Chapter nine #3
“I know.”
“And Cyrus likes her too. You should’ve seen his face after he fixed her bandage. He wore it all day.”
“Cyrus likes that she doesn’t flinch around him. You know how he gets about that.”
“And you.” The words crack. “You like her.”
Garrett doesn’t deny it. “She’s easy to like. She’s kind.”
“I was kind. Before.”
He hauls me into his arms. I don’t fight him. He kisses the top of my head, my temple, the shell of my ear. His hands rub up and down my back. “You’re still kind. You’re just hurt.”
I breathe him in. My body should be settling. My cock should be going down.
It’s not.
Garrett’s hands stop moving. His breath catches. He’s scenting the air, and his head pulls back. His eyes drift to mine.
“Miles.”
I sense what he smells. He smells the ozone and peaches clinging to my skin. He smells the hot iron of my anger. And underneath it, beneath the burnt sugar of my distress, he smells the salt-sweet musk of my arousal.
I try to pull away. He holds tight.
“Miles.” He says my name softer this time, but there’s a thread of alarm.
“It’s nothing. I’m just—it’s been a while since any of you touched me. It’s normal.”
“The last time I touched you was two days ago. We fucked in the shower. You came twice.”
My cheeks burn. “Then I don’t know. I don’t know what’s wrong with me.”
He’s quiet. He knows I’m lying.
Then he offers. He sounds careful, deliberate, like he always is when I’m wound up and he’s trying to get me to settle. “You want me to help you with that?”
I almost say yes. My body screams yes. My omega has always belonged to Garrett—sweet, steady, safe Garrett who was the first person I let touch me sexually after my pack died.
He was… is the safest alpha here. He saved me from the panic attacks and the screaming nightmares. His hands are my favorite thing.
But I can’t. If I let him touch me now, he’ll be touching a version of me that doesn’t fully belong to him. A version of me that got hard while making an omega bare her neck. He’ll be touching me while my skin still smells like her. It would be a lie. A betrayal.
I shove away. “No.”
Garrett stares at me, shocked.
“I’m fine. It’ll go away. I just—I need to shower. I’m going to shower.”
“Miles.” He’s got that tone. He’s figured it out. “Miles, were you—is that why your scent’s like this? Did she—“
I don’t wait for the end of the question. I run.
***
My nest used to be my safe place.
When they first brought me home from the hospital, I couldn’t sleep anywhere else.
I tried the bedroom they’d prepared—the one with the bright yellow walls and the big windows and the hand-knitted blanket folded at the end of the bed.
It was a nice room. It looked like the room of an omega who deserved nice things.
I spent three nights sobbing on the floor of the walk-in closet before Garrett found me. He didn’t try to drag me out. Just sat in the doorway and talked about nothing until I fell asleep.
The next day, he and Gabriel and Cyrus started building me a nest in the pack room.
It took up half the huge bed. We all knew I wouldn’t sleep in there—not with alphas, not after what happened.
But they did it anyway. They bought all kinds of fluffy blankets and different styles of pillows.
They put their shirts in it and scented everything.
They knew exactly what to do even though they’d never had an omega before. Especially a broken one.
Then they left their own pack room and told me to make the space mine.
I slept for fourteen hours. Woke up screaming, and all three of them were there in a second.
“Okay,” Gabriel said, holding me. “Okay. This is good. It’s a start.”
I’ve slept here ever since. Not every night. Sometimes I sleep in my alphas’ personal beds when they want some alone time with me. But usually it’s here. The nest has shrunk as I’ve gotten better—I don’t need the walls so high to feel safe anymore. But they’re still higher than the average nest.
I pace for a while. I’ve been up since four, and my body is exhausted, but my mind won’t stop. I shower again. I scrub my skin until it’s raw, but she lingers.
Fine.
I crawl back into my nest. The sheets and pillows and blankets are saturated with the scents of my alphas.
Three years of scenting—lazy Sunday mornings, post-nightmare cuddles, heat cycles where they took care of me so gently that I didn’t have to be afraid.
Home. Safety. Everything I’ve fought to keep.
And underneath all of it, so faint I could almost pretend it isn’t there—her fucking omega scent. Clinging to my skin. Rubbing off into my nest. It’s wrong. This is the one place she shouldn’t exist. And she’s here anyway.
I don’t touch myself. I won’t give her that.
But I don’t sleep either.
I hear the shower down the hall. Her shower. Maybe she’s trying to scrub me from her skin the same way I tried. Later, she’ll go to the kitchen, and she’ll see me, and her blue eyes will pierce right through me. She’ll know exactly how she affects me.
I pull a pillow over my head and scream.