Chapter eighteen #2
Relief hits me before I even move. Hearing the words—the permission, the choice—and everything inside me unclenches.
I close the door. The click of the latch is the loudest sound in the world.
Garrett shifts on the bed, making space.
He doesn’t tell me to come closer. He doesn’t have to.
I cross the room and climb onto the mattress beside him, and the second I’m there, his scent moves around me: honey and sage, warm and safe.
My omega sighs, a full-body exhale that goes all the way to my bones.
He pulls me in, just like that. One arm hooked around my shoulders, the other hand finding the back of my head and drawing me close so my face is pressed right up against his chest. His heartbeat is right there, a steady tick, tucked under the fabric of his shirt.
I breathe it in, and suddenly my lungs fill up with nothing but him.
“I’ve got you,” he says, low and gentle. “I’m right here.”
And then he purrs.
It’s not the faraway rumble I sometimes hear through the walls or down the hall when he’s with Miles. This is up close, no filter, pressed right against my bones. The vibration rolls through me, seeping into every hollow, smoothing out all the rough parts.
My headache? Shatters. It doesn’t fade slowly. It breaks and falls off me. In its place, there’s warmth. Just Garrett. The pulse of his purr humming through my body, telling me it’s okay, even if nothing outside is.
“Thank you,” I whisper, muffled against his chest. “Thank you, thank you, thank you.”
His arms get tighter. His lips brush my hair, barely there, more like a breath than a kiss. His purr deepens, and he shifts, finding exactly the right spot to make my muscles go soft and my brain go quiet.
And now I’m crying. Not from pain… the pain is gone.
I’m crying because this is all I’ve wanted for so long.
This right here. An alpha holding me, purring for me, the smell of someone who cares wrapping all around me until nothing else matters.
This is what Gabriel asked me to pretend I didn’t need.
What Dr. Turner said I was starving for.
What’s been eating me alive: missing it, being told I couldn’t have it, being denied the one thing my body can’t function without.
It won’t last. I know it. This is stolen, borrowed, a few minutes behind a closed door before it all gets taken away.
But right now, with Garrett’s heartbeat under my ear and his purr making a home in my chest, I don’t care what it costs. I’ll pay later. Please let me have this.
We stay like that. I lose track of time.
Ten minutes, maybe more, my body soaking up every second.
My scent comes back, peach and ozone filling the room like it never left.
The change is instant—proximity to my alpha, and I’m alive again.
Garrett notices. The rumble skips, like he’s been waiting to smell me alive again and didn’t know how much he needed it.
“There you are,” he murmurs. “That’s you. God, that’s really you.”
I press closer, greedy for it. His hand moves slowly through my hair, rhythmic, gentle. I could stay here forever. I could live in this moment and never want anything else.
The door opens without a knock or a warning. Gabriel stands there, and the second he sees us, the whole world splits open.
He takes it in. Me on Garrett’s bed, curled up against him. Garrett’s arms around me, his hand in my hair, the purr still going. The scents in the room tangled up together, thick and impossible to explain away as anything but what it is. Sustained. Intentional.
Gabriel goes rigid. Every muscle in his body has locked up. His eyes go dark and cold. A cold that comes right before everything collapses.
He steps in and closes the door behind him. The click of it echoes like a gunshot.
“Let go of her,” he tells Garrett. The danger in his voice is something I’ve never heard from him before.
Garrett doesn’t move. “She was in pain, Gabriel.”
“I said let go of her.”
Garrett’s arms loosen, and I sit up, pulling away. The cold hits me instantly; the headache starts crawling back in at the edges. Losing his touch is physical, a gasp, a flinch, my whole body screaming at the loss of what it just had.
“What part of limited contact was unclear?” Gabriel asks. He doesn’t yell. The quiet is way worse. “What part of ‘the more you touch her, the stronger it gets’ did you not understand?”
“She was sick. She came to me for help.”
“And you should have sent her to me.”
“You won’t help her. You made that clear.”
Gabriel’s face doesn’t change. “I am helping her. I’m protecting her from getting more attached to a pack that can’t keep her. That’s help, Garrett, even if you don’t want to see it.”
“She was about to break down. I’m not going to watch her suffer because you—“
“Because I what?” Gabriel steps in, closer. “Because I promised Miles? Because I’m trying to keep this pack together? Because I’m the only one around here who remembers we already have an omega, and she isn’t it? You promised Miles too, Garrett. And now you’re breaking it.”
The words smack into me, one after another.
“She is not your omega. She’s not mine. She’s not Cyrus’s.
She’s a temporary guest, and every time you pull her into your bed and purr for her, you make it harder for her to leave.
You’re not helping her. You’re making it worse.
You’re giving her something she can’t keep, and when it’s gone, she’ll fall apart. And so will you.”
“So what, I just let her suffer?”
“Yes.” Gabriel says it without flinching. “If that’s what it takes to protect Miles, then yes. She suffers. We all suffer. Except him. That’s the deal.”
I’m crying and can’t stop. The tears keep coming because that’s what he’s deciding. Out loud. In front of all of us. He’s choosing my pain over Miles’s discomfort, and he’s calling it a deal like there’s any version of this where I agreed to it.
“Gabriel, please—“ I try.
“Don’t.” He turns on me and all his attention crushes down at once. “Don’t sit there in my packmate’s bed, smelling like him, and ask me for anything. You knew the rules. You knew what I asked. I asked you to lie about the touch helping, and instead you came to his room and—“
“She was in pain!” Garrett is on his feet now. “Real, physical pain. Her headache was…”
“Her headache is always bad. It’s always the excuse. And every time, you break. Every time, you choose her over Miles.”
“That’s not true.”
“It’s exactly true. You’re choosing the omega who smells like your match over the omega who trusts you. And Miles can smell it, Garrett. He can smell her on you for days after. Do you know what that does to him?”
The door opens.
Miles.
He stands in the doorway and everything stops. His eyes go over the room. Me on the bed. Garrett still close. The air heavy with all our scents.
His face changes in a way I’ll never forget. Real hurt this time instead of his usual malice. His mouth opens, but nothing comes out except a broken sound, as if he’s finally… snapped.
He glares at me. At Garrett’s bed. At the proof that I’ve been lying here, wrapped up in his alpha’s arms, soaking up comfort that’s supposed to be his.
“You—“ His voice breaks. “You were in his bed.”
“Miles, it’s not what—“ Garrett starts.
“HIS BED!” Miles screams. It’s a scream he can’t control, the kind that shreds the throat on the way out. “You were in his bed! He was holding you! I smell you all over each other, you were—you were PURRING for her—“
He’s shaking so bad I can see it from across the room, fighting to keep it together, and losing. I see the split second he gives up.
He lunges at Garrett. Hands reaching, nails out, the sound he makes more animal than person.
But halfway there he twists and comes at me instead, and the look in his eyes isn’t mean or calculated.
It’s pure, wild panic. The type where an omega is sure he’s being replaced, right now, in front of everyone.