Chapter 18
ROWAN
My fucking thoughts won’t shut the hell up. I can still hear the door click behind them, the quiet shuffle of her laugh before it disappeared. Cassian made her a fire.
I lay there, fists tight, pretending I didn’t care. Eli’s breathing was slow beside me, the kind of calm that makes you feel feral by comparison.
My Alpha side wants her—wants to taste the sound she makes when she gives in, to mark her until the whole damn cabin smells like us.
If I’d gone out there, I wouldn’t have stopped at a kiss. The bed she’s been sleeping in wouldn’t have survived it, and neither would my control.
So I’m up, pacing. And I’m trying real damn hard to convince myself this is fine.
She chose Cassian last night. That’s everything we promised her she’d get here. But what’s eating me is if they did more than kiss. If she’s a one-male Omega or if she even wants Eli and me. We’ve been here before—females who fit us in pieces but never as a whole.
My jaw hurts from clenching.
I give up on sleep and throw on a sweatshirt.
The hall smells like her. Vanilla and jasmine underneath that makes my teeth ache.
Cassian’s towel is slung over a chair, still damp.
Sand tracked across the rug in two sets of footprints leading to the blanket basket.
Half the blankets are gone. I stand there fucking too long staring at those prints like they’ll tell me something useful.
They don’t.
Outside, the fog is thick enough to choke on. Gray water, gray sky, no line between them. The tide’s out, flats shining wet in the almost-dawn. A motorcycle screams past once.
I lean against the porch rail and breathe. Cedar. Salt. Cold air that bites.
And underneath it all: Cassian’s scent mixed with vanilla that’s gone soft and easy, the kind of scent that means she felt safe. Means her Omega stopped bracing long enough to let go. I’ve been chasing that scent in my head for days. The idea of her loose and willing and trusting enough to just be.
Cassian pulled it out of her first.
My knuckles go white on the rail.
Behind me, the door opens, and I know without looking that it’s Eli. He’s got his ridiculous big mug with BETAS DO IT BETTER stamped across it, and he’s not saying anything, just standing there like he’s got all the time in the world.
“You heard them come in,” he says finally.
“Yeah.”
He huffs in a way that’s neither yes nor no. Just space for me to sit in my own shit.
I don’t look at him. “I checked earlier. The fireplace was cold before we went to bed.”
Eli takes a sip of his coffee. “He lit it after.”
Don’t need a picture; I can imagine more than enough with him wrapping her in a blanket, starting the fire, maybe even sharing a bottle of wine. No fucking way am I going to check if he’s in his bedroom or alone.
Eli’s shoulder bumps mine. “You’re gonna snap that wood if you keep squeezing it like that.”
“I’m fine.”
“You’re controlled. Barely. Different thing.”
He’s right, but I don’t want to admit it, cause he gets to drink coffee while I try not to taste blood from clenching my jaw.
“She’s not in heat.”
“Nope.” He takes another sip of his coffee. “She was making a choice.”
The porch creaks under my weight. “We knew this would happen eventually.”
Eli gives me a look. The kind that sees straight through my bullshit. “You hoped it’d be you.”
Yeah. I did. I’ve wanted her since I first saw her and looked at me like I was dangerous.
Since I kissed her and she grabbed my shirt like she thought I’d vanish.
Since she opened her mouth to put even Cassian in his place, demanding he call her by her name.
All of it made every Alpha instinct I have roared mine.
“Doesn’t matter,” I say.
“Still true though.”
Eli doesn’t tell me to get over it. Doesn’t tell me I should be happy for them. He just stands there with his stupid mug and lets me be pissed off and wanting and trying not to show it.
“I’m not jealous,” I say. It sounds thin even to me.
He gives me a comical look, but shakes his head. “Mm. What are you then?”
Scared, mostly. The kind of fear that’s old and mean, the kind that says if you let go for even a second, you’ll lose everything. She could still walk away. Could decide this isn’t what she wants after all. Could leave, and there’s not a damn thing I could do to stop her.
“She could still leave,” I say.
“Yeah.” Eli doesn’t flinch. “And if she does, we help her pack. That was the deal.”
I nod, hating that he’s right.
Below us, the stupid shark float leans against the rail like it tried to escape and gave up. I stare at it instead of the door, because I can feel her inside like a shift in pressure.
Jess comes out, and I don’t turn right away. Feels like giving something up if I’m too eager.
“Morning,” Jess says. Her voice is soft.
I look over my shoulder and nearly swallow my tongue.
She’s wearing Cassian’s hoodie. The sleeves are too long, hanging past her hands, and she’s got her thumbs hooked through holes in the cuffs.
And every instinct I own snarls mine. I want my scent on her skin, want the vanilla in the air to twist with the storm that lives under my ribs.
Want her to smell like us, not just him.
Want my mark there too—proof that she’s not just Cassian’s, that she chose more than one of us.
It’s possessive. Primitive. I don’t fucking care.
Her body should be layered thick enough with all our scents that anyone who gets close knows she’s claimed. Pack.
My hands curl into fists.
No makeup. Hair is damp and curling at the edges. There’s a crease on her cheek from sleeping and a faint pink mark on her throat just above the collar. Not a bite. Just proof that Cassian took his time.
I want to add my own. Want to find out what sounds she makes when I put my mouth there instead and on other places.
“Coffee’s fresh if you’re interested,” Eli says, because apparently I’ve forgotten how to speak.
She smiles at him, then at me. Shy but not. Like she knows we both know what happened last night, and she’s not sure what that means yet. “Thanks.”
“We have reservations for brunch later, but I can make you something if you’re hungry,” I say automatically.
Her mouth quirks. “I’m good with just coffee for now.”
“I’ll go make you a cup,” Eli says, leaving us alone on the porch, and I know it’s to give us time alone.
She moves to the rail on my other side. Close enough to feel her body heat. Close enough that if I shifted my weight, our shoulders would touch. She stares out at the water, and when she breathes in and I breathe with her. For a second, we’re synced.
“I, um.” She folds her hands into the sleeves. “Last night—”
“You don’t owe me an explanation.” The words come too fucking fast. But I’m not making her apologize for wanting what she wanted.
For choosing Cassian and doing whatever they did last night.
The rules exist so she doesn’t have to manage us.
We all chose her, even Eli, I see the way he looks at her--different than how he does me, but there’s still the desire there, the hunger.
Even if I spent half the night awake tracking sounds through the floorboards, I won’t let her know how much I want to kiss her, press her body to me until my scent overrides Cassian’s.
Which is stupid. If she agrees to be our Omega, then it’s all of us.
Though I don’t know how Cassian feels. If she chooses him and not us?
Would he tell her we’re a pack and any female has to want all of us or none of us?
Don’t know if I’d be able to if I were him.
She goes quiet. “Okay.” Then again, more certain: “Okay.”
“Can I ask you something?” Her voice goes soft. Hesitant. The kind of tone that means she’s already half-convinced she shouldn’t.
“Anything,” I say. No qualifiers. She can have whatever she wants from me.
She clears her throat. “Why don’t you all already have an Omega? I mean, you’re what, thirty? You could’ve had your pick by now.”
A bitter sound tries to come out. Not quite a laugh. “We did. Once.”
Her gaze lifts. “What happened?”
Meredith’s name sticks in my throat, catching on the scar tissue that never quite healed right.
“We were eighteen when we found her. She was twenty-four—smarter than all three of us combined, bossy as hell, had this laugh that could pull Cassian out of a black mood in thirty seconds flat.” My grip tightens on the rail. “Made me forget I had rules.”
Jess smiles faintly. “Sounds like someone I’d get along with.”
“Yeah,” I admit. “You would’ve. She didn’t take shit from anyone. First week she moved in, she reorganized Cassian’s entire workshop, and when he complained, she told him if he wanted to live like a feral dog, he could do it outside.”
That pulls a soft laugh from Jess. It helps. Makes the next part easier.
“It was good. Better than good. We built the foundation of that house with her—literally. Meredith loved the smell of sawdust and lemon oil. Said it meant we were building something real, that if we just kept going, we could make anything work.” I can still see her standing in the frame of what would become our kitchen, hair tied back, hands on her hips, telling us the support beam was two inches off and we’d better fix it before the inspector showed up.
“We thought we were solid. Thought we’d figured out what everyone said was impossible—four people who fit. Who wanted the same things.”
The fog curls around the porch rail. Jess doesn’t move, doesn’t fill the silence. Just waits. That’s what undoes me.
“Then there was Blake.” The name scrapes me like razor blades to my heart.
“Another Alpha?” Her tone is careful.
“He was twenty-five. Older. Smarter than us, or so we thought. He was… charming in the way men like that are. The kind of charm that hides evil.”
Jess’s fingers tighten around her mug, but she doesn’t interrupt.