Chapter 7
Alice doesn’t knowhow many days pass in her heat, only the delirium of it.
She is aware of her body, the pain that radiates through her insides tearing up her veins until one of her Alphas gives her relief. She can’t stop crying if they aren’t both there with her when she wakes, but the tears are short-lived.
She didn’t speak much, but she knew that she begged them to complete the mating bond and make her theirs forever. Alice will be thankful later that they didn’t give in to this request, considering she couldn’t think straight, or could hardly think at all. Her days are spent sleeping and knotting and being fussed over by the warmest men she’s ever known.
And then it breaks.
When her eyes blink open, Alice gains awareness of the room she’s spent the last unknown number of days in. The scent of the three of them is heavy like a blanket. The room is cozy with substantial blackout curtains over the windows, and strands of dim yellow lights are hung on the walls. The sound of running water trails into the room through one of the doors.
Tucked beneath a heavy arm, she’s barely covered by the soft linens on the bed. When she peers over her shoulder, she finds Caleb softly snoring. He’s got the dark shadows of a beard, and his bare shoulder leads to a smooth torso she can’t see the rest of.
There’s a bright light coming from beneath the door, but after a few minutes, the light clicks off before the handle slowly turns, pushing the door open into the room. It’s Grant wearing only a pair of sweatpants that hang low on his hips. His eyes go straight to Alice’s. She stares back at him.
“Did it break?” he asks, his voice quiet enough to not wake Caleb.
She nods, and though her right mind has returned, her body hasn’t gotten the memo. She feels like she might start sniffling if he doesn’t start touching her again. She holds out a hand for him and he rushes across the room to take it, kneeling next to the bed to press soft, long kisses on her forehead, cheeks, and eyelids.
“Are you feeling okay?” Grant searches her face and uses one hand to hold her palm to his chest. There’s a soft purring there.
“I feel weak, I think I need to shower, but I don’t . . .” Alice’s voice croaks, and her lips start to wobble against her best efforts.
“Oh, baby,” Grant says, all sympathy, and presses another firm kiss to her temple. “I’m going to help you, okay?”
She’s too tired to be embarrassed and just lets him guide her out of the bed and into the bathroom, leaving Caleb to roll over and sleep a while longer. There’s no doubt that he’s exhausted from helping her through her heat.
Grant turns on the bathroom lights but dims them using a slider so they’re about as low as the other room, then messes with the shower knobs until water starts spraying into the tub. Steam swims from around the curtain. He swipes his hand under it a few times before stripping out of his pants and bringing her, already naked, in with him.
Alice watches Grant clean her as confidently as everything else he does, with complete ease at the task at hand. He slathers soap around her body using his warm hands to wash her.
Her cheeks and neck are set aflame as he scrubs her breasts and between her legs, but she’s not filled with the overwhelming need she remembers.
“How many days?” she asks as he massages shampoo into her scalp.
Grant hesitates, his fingers pausing their work. “Eight.”
Alice turns around to face him, but a bit of shampoo drips into her eyes. She squeezes them shut while he rinses her hair clean. She’d never missed a full week of work, not in college, not since she started at the company, maybe not ever. And eight days? From what she knew, most heats only lasted four. Eight days of them taking care of her nonstop?
Their entire lives were overturned for Alice.
“I’m so sorry,” she breathes.
“Stop that,” Grant holds Alice’s face between his hands and ducks his head to look into her eyes. “You have nothing to be sorry for. You’re perfect.”
She doesn’t feel perfect, she feels like a heavy burden, a plague upon their house. But even with the running water washing their bodies clean, Alice can still smell Grant and herself—the perfect mingling of their scents.
Together they create something a little closer to whole.
His scent is different from Caleb’s. Earthy and soothing, like vetiver and chamomile. She lets him pull her to his chest and they stand like that under the hot spray.
“You need to eat something,” Grant says before turning off the shower. They stand quietly watching each other for a minute until goosebumps travel over Alice’s arms.
The towels he bundles her in are some of the fluffiest she’s ever felt. She lets him dry her limbs and wraps a towel around her hair. He retrieves a plush robe for her and she wants to wear it, but something is missing that she doesn”t know how to ask for. She doesn’t want to ask for it.
“What’s the matter?” he asks.
“Can I, um,” Alice sighs and probably looks as weak and defeated as she feels. “Can I have something with your scent? Caleb’s too?”
“Of course.” Grant retreats into the bedroom only to return a moment later with a soft, old tee shirt, a hoodie, and a pair of sweatpants. They do the trick, immediately offering comfort as soon as she puts them on, the scents of Caleb and Grant engulfing her own. “You don’t have to be embarrassed to ask for what you need.”
Alice keeps her eyes trained on the bathroom’s tile countertop, but nods.
“Let’s go downstairs. Caleb’s cooking something.”
When they walk through the room, the place where Caleb was is now empty and the bed has already been stripped of sheets. The comforter and other blankets sit in a pile on the carpet.
It smells like them. Heady like sex, too.
Though she’s been here for eight days, she really sees the house for the first time as they make their way towards the kitchen. It’s new, or newly renovated, with smooth walls and bright wood floors. It’s the middle of the night, something she couldn’t tell with the blackout curtains, and as they shuffle down the stairs, the light of the moon filters in through large windows.
“Who’s house is this? Yours or Caleb’s?”
“Ours,” Grant says and squeezes her hand once. “Caleb and I bought it together.”
“Are you. . .”
“Together?” Grant peers over his shoulder and Alice shrugs. “We are.”
They walk into the big kitchen where Caleb is shirtless and standing over the stove. The muscles of his back are defined and speckled with moles and freckles. Alice takes a seat on one of the bar stools, her body achy but warm bundled in their clothes.
Caleb and Grant being together doesn’t surprise her after what she remembers of the first day of her heat; the intimacy that was shared between them with ease and confidence.
Maybe that means they’re happy as they are. Just two Alphas that love each other and don’t need an Omega to be complete. If anything, Alice was just a temporary thorn in their side before they could move back onto their life alone together. It would be better that way, scent matches or not—they must know that she’s not pack Omega material. Too stubborn, too anxious, too much.
“Smells good,” Grant says, squeezing Caleb’s arm.
Grant fills up a glass with water and an electrolyte packet for Alice. She studies the two men as they move about each other. A hand placed on a back, a kiss dropped on a bare shoulder so natural like it’s only one of a thousand moments just like it—there’s an ease of movement as they glide through the kitchen, they’re comfortable around each other.
“I’m going to get the bed made up,” Grant says after setting the glass and a bowl of grapes in front of Alice.
Caleb stirs the liquid in the pot for a moment longer before he adds the lid and turns to look at Alice. “Nice hoodie,” he says, a smirk pushing up his lip.
Is Caleb Everett smirking?
“Thank you,” she says. What she really means is thank youfor everything, for eight days, for helping when the consequences of my decisions caught up to me, but she knows she doesn’t have to say so.
Caleb tilts his head and hesitates, really deliberating over something before maneuvering around the counter to pull her against his chest. She lets him.
Tomorrow she’ll put a stop to all this. She’ll tell them they don’t have to pretend to want her with them just because she’s an Omega and their scent matches—it won’t hurt her feelings, really, it won’t, and she’s sure they can sort something out to work together without too much distraction.
Tonight, though, she lets Caleb curl his arms around her while she breathes in his scent.
Tonight, she lets them feed her and pet her hair and tuck her into the soft bed beneath fresh linens. And when she goes to sleep, she lets them hold her, one on either side of her, and imagines for just a moment that it can always be as simple and comfortable as this.
Tomorrow, she will leave, but tonight, she falls into the most peaceful sleep she’s known in years.