Chapter 19 #2
“I expected exactly that. I just wanted to see if you’d do it.”
Her eyes narrow playfully. “Are you saying you let me test you?”
“I’m saying I like it when you do.” I turn us again, this time adding a small dip that makes her grip my shoulder tighter. “I like that you’re not performing. That you’re just…here. Being you.”
The playfulness softens into something else. Something that makes the air between us feel heavier, warmer. “Is that what you think I do? Perform?”
“I think you’ve had to,” I say carefully. “I think you’ve spent a long time figuring out what version of yourself keeps you safest. What I’m saying is—” I pull her a fraction closer. “You don’t have to do that here. Not with me. Not with any of us.”
“That’s a big promise, Eli.”
“I don’t make the other kind.”
Her thumb brushes my jaw, slow, like she’s smoothing something there or memorizing the shape of it.
“This okay?” I ask because asking is muscle memory with me. It’s not a performance. It’s the point.
She nods, breath catching. “Yeah.”
We keep moving. The radio croons about coming back, about choosing to stay, about hands you can trust. The cabin carries our footsteps like a secret.
“Rowan told me the part about the house. How Meredith loved the smell of sawdust and lemon oil. How she stood inside the kitchen studs and told you the beam was two inches off.”
“We moved it two inches,” I say.
“Of course you did.”
Her hand slides to the back of my neck, fingers threading into short hair at my nape. It’s not possessive. It’s…claim-adjacent.
I lean in a little, then stop just shy. She closes the distance. Her mouth is soft and sure. She tastes like coffee gone sweet on the tongue and something that belongs to the afternoon—salt from the air, warmth from the steam of her earlier shower, a note I can’t name that feels like relief.
It’s not Rowan’s hungry gravity. It’s not Cassian’s wildfire. It’s a door opening into a room that was always there.
Her lips part, a whisper of breath against mine, and I let the kiss go deeper—unhurried, deliberate. My hand tightens at her waist for a second, enough to say I’m here without saying you’re mine. She answers with a soft sound that goes straight to my knees.
A slow warmth rolls through my chest. I angle us a fraction, pinning her gently between me and the counter—not trapped, just held.
Her fingers tip my chin up like she wants more access, and I give it, mouth tilting, the slow parting and deeper taste, a low hum I’m not pretending isn’t a little desperate.
I break first because someone has to. I rest my forehead to hers. We breathe the same small square of air until our hearts find a pace that doesn’t feel like running.
“You taste like autumn and cinnamon-flavored hot chocolate,” she whispers, smiling against my mouth.
“Don’t tell Cassian,” I murmur. “He’s been trying to ruin my reputation for years.”
She laughs, softer this time, and it presses into me in all the right places.
The sweatshirt hem brushes my thigh. Her legs shift, knees brushing my hips, and for one bright, reckless second, I imagine the back of her knees in my palms, the counter edge biting my hip, the rhythm changing.
It would be so easy to let the kiss tip from warm to scorching.
“I want—” she starts, then stops, throat working.
“Me too,” I say, and the two words do a lot of heavy lifting. “We can want and also not rush.”
“Brunch might have killed them,” she says, voice low and amused. “We have time.”
“We do,” I agree, because yes, and also because the sentence tastes like a promise I don’t make lightly.
Another song starts on the radio—something with a little more lift in it, still slow, the kind that makes you sway without realizing you’re doing it. I put us back into motion, a step and a turn, her grin blooming like we just broke a rule and found out the world didn’t end.
We move together through a full rotation before she speaks again, and I can feel her thinking, processing, deciding something.
“You don’t second-guess yourself much, do you?” she asks. “With this. With me.”
“Should I?”
“No, I just—” She shakes her head slightly. “Rowan looks like he’s constantly at war with himself. Cassian acts first, thinks later. But you...” Her gaze searches my face. “You’re very sure.”
“Only when it matters.”
Her hand coasts down the front of my shirt, stopping at a button. She toys with the edge of it, thoughtful. “Everyone treats you like the steady one,” she says. “Like you don’t need…anything.”
“I need lots of things. Probably more than most,” I say simply.
She looks up quickly, eyes sharp, like she’s memorizing that. “Okay. Then tell me when I miss it.”
“I will.”
We dance through another chorus. She fits under my chin in a way that makes some old ache quiet in the bones.
I imagine for one unguarded second a late fall evening in this same kitchen: pumpkin soup steaming, Rowan kissing her cheek on his way to the toaster, Cassian stealing a piece of bread and getting smacked with a wooden spoon for his trouble, Jess rolling her eyes and laughing, me pretending not to see any of it while seeing all of it.
The picture is so clear it feels like it already happened somewhere, once.
We stop dancing without stopping touching. I brush a stray hair off her cheek.
“Rowan told me something else,” she adds after a minute, not looking up. “He said you’re a whole together. That some Omegas didn’t like that.”
My hand stills on her waist. “He told you about the others.”
“Some. Not all the details. Just that—” She looks up, meeting my eyes. “That some wanted you to be separate. Wanted to pick and choose.”
“Yeah.” I dance us through another turn, slower now.
“Most Omegas who came after Meredith wanted the Alpha experience. Rowan and Cassian, the protection, the status, the traditional pack structure. I was…” I search for the right word.
“Tolerated. The friend who happened to live there. The Beta, who was useful but not essential.”
“That’s bullshit,” she says flatly.
A laugh huffs out of me. “Agreed. But it’s not uncommon. Betas in pack dynamics are often treated as accessories. Support staff. We’re not driven by the same biology, so we’re seen as lesser. Safer, maybe, but lesser.”
“Is that how Rowan and Cassian see you?”
“God, no.” The answer comes fast, certain.
“They’d throw themselves in front of a bus for me.
But they also know what I bring to the table isn’t the same as what they bring.
And for a while, we thought that might be okay—that we could find an Omega who wanted all of us but in different ways.
Who needed their Alpha sides but also wanted… ” I trail off.
“Wanted what?”
“Someone who listens. Who sees the small things? Who doesn’t lead with dominance but with attention.” I meet her gaze. “Someone who wants to be chosen, not claimed.”
Her breath catches. “Eli—”
“Most Omegas we met after Meredith wanted to separate us. And when they realized I came with the package, that I wasn’t just going to step aside or play a supporting role, they’d leave. Or they’d stay and freeze me out. Make it clear I was tolerated, not wanted.”
“That’s not—” She stops, recalibrates. “How many?”
“Four serious attempts. A handful of dates that went nowhere.” I keep my tone level, almost clinical.
It helps. “One told me outright she’d stay if I left.
That she could handle two Alphas, but adding a Beta complicated the vibe.
’ Another tried to sleep with me once, like she was checking a box, and then never touched me again.
Made it clear that it was charity, not desire. ”
Her fingers dig into my shoulder. “Jesus.”
“It’s fine. I’m fine with it.” And I am, mostly. “It taught us that we need someone who wants all of us, not just the parts that make sense on paper. Who doesn’t see me as a consolation prize or a quirk to tolerate?”
She’s quiet for a long moment, just swaying with me. “I don’t see you that way.”
“I know.” And I do. I’ve been watching her, cataloging every interaction, every glance. The way she leans into my space when she’s uncertain. How she ask my opinion like it matters. The fact that she’s here, in my arms, kissing me like she means it. “You see all of us. That’s why this works.”
“I want all of you,” she says, and the words land like a vow. “Even the complicated parts.”
Something hot and bright unfurls in my chest. “That’s a big thing to say, Jess.”
“Good thing I mean it.”
I stop dancing. Pull back just enough to look at her properly. “Say it again.”
“I want you—all three of you.” Her eyes don’t waver. “Rowan, Cassian, you. The whole messy package. I’m not here to cherry-pick. I’m here because—” She swallows. “Because you feel like home. All of you.”
I kiss her then, hard and sure, because words aren’t enough for what’s pouring through me. She makes a small sound of surprise that melts into something warmer, hungrier, her hands fisting in my shirt.
When I pull back, we’re both breathing hard.
“You know they’re going to wake up soon,” she says.
“Probably,” I agree.
“We should stop.”
“We should,” I echo, which is not the same thing as we will.
She turns her face up to mine. I oblige her like it’s a ritual.
The second kiss isn’t chaste. It’s slow at first, then not.
She hooks two fingers in the collar of my shirt and draws me the inch she wants.
Lust flares; I let it, meeting her mouth, parting for her, tasting lemon and salt and the warm reality of her tongue against mine.
My hand finds her thigh where the sweatshirt ends, thumb skimming the inside above her knee; warmth answers under my palm, a slow yes that makes my cock harden.
Her breath hitches—a small, helpless sound I make a map of.
We stop because the kitchen is not a place for the next thing, at least not the first time I’m with her, and also because I like the almost more than I should. It stretches a bright thread between us.
A couch groans in protest. Cassian coughs, swears, then goes silent. Rowan shifts and mumbles something about wolves and waffles that I will never let him live down.
Jess bites her lip to keep from laughing. I kiss that, quick and unrepentant.
Rowan scrubs a hand over his face, eyes slitting open. He looks at Jess, at me, takes in the distance between our bodies and the color in our faces, and the faintest, smallest smile tugs at the corner of his mouth before he schools it away.
“Hmm,” he says, eloquent as ever.
“Dinner at nine,” I say, because schedules make everyone feel safe. “If you’re hungry by then.”
Cassian glares like I’ve insulted him personally. “I’m always hungry.”
“Greens and healthy,” I warn.
He groans like he’s been shot. Rowan smirks, and Jess bumps my hip with hers, conspirator to the crime.
Small victories. The kind that stitches a day into something you can wear tomorrow. I’ll take them. I’ll take all of them.