promise, and stare at the ceiling.
My body is still humming. Deklan's mark purples on my throat, a bruise I can feel every time I swallow.
Between my legs, I'm still swollen, still sensitive, still slick with the aftermath of an orgasm that cracked me open.
But my brain won't shut up.
They shared me. All three of them. The match faded. They didn't even knot me.
I roll onto my side and press my face into the pillow.
The cedar scent floods my nose, grounding, warm, Deklan, and for a moment, the voices recede.
For a moment, I'm back in that room, back against the wall, back in his hands, and I'm not a placeholder.
I'm not a function. I'm Willow, and I matter.
Then the moment passes.
Because here's the thing about Serena's words that Deklan couldn't fix with his mouth, no matter how talented that mouth is - she wasn't just talking about the match.
She was talking about the Before. The thing that exists before biology kicks in, before the scent-match, before the pheromones and the slick and the knotting.
She was talking about who I am when you strip all of that away.
And who am I?
Willow Lorelei Vasquez. Twenty-three years old.
Small-town omega with a high school diploma and one incomplete semester of community college.
A duffel bag full of thrift-store clothes.
A mother who works double shifts at a diner and a father who left when I was four.
A bank account with $312 in it. No property.
No assets. No prospects beyond this job.
That's who I am.
And they are JD Blaine, Knox Dixon, and Deklan Kros.
Billionaires. CEOs. Men who sit in boardrooms and move money like chess pieces.
Men who live in a penthouse that costs more per month than my mother's house.
Men who have a private elevator and a black SUV and a kitchen with more square footage than my childhood bedroom.
Men who, according to Serena, have done this before. Shared an omega. Used her. Discarded her.
Not like this, I tell myself. Not like this. What I feel with them is different. What Deklan showed me was different.
But was it?
Was it different, or was it just... new? The match is fresh. The chemistry is overwhelming. Of course it feels different. Serena probably felt it too, in the beginning. The rush. The heat. The impossible, electric certainty that this time, this one, this is real.
And then it faded.
I sit up in bed. The sheets pool around my waist, and the cool air hits my skin, raising goosebumps. The clock on the nightstand reads 1:47 AM. The penthouse is silent. Three men breathe behind three closed doors, and I sit here in the dark, hollowed out and terrified.
My body aches. Not with arousal this time, or not only with arousal. There's something else. A pull. A need that goes deeper than physical want, deeper than the scent-match, deeper than the biological imperative that's been screaming at me since I walked through the elevator doors.
Nesting.
The urge has been building for hours. Since Lily's room, if I'm honest. Since he held me and I cried and he showed me what it means to be wanted.
The omega instinct deep in my chest says build.
Gather. Make a home. It says collect their scents, their clothes, their warmth, and build a place where you belong.
But I can't nest here.
Nesting is for claimed omegas. For bonded mates.
For omegas who have been knotted and marked and given a permanent place in a pack.
I am none of those things. I'm a nanny with a contract and a scent-match that might fade, and if I nest, if I give in to that primal urge and build something out of their shirts and sheets and warmth, I'll be pretending I belong here.
And if I pretend, and then it falls apart, it won't just break my heart.
It will destroy me.
I get out of bed. The floor is cold under my bare feet.
I'm wearing Deklan's oversized shirt again, I changed back into it after Lily's nap, and none of them commented on it, though Knox's eyes had tracked the hem with visible hunger.
The fabric falls to mid-thigh, and I pull it tighter around myself, breathing in cedar and rain.
Don't do this, a voice whispers. Don't leave. Talk to them. Tell them what you're feeling.
But I can't. Because talking means hoping, and hoping means trusting, and trusting means believing that three billionaires could want a girl like me for more than a match. For more than a function. For more than a warm body to fill the gap a dead sister left.
And I can't believe that. Not yet. Maybe not ever.
I move quietly. I've always been quiet, it's a skill you learn when you grow up in a small house with thin walls and a mother who sleeps between double shifts. I open my duffel bag and stuff my few belongings inside. Two pairs of jeans. Three shirts. Underwear. Toiletries. The worn denim jacket.
It takes less than five minutes.
I leave the oversized shirt folded on the bed. Deklan's shirt. Cedar-scented. A goodbye I can't say with words.
Leave a scent trail, my omega instincts scream. Mark your departure. Let them know you were here. Let them find you.
I ignore the instinct. I shove my feet into my sneakers, no socks, no time, and ease the bedroom door open.
The hallway is dark. The penthouse is designed so that the bedrooms are clustered at one end, a long corridor with five doors. Mine is closest to the living area. Beyond it, three more doors. JD's. Knox's. Deklan's. Lily’s.
I pause outside Deklan's door.
Through the wood, I hear him. Not sleeping, his breathing is too deliberate, too controlled. He's awake. He's probably sitting at his desk with his laptop, running numbers, pretending the world is something that can be quantified and predicted.
I want to knock. I want to tell him I'm scared. I want to ask him to hold me again, the way he did in Lily's room, steady and solid and unwavering. I want to ask him if it's true, if I'm really more than a match, if the way he looked at me when he was on his knees meant what I think it meant.
But Serena's voice drowns it all out.
They get bored. The match fades. You're just convenient.
I pull my hand back from the door and keep walking.
Knox's door is next. From inside, I hear a low sound, not a groan, not a growl, but something in between.
He's awake too. Probably hard. Probably thinking about me, I know he can smell me, know the honey-vanilla of my scent is leaking under my door and into the hallway.
He's been smelling me for two days, and I know it's been driving him insane because I can hear him sometimes at night, the rhythmic, muffled sound of a man taking himself in hand.
I want to open that door. I want to crawl into his bed and let him do all the things he described in the kitchen.
I want to feel his hands on my hips, his mouth on my neck, his cock pressing against me.
I want to ask him if the filth he whispers is just dirty talk or if he means it, if he really wants to breed me, claim me, make me theirs.
But wanting isn't the same as having. And having isn't the same as keeping.
I keep walking.
JD's door is last. The Alpha. The leader. The man who growled my name in the shower and came so loud the walls shook. The man who said nobody touches her, not until she asks, and meant it, even though every line of his body screamed that he was dying to break his own rule.
I stop.
His scent is the strongest here. Pine and smoke, seeping through the gap under his door, wrapping around my ankles like a rope.
My body responds, slick, immediate and embarrassing, and my inner omega whines.
Alpha. Alpha is close. Alpha will protect us.
Alpha will keep us. Don't leave. Don't leave. Don't…
I press my hand against the door. The wood is warm. He's right there. Inches away. If I knocked, he'd open it in a heartbeat. If I stepped inside, he'd catch me before I hit the floor.
And if I stayed, if I let him claim me, knot me, bond me, and then it faded? If the match weakened the way Serena said it would, and JD looked at me one day with flat, empty eyes the way Serena described?
I wouldn't survive it.
I pull my hand back.
I stop in front of Lily’s room, and tears track down my cheeks. I don’t want to leave her, but all I can do is pray that, in her youth, she will quickly forget about me.
I walk down the hallway, through the living room, past the kitchen where Knox cornered me, past the island where Deklan told me to sit and eat.
The penthouse is dark and quiet, and every surface holds a memory.
The counter where Knox whispered filth in my ear.
The stove where JD made pancakes. The doorway where Deklan leaned and watched me with those dark, unreadable eyes.
‘You're our home,’ Deklan said.
Home, I think, and the word tastes like ash.
I reach the elevator. The private one, the one that goes straight to the parking garage. I press the call button, and the soft chime sounds obscenely loud in the silence. I wince, glancing back down the hallway.
Nothing moves. No doors open. No footsteps sound. The elevator arrives, I step inside, and the doors close. And just like that, I'm falling.