Chapter seventeen
Cyrus
Garrett and I walk in together, three steps past the front door before it hits us. The scent.
I freeze. Garrett does too. The air’s thick enough to chew.
Omegas.
Not the usual baseline. Every house with an omega in it has a background hum, a low-level cloud of pheromone.
This is a bomb. Wet, sweet, dizzying. It goes straight to the roof of my mouth, up my nose, behind my eyes.
It’s all over everything. Two scents, layered but distinct.
Burning bright. Colliding. Slick. Desire.
The aftermath of a fight, or something harder than fighting.
I grab the wall with one hand, just to keep upright. My cock stirs, doesn’t care about my confusion. The scent is so raw I can taste it.
Garrett’s blinking fast, trying to clear his vision. He coughs into his sleeve, shakes his head, then leans back and sniffs again. Cautious this time.
He looks at me, face pale. “Is that—“
“Yeah.”
“Both?”
“Yeah.” It comes out as gravel. My throat’s tight.
It shouldn’t be possible. Not like this. Not this strong. But there’s no denying what the air says.
We move together, silent. Don’t need to talk. Follow the trail through the house, two hounds on a scent. The kitchen is ground zero. The invisible stain at the island, splattered outward.
I stare at the countertop, where the smell is strongest. There’s no sign of mess—just a regular kitchen, maybe cleaner than it was this morning.
But the scent pulses off the stone, out of the air above it.
Miles’s burnt sugar and metal, stronger than usual.
Lily’s ozone-peach, cranked all the way up and sticky-sweet.
Both of them spiked with the low, bruised ache of real want. Wet want.
Garrett’s nostrils flare. He sets his bag down slow, hands shaking. Looks at the counter. Then at me. Then back at the counter, like he’s waiting for it to confess.
He tries a joke. “You ever see anything like this in the wild?”
“No.” I force a breath, clear my head. My cock’s hard as a pipe. “Not even close.”
He’s not joking now. He walks around the island, sniffs, then snorts like it’ll help. “It’s everywhere. How—“
I grunt, because he’s right and because the sound is safer than words.
There’s a silence. Then Garrett, low and urgent: “Did they—“ He can’t finish.
Doesn’t have to. The scent says everything.
No one could mistake this for an accident. The scent of fresh omega arousal saturates the room, desperate and unmistakable, slick spread across skin. This is two omegas so wound up they couldn’t keep it to themselves.
Whatever happened here… it didn’t stop when it should have.
I walk to the sink, grab the edge and squeeze until my hand aches. My pulse is up. Every cell of me wants to find both of them and make sense of it. I don’t know if it means screaming, or fucking, or something else.
Garrett moves behind me. He’s closer than I expect, his voice right at my ear: “What do we do?”
I want to say: We go upstairs, we find them, we make sure they’re okay.
I need to say: We wait for Gabriel, let him take care of it.
I would like to say: None of your fucking business, Garrett, just leave it alone.
But I can’t say any of it, because the only thing I ache to do right now is to take a deep breath, and then another, until I can hold their scent inside me.
So I say nothing.
We stand there, two big idiots, staring at a kitchen that smells like an orgy but looks like a Martha Stewart crime scene.
Garrett shakes his head, like he’s trying to rattle the thoughts out. Looks at me. “This doesn’t make sense. Miles hates her.”
He says it soft, like it’s a secret.
“Maybe not as much as he thought,” I say. The words are weird in my mouth, like talking with someone else’s teeth.
Garrett opens his mouth, shuts it. Then, after a beat, says what we’re both thinking. “But… Miles doesn’t even like women.”
I shrug. It’s all I have.
We both know that isn’t true. Miles doesn’t like anyone who’s a threat. Anyone who might take his pack, his alphas, his place. But I’ve seen him watch Lily when he doesn’t know I’m watching him. He catalogues her. Measures her. His scent goes wild around her, even when he’s hating her out loud.
Maybe it was never hate.
Garrett circles the kitchen once more, then heads to the living room. I follow. I don’t want to stand here anymore, breathing in their ache and wanting to make it worse. Better. Both.
We sit, both on the same side of the couch. The house is quiet, but the echo of what happened is still in the air, the violence of it, the promise. My body can’t let it go.
Neither omega is in the living room. No sound from upstairs, no footsteps, no voices. But their scents drift—Miles is in the pack room, Lily in her room, the two trails never crossing. Aftermath.
Garrett stares at his hands, flexes them open and closed. “Do you know what this means?” he asks, the question so loaded I can’t believe it came from him.
I shake my head, slow.
He turns toward me, hope in his eyes. “It means they could…like, maybe, it’s possible. Maybe they could both stay. Maybe it was always supposed to be this way. If they both—if they want each other. If they want us.“ His mouth twists. “A full pack. Both omegas. It’s been done.”
I need to shut it down. Tell him not to get his hopes up.
But I can’t, because the thought is there: two omegas, both of them ours, both laughing in the kitchen, or play fighting, or—god—making us breakfast in nothing but our shirts.
Both of them in the nest, side by side, between us, all the soft and the sharp tangled together until you can’t tell where one ends and the next starts.
I let myself think it, just for a second.
Then I look away. “You want to be the one to tell Gabriel?”
Garrett grins, but it’s not real. “Hell no.”
We sit in silence, waiting for something to happen. My body won’t rest. The air is still slick, still sweet, every inhale a new problem.
Then the front door opens, and the problem gets bigger.
Gabriel.
His footsteps are heavy, precise. He stops in the entryway, the same place we did. He stands there for a long moment, scenting. His nostrils flare. His pupils blow wide. His cock’s hard before he even takes his shoes off. When he calls out, his voice is clipped: “Cyrus. Garrett.”
Garrett stands. “In here.”
Gabriel enters. His eyes are wide, hungry, and his face is unreadable. He says nothing at first. Just scans the room, following the drift of omega need through the air. Then, abrupt: “Is that what I think it is?”
Garrett nods. “Yes.”
Gabriel’s eyes fix on me. “Why?”
I spread my hands. I have no answer.
He paces, restless, three quick laps around the kitchen and living room, as if by moving he can outdistance the want. He comes to a hard stop in front of the couch. Runs a hand over his hair, up and down the back of his neck.
“This is going to complicate things,” he says.
Garrett sits back down and leans forward. “Or simplify them.”
Gabriel’s hand comes down. “Don’t.”
“Hear me out. If Miles is feeling something for her—if whatever happened today means he’s starting to —“
“It doesn’t mean that.”
“The scent says otherwise. Both of them, Gabriel. At the same time. That’s not one-sided.”
“It could mean a hundred things. It could mean he cornered her and she panicked. It could mean proximity and hormones. It doesn’t mean he’s ready to share his pack with her.”
Lily’s scent in the kitchen didn’t smell panicked or cornered. The opposite. But Gabriel is talking and I keep my mouth shut, because I know what comes next.
“But if he is —“
“He’s not.” Gabriel’s voice hardens. The pack lead tone that ends conversations.
“Miles might be confused right now. His body might be reacting to her presence—she’s an omega in distress in his territory, his instincts are going to fire.
But that’s not the same as wanting her. That’s not the same as being ready to live with her, sleep next to her, let her into his nest. That takes years, Garrett. We spent years earning that from him.”
“I know how long it took.”
“Then you know that one afternoon doesn’t undo the trauma. It doesn’t undo the fear of replacement, or the promise he thinks I’ll break, or the fact that every time he looks at her he sees the person who could take us away from him.”
“She’s not taking us.”
“He doesn’t know that. He can’t know that, not until he’s healed enough to trust it, and he’s not there yet.
Maybe he never will be.” Gabriel exhales through his nose.
“And in the meantime, if we start treating this like a sign, if we let ourselves hope and act on that hope—we’ll be leading her on.
Lily will think she’s staying. She’ll get more attached, more settled, and then when Miles can’t handle it, when it all falls apart, we’ll have to tear her out of a life she thought was hers.
That’s worse than sending her away now. That’s crueler than anything I’ve done so far. ”
Garrett’s mouth is a flat line. He wants to argue. I can see the words stacking up behind his teeth.
“She can’t stay,” Gabriel says, quieter now.
“I’m not saying this because it’s what I want.
I’m saying it because I know Miles. Better than anyone.
And what happened today—whatever it was—is going to scare him.
He’s going to wake up tomorrow and hate himself for it, and he’s going to take that hatred out on her.
That’s the cycle. That’s how he works. And I won’t watch Lily get caught in it. ”
He says it like she’s not in the house.
Like she’s already gone.
Garrett looks crushed, his shoulders folding in. “Maybe you’re wrong,” he says, but he doesn’t sound convinced.
Gabriel drops into the armchair and leans back, closing his eyes. “Maybe I am. But I’m not risking them on a maybe.”
“You mean you’re not risking Miles,” Garrett says drily. “But you’re willing to risk Lily.”
As if Lily is easier to lose.
Gabriel’s eyes narrow. “I never made any promises to Lily.”
There’s a long pause. The air still pulses with omega, but it feels colder now. A warning. No one says a word as our eyes flick around to each other in turn.
Gabriel stands. “I’m going to shower,” he says.
Garrett nods, but he doesn’t move.
When Gabriel’s gone, Garrett turns to me, eyes wet. “I want them both. Is that so wrong?”
I don’t answer. I squeeze his wrist, a quick one, then let go.
Garrett wipes his eyes. He gives a thin laugh. “Go check on Miles. I’ll give you some privacy for a while.”
I nod.
I take the stairs two at a time, feet silent on the runner. The scent of omega is a current, leading me straight to the pack room. The door’s ajar. I push it open with my foot.
The nest is wrecked. Upended. Blankets and shirts thrown everywhere, pillows all wrong. Miles is in the middle, half-buried, eyes wide and black in the low light.
He sees me. He doesn’t say a word. His whole body tenses, waiting for whatever comes next.
I strip to my boxers and get in the nest. Miles doesn’t move, but his eyes follow every inch. I wrap an arm around him, haul him close, feel his heart hammer through his ribs.
For a long time we lie there, the scent of two omegas and one alpha filling every crack. He’s saturated with her scent and he brought it into his nest. That’s not an accident. That’s a choice.
No. I won’t read into that. I can’t. I can taste the confusion on his skin.
Eventually, his breathing evens. He relaxes, enough to let me know he’s not afraid. I bury my nose in his hair and close my eyes.
I need to tell him: I don’t care what Gabriel says. I want both of you. I want all of us.
But I don’t say anything. I don’t know which part would break him more.
I want to go to her too.
I don’t.
Something changed in this house today.
And none of us know how to undo it.
I hold him until I hear the shower shut off, until Garrett’s steps cross the hall, until the world outside is white noise.
Then, and only then, do I sleep.