Chapter twenty-nine #3
He lifts my hand to his mouth and presses his lips to my knuckles. It’s softer than a kiss. It’s more like a promise, mouth-to-skin, because his words have been too cruel for too long.
“I want to kiss you right now,” he says. “I want it so much it physically hurts.”
I almost want to laugh. “But you can’t.”
“Not yet. Not until Miles is ready. But I need you to know that the wanting is there. It’s always been there.”
I look at him, kneeling on the floor of Jasper’s apartment, eyes red, hands shaking, every wall he’s ever built in pieces around him. This is Gabriel with everything stripped away. Just a man on his knees, asking for another chance.
“If you say one more cruel thing to me,” I say, “I’m gone. No more chances.”
“I know.”
“I mean it, Gabriel. One more time and I walk out and I don’t come back.”
“I understand.”
I glance toward Jasper in the kitchen doorway and find him watching us. His expression is unreadable, caught somewhere between hope and grief. Like he recognizes what’s happening between us, but also knows how impossible it can feel to fix something after it’s been smashed apart.
“Okay,” I say. “I’ll come back.”
Gabriel exhales, like he’s been underwater this whole time and finally gets to breathe.
We say goodbye to Jasper. Gabriel shakes his hand, holds it, says thank you in a way that makes it clear he knows how bad things could have gone tonight. Jasper nods. Then he looks at me. “Take care of yourself.”
“You too,” I say. And I mean it.
The drive home is quiet. Gabriel keeps both hands on the wheel and doesn’t even try to touch me.
The inside of the truck smells like cedar and smoke and I breathe it in, letting it fill me up.
For once, it doesn’t hurt. It’s not a reminder of what I can’t have.
It’s just Gabriel, sitting next to me, driving me home.
Home.
The word slams into me. I let it.
Even knowing how badly that place can hurt me.
Maybe home isn’t the place that hurts you least.
Maybe it’s the place that still wants you after seeing the worst parts of you.
When we pull into the driveway, the porch light is on. The front door is already swinging open before we’re even out of the truck.
Miles.
He’s in the doorway, barefoot, hair wild, drowning in one of Gabriel’s hoodies. His face when he sees me—a mix of relief, anger, and a need so raw it knocks me back a step.
Gabriel puts a hand on my back, guiding me toward the door, but Miles is there, shoving him with both hands, hard enough to make Gabriel stumble back.
“Don’t touch her,” Miles snaps.
Then he grabs me and hauls me in, arms like steel, face buried in my neck. He breathes me in and immediately makes a face.
“You smell like strange alphas,” he complains, scrunching up his nose. “I don’t like it.”
Then he starts scenting me, rubbing his face along my neck, my jaw, my hair, marking me with his scent, erasing every trace anyone else left behind. There’s nothing gentle in the way he touches me. It isn’t really about me at all. It’s his need, raw and unhidden.
Gabriel tries to intervene. “Miles, be gentle, she’s been through—“
Miles growls. Low and dangerous. He tightens his grip, glaring at Gabriel over my shoulder, daring him to try it.
Gabriel stops.
Miles grabs my hand and pulls me inside. Garrett’s in the hallway, eyes wet, relief written all over him. Cyrus is there too, gives a single nod, his version of “thank god.” But Miles doesn’t stop. He pulls me past everything, all the way up the stairs and to the pack room door.
He opens it and pushes me inside.
“Get in the nest,” he says.
I look at the nest. His nest. The one he’s guarded from me since day one. Blankets, shirts, pillows in his perfect order, saturated with alpha scent, made for his comfort. I’ve never been allowed near it.
“Miles…”
“Get in.”
So I do. The scent hits me first—all of them, burnt sugar and iron, cedar and smoke, honey and sage, black pepper and leather.
Layered and tangled, and I’m right in the middle of it.
My omega goes so quiet it’s almost scary.
All of my lingering aches and pain… gone.
Fullness—complete, even without their physical bodies here.
And the scent of another omega intertwined with the scent of my matches?
It surprisingly doesn’t bother me. It doesn’t even register as a threat.
Maybe because this is the nest he built, not mine.
Maybe because I never truly expected to be a part of this.
Miles climbs in after me. He builds the nest up higher around us, tucking the blankets, shoving pillows close, making it all fit with me inside it this time. Then he curls up behind me, arm slung around my waist, nose finding the spot on my neck he’s claimed a hundred times.
“Don’t ever do that again,” he says.
“Don’t ever give me a reason to.”
He’s quiet for a while. His breathing evens out. His arm tightens on my stomach.
“What happens now?” I ask.
“I don’t know,” he says.
I close my eyes. The nest is warm, the scent is everywhere, and Miles’s heartbeat is steady against my back.
“Neither do I,” I say.
We lie there, two omegas in a nest that finally has room for both of them, and we don’t know what comes next.