Chapter thirty-one
Miles
Six in the morning. The house is dead quiet and I’m the only one awake.
Or at least it feels like it. I’ve been here since five, cross-legged on a stool in my drawing room, a canvas propped on the easel, charcoal pencil gripped tight in my hand.
The lines don’t make sense yet. Just curves, shapes, angles, a scatter of shadow that might become something if I let it.
I never plan these. I move and wait, let my hand pull whatever it wants out of the paper.
Sometimes it’s nothing. Sometimes it’s something that looks back.
The house breathes. Morning hasn’t fully started yet.
The coffeemaker is quiet, the pipes still.
I haven’t heard any footsteps going by yet.
I like this liminal place, the gap between sleep and the day’s first demand.
It’s the only time nothing is expected. A time where I can hold all the pieces together.
The last few days have blurred. Fever-dream days, golden and unreal. A dream you never want to wake from because reality can’t possibly compare.
I’ve been fucking Lily every day this week.
Every. Day.
While the alphas are gone I explore every part of her that I want to understand completely. The sound of her voice, my mouth on her. I fuck her on the kitchen counter. The couch. The hallway floor, once, because she pushed my buttons and I couldn’t trust myself to wait for privacy.
People think perfection looks soft. But what gets under my skin is the way she takes pressure without snapping.
She doesn’t play at submission like some omegas do.
Like I used to do. She slips into it, honest and absolute, like her body was made for this and only needed someone to show her how far she could fall.
She doesn’t fight. Not unless she’s feeling mouthy, and then it’s better, because I get to push back. She tests me just enough to make it feel real, to make every win earned.
Yesterday she called me a brat. For stealing her fries.
A brat, right to my face, that little smirk like she already knew what was coming and wanted it.
I made her get on her knees, right there, at the kitchen island.
She looked up at me through her lashes, blue eyes bright and knowing, took me in her mouth and swallowed every drop without a single protest. And afterward—and this is the part that won’t leave me alone, it replays every time I close my eyes—she kissed me.
I didn’t tell her to do it. I didn’t pull her into my lap or demand it from her.
She just stood, put her hands on my face, and kissed me like it was the most natural thing in the fucking world.
I didn’t push her away. I think I may have held her tighter.
She’s careful with the alphas. Careful in a way I never told her to be, but noticed anyway. She doesn’t touch them. There’s no flirting. No hovering. No needy little omega act. She lets me set the terms and follows my lead instead.
Last night… I couldn’t sleep. Restless heat buzzed beneath my skin, my omega pacing in circles over some need he wouldn’t name.
I went to Lily’s room. Climbed into her bed without asking, without a word.
She slid over, made room, didn’t even look at me funny.
I curled around her, nose in her neck, and everything in me finally shut up.
Later, when Garrett came looking for me—as he always does—I called him in.
He stopped in the doorway, saw me and Lily tangled together, and I could feel him hesitate.
But I told him “get in,” and he did, slipping behind me, arm around my waist, chin on my shoulder.
He started to purr and I felt it vibrate through me, into Lily, a current moving from alpha to omega to omega.
It was perfect. My alpha at my back, my girl in my arms, the starving part of me finally shutting the hell up.
I was getting both sides of me fed at the same time. Garrett at my back, heavy and alpha. Lily in my arms feeding some other needy part of me I still don’t fully understand. I don’t know if there’s ever been a time I’ve felt more content.
My girl. I don’t… I don’t know when that started.
When did I start thinking of her like that?
There’s a knock at the door. I scent him before I see him. Gabriel.
“Come in.”
He’s dressed already, hair still wet from the shower. He crosses the room, cups my jaw, kisses me slow. A kiss that says I’m the first thing on his mind and nothing else matters yet.
“Good morning,” he says.
“Morning.”
He sits by the window, chair angled toward me, eyes tracking the canvas. “What are you working on?”
I glance at it. Lines, curves, the raw edge of something alive but unformed. “I don’t know. Just letting it happen.”
“It’s good. I can see it taking shape.”
“You can’t see shit, Gabriel. It’s a mess.”
He smiles. It’s the one he doesn’t show when he’s in pack lead mode. “I’ve missed you in the pack bed.”
I nod. I know he has. I’ve been drifting. Lily’s bed, sometimes. Garrett’s. Cyrus’s room, once, when I needed his weight beside me. I haven’t slept in the pack bed in days.
“I’m not trying to punish you,” I say. “I’ve just been… moving.”
“I know. I just miss you.”
He doesn’t mean it as a guilt trip. He’s being honest, like he promised Lily he would be, even when it costs him.
“How are you feeling?” he asks. “About Lily.”
I shrug. “She’s okay.”
“Only okay?”
“She’s fine, Gabriel. What do you want from me?”
He pauses. Picks his words with care, like always. “The month is almost up.”
I look at him. “And?”
“And she’ll be gone soon. If that’s still what you want.”
“Of course it’s what I want.” It comes out harsh. A reflex. The wall that’s been up since the day she arrived: she’s temporary, she’s leaving, she has to. “Two omegas don’t make sense. She can’t stay.”
Gabriel’s face doesn’t change, not really, but I can see the subtle shift. He’s not surprised, but his face droops a little. He hoped I’d say something else.
“Okay,” he says. “I’ll tell her. The Carrs are ready. Jeremy called me yesterday, asked if she was ready for their next date, but I reminded him the month was almost up. He said they’re ready to take her now if she’s willing.”
“Are there no other packs she can try first?”
The question’s out before I can stop it. Gabriel’s eyes narrow, but he doesn’t push.
“The others passed. They want the registry process or they’re worried about Lily’s health.”
“You mean they don’t want a maybe-infertile omega.”
Gabriel sighs. “That’s part of it.”
“That’s sick. She’s not a baby mill, Gabriel. She’s a person.”
“I know that.”
“Do you? Because the way the system works, omegas are livestock with better branding. We’re valued by how many babies we can pump out, and if the answer’s maybe none suddenly we’re broken.”
“Miles—“
“I know it won’t change overnight. But I’m still pissed about it.”
Gabriel nods. Not arguing is the smartest thing he’s done all week.
I put the pencil down. Cross the room, climb into his lap and straddle him. When I need to be close, I do this—I don’t explain. His arms go around me, his purr starts up instantly, the sound sinking into me like heat. I press my face into his neck—cedar, smoke, everything that means home.
“I wish I could let you mark me,” I whisper.
His purr stutters but his grip tightens. “One day. When you’re ready. There’s no rush.”
“What if I’m never ready?”
“Then you’re never ready. You’re still mine, and I’m still yours. The bite isn’t what makes it real. We do.”
My omega purrs back, the small, soft sound that Gabriel is the only one to ever pull from me. I’m safe and home and his. Gabriel’s own purr deepens, winding around mine, thickening the air with sound.
We stay there, just breathing, until the house stirs awake. Garrett’s shower kicks on, then Cyrus’s boots on the stairs, the coffeemaker churning to life. The world starts again, and the hush of before belongs to yesterday.
I kiss him, slide off his lap, and go start my day.
***
Hours later, the shower is running. Lily’s pressed to the wall, legs wrapped around my waist, and I’m inside her. Nothing else matters.
She claws my shoulders, nails digging in, every mark a claim.
Like she’s the one staking territory on my body.
I fuck her hard, watching her face. Her mouth drops open and her eyes glaze.
I love how she bites her lip when she’s close.
She whines. It’s not pain—she’s used to the stretch by now, craves it even—but she makes the sound anyway, a signal of surrender.
That pure omega noise that makes that other part of me roar in pleasure.
I set the pace, fast and relentless. The water makes everything slicker, skin on skin, no friction, just heat, pressure, her body giving way for me.
I fuck her until her voice is nothing but breath and broken syllables.
She comes quick, harder than the first time, and the way she clenches around me almost makes me lose it, too.
I slow down, force her to ride the edge, keep her pinned there as long as I want.
When I finally finish, I bury my face in her neck and groan into her skin, let her feel every pulse of it.
When I pull back, she’s looking at me. Right at me, those bright blue eyes clear and soft. Needing, but not desperate. She keeps choosing me over and over. I don’t know why.
Or maybe I do.
She looks at me like I matter and it isn’t because I’m fucking her or bossing her around. I think she’d stay, even if I stopped all of that. She wants the person, not what I do to her or how I make her feel.
Water beats over us and her eyes stay on mine.
I’m going to miss her.
When she’s gone. When Gabriel signs the papers and sends her to the Carrs with her ugly suitcase.
I’m going to miss more than the sex. I’m going to miss her laughing at my terrible jokes, trusting me with her body after everything I’ve done to her.
The soft little yes, Miles that always sounds real.
Her rolling her eyes and calling me a brat before kissing me anyway.