Chapter 5
CHAPTER FIVE
Declan
Barbecue day dawns with the kind of stupidly wholesome sunshine that makes my eyes hurt.
Sweetwater Pines looks like a brochure. Kids’ bikes on lawns. Chalk drawings ghosting the sidewalks. Two houses down, Mrs. Pritchard is already dead-heading her rosebushes with the kind of determination I reserve for all-nighters on a launch night.
I should be asleep.
Instead, I’m standing barefoot in our backyard at nine on a Saturday morning, squinting at a half-assembled grill and trying not to think about the ghost next door.
It’s been three days since Mia sprinted out of our kitchen.
Three days of radio silence from 124 Pine Lane.
We know she’s there. We see the lights go on and off. We see the mail disappear from her porch. But she hasn’t stepped foot outside since Wednesday morning, like she’s hoping if she stays very, very still, the pack of alphas next door will simply despawn.
“She’s not going to come.” Knox swallows a yawn and replaces it with a protein bar, punishing the dry square with a slow, heavy grind of his molars. He’s on the patio steps, fresh from his shower, bare feet braced wide. He’s watching me watch the fence.
Rhys is beside him, sitting with elbows on his knees, silent and tensed like he always is before we’re around strangers. He looks like he’s just hanging out. I know better. His jaw is tight.
“She said she’d come,” I say, kicking the grill box. Pain zings up my toes. Worth it. “Eli invited her. She said yes.”
“That was before she spent seventy-two hours hiding in her house,” Knox mutters. “People say yes to a lot of things and still bail. Especially when they realize the neighborhood HOA president is a demon in a sundress.”
I grin despite myself. “You just don’t like Carol because she told you that you couldn’t keep the server rack on the front porch.”
“It wasn’t even there for long.”
“It was there for two days,” Rhys says quietly.
Knox scowls at him.
The screen door slides open and Eli steps out, already in host mode.
Clean dark jeans. Black t-shirt that’s tight over his chest and stretched across his shoulders.
He’s got a list in one hand, his phone in the other, and his scent is that steady warm-oats comfort that’s been keeping the rest of us from detonating all week.
“Chairs?” he asks without preamble.
“Set up,” Rhys answers.
“Coolers?”
Knox doesn’t even look up from his protein bar. He points a thumb toward the shaded side of the patio, his other hand tapping a quick rhythm on his leg like he’s coding in his head. “Done. Stocked and staged. Two with ice, one dry for the wine.”
Eli marks a mental checkbox.
“Hm.” His gaze flicks over Knox, then to me, and finally to the hedge between our yard and 124. “Food?”
“In progress,” I say, wrestling a metal side-panel that refuses to align. “The steaks are marinated. The propane is hooked up. But this bracket is fighting me for dominance.”
Eli walks over and crouches down. He sees the misalignment I’m struggling with and presses his thumb against the metal to force it into place so I can drive the screw home.
“Torque it,” he says quietly.
I tighten the bolt. It clicks into place perfectly. Teamwork.
“Done,” Eli says, straightening up and wiping his hands on his jeans. “You’re on fire duty. You promised Tom. You like fire. It’s a good fit.”
“I do like fire,” I agree, testing the igniter with a satisfying click-whoosh.
Rhys snorts. It’s the closest he gets to a laugh in the morning.
Eli’s eyes flick to the hedge again. His nostrils flare just a little. “She up?”
My heart does a short-circuiting thing. “How would I know?”
Knox’s mouth curves. “Because you were at the kitchen window at seven like a creep, that’s how.”
“I was checking the weather. You know, since it’s barbecue day and all.”
“For an hour?” Rhys asks. His tone is flat. His eyes aren’t.
“Forecast said high chance of judgment,” Knox adds. “Fifty percent chance of you spontaneously combusting if she wears a sundress.”
I flip him off.
Eli hides a smile. Barely. “We’re not jumping her at the barbecue,” he says, voice going into that calm, alpha-proof register he uses when he needs us pointed in a direction. “We host. We charm. We don’t scare her.”
I know that tone. Handler voice.
“Who said anything about jumping?” Knox frowns, looking offended. “I’m going to be a delight. The definition of neighborly.”
“You’re going to flirt until the HOA files an incident report,” I say.
“And you’re not?” he shoots back.
“We,” Eli repeats firmly, looking at each of us in turn, “are going to behave. She’s alone here. New house. New neighborhood. New pack next door. We’re a lot.”
“Understatement of the century,” I mutter.
Rhys shifts his shoulders, rolling out tension. “We don’t touch her unless she reaches first,” he says, backing Eli up. “No crowding. No cornering.”
“You three act like I don’t have self-control,” Knox protests. “I have so much self-control. I am famous for my self-control.”
I bark a laugh. “You dismantled our biggest competitor’s entire backend in a single night because they tried to poach our lead engineer.”
“They broke the non-compete.” Knox blinks at us, knowing he has a point. “I just ran a test to show them the error of their ways.”
“You bricked their platform, Knox,” Rhys murmurs. “Legal is still dealing with the fallout.”
“They stopped poaching.” Knox shrugs. “Problem solved.”
Eli sighs, giving him the flattest beta stare in the Sweetwater area. “Just…don’t go full Knox,” he says. “Half Knox. Charming, but not lethal.”
He’s worried, under all that calm. I can feel it. His tone goes cooler when he’s anxious. Anticipation and strain.
I step closer, bumping Eli’s shoulder with mine. “You’re overthinking it,” I murmur. “We’re not idiots.”
“Debatable,” Knox says under his breath.
I flip him off.
Eli’s mouth twitches. “I just…don’t want to spook her.”
There it is. The core of it. Eli’s got his calm and his steadiness and his responsible older-brother thing, but underneath, he’s just as gone as the rest of us. He’s just better at pretending otherwise.
“We won’t,” I promise. “We’ll be perfect gentlemen.”
“Relative to what?” Rhys mutters.
“Relative to us,” I fire back. “Low bar, easy to clear.”
Eli exhales, like he’s trying to let some of the tension out with the air. “Fine. Repeat after me: hosting first, dating later.”
“Hosting first,” Knox echoes dutifully. “Dating slightly later.”
I grin. “Dating aggressively later.”
“Declan,” Eli warns.
I shimmy my shoulders. “I’ll be good, too. I swear on my very expensive grill.”
“The one you just polished with a microfiber cloth?” Rhys asks dryly.
“Dust creates buildup.” I check the reflection on the hood. “Buildup creates off-flavors.”
“It’s a burger, Dek. She’s not going to care.”
“I care,” I say, and I’m dead fucking serious. “This is the first time she’s eating from my hand. It’s going to be perfect.”
“Focus,” Eli groans.
I do try. Really.
But then, around ten-thirty, a breeze shifts.
It’s subtle. Just a thread of new scent weaving through the warm suburban air, curling under the tang of charcoal and cut grass and sunscreen.
Strawberries.
Not the cheap artificial kind. The real ones. Sun-warm and ripe. Sugar-coated and mixed in with champagne. And beneath all that, the faint, nervous prickle of omega anxiety.
Every alpha neuron in my brain stands up and salutes.
Knox goes rigid on the steps. Rhys’s head snaps toward the hedge so fast I hear his neck crack. Eli’s hand tightens around the dish towel he’s holding until the fabric strains.
“She’s up,” I say unnecessarily. No one argues.
We try, we really do, to not just stand there and sniff like perverts. Eli starts barking orders at us, half to get things done, half to keep our idiot selves busy.
By noon, the yard looks…respectable. Tables set up. Chairs spaced out. Grill preheated. Coolers stocked.
Other neighbors start to trickle in. Tom arrives first with his golden retriever, Mala, and a giant bowl of potato salad.
He claps me on the back so hard I almost faceplant into the cole slaw.
Mrs. Pritchard brings samosas. The college kid from across the way shows up in a faded gaming convention t-shirt and immediately imprints on Knox and Rhys like they’re rare Pokémon.
We mingle. We host. We do the thing.
I’m laughing at one of Tom’s terrible jokes when Rhys’s fingers close around my elbow. It’s light, but his grip has that tension that always makes my spine snap straight.
“She’s here,” he murmurs under his breath.
Everything in me goes quiet.
I turn.
For a second, the yard noise blurs. The conversations fuzz out. The only thing left is her.
Mia steps through the gate like she’s not sure she’s allowed to. She hovers just inside the fence line, a foil-covered dish in her hands.
The sundress hits me like a truck.
Soft yellow, thin straps, the kind of easy, floaty fabric that sways around her thighs when she walks. It cinches under her breasts and leaves her shoulders bare, a long line of throat down to the delicate dip of her collarbone.
Her hair is down for the first time since we’ve met, a dark, glossy waterfall around her face. The sun hits strands of copper in it I hadn’t seen before.
She smells like strawberries but it’s muted, like she’s wearing blockers, but the nerves are pushing right through them. Bright and spiky. Underneath that, the steady hum of healthy omega. Warm. Soft.
My mouth goes dry.
Mine, something primitive in me snarls.
I don’t realize till a second later that it’s my alpha.
The word is instant. I don’t even get the selfish, singular version before my pack rolls into the claim. Ours. Pack-deep. Non-negotiable.
And the others—fuck. We’re hopeless.
Eli, who’s been mid-sentence with Carol, the HOA president, just stops. His gaze slides over Mia, and for a split second, the polite beta mask completely shatters. He seems to catch himself, blinks, and reboots his polite face.