Chapter 8
Eight
COLE
As I head back to the pack penthouse, thoughts of Liana and the look of heartbreak on her face run through my mind on repeat. I had spent the rest of the day not too far from her floral shop, secretly guarding her.
Her old pack could be looking for her. It’s none of my fucking business, but I care about her already. It’s crazy, but I do.
Her guard was down, and she trusted me even though it was for a couple of hours.
Ezra’s already in the great room when I get there, standing at the window with his hands in his pockets, looking down at the Brooklyn skyline like he can see her shop from here.
Julian’s sprawled on one of the charcoal sofas, elbows on his knees, Pepper absent for once. I can’t stand that bird sometimes, and right now is a serious moment. August has his sweater sleeves pushed to his elbows, a legal pad tucked under one arm.
“We need to know about Liana,” Ezra says to all of us. He doesn’t waste time. “Cole. You said you had more.”
“I do,” I say after texting him earlier about my meeting with Liana.
“Tell us.”
“She was with a pack six years ago,” I say. “Before she opened the shop. An alpha named Magnus. He abused her. Probably along with his pack.”
Ezra’s head turns from the window. Slow. “How long did he hurt her?”
“For three years.”
The room goes very still. Julian’s jaw tenses angrily.
“She told me herself,” I say. “This morning, at the shop. I didn’t push.
She just started talking.” I look at Ezra directly because he needs to hear the next part looking at me, not out a window.
“When Magnus died three years ago, during his funeral, she stole cash out of his study and ran. That’s how she opened Marsh Florals. ”
“Wow,” Julian says under his breath, impressed with her resilience.
“There are scars on her forearm,” I go on.
“I asked to see it. She let me. She had multiple separate claiming attempts, layered on top of each other. I know what failed marks look like versus healed ones. These never healed clean. He tried many times to make her his, and her body rejected him every single time.”
Ezra turns fully away from the window now, one hand braced against the glass like he needs it to hold him up. I’ve seen him take losses in the seven figures without his pulse changing.
I’ve never seen him look like this.
Julian is staring at the coffee table, at nothing, his hazel eyes glassy.
“She laughed with me at the fair,” he says, quietly. “We had such an amazing time together. I would never have known. Not for one second. She’s so goddamn happy around her flowers, Cole. How does someone survive that and still…”
He doesn’t finish. He doesn’t need to.
August has gone very quiet in the armchair, his legal pad forgotten on his lap, his blue eyes bright behind his glasses in a way that means he’s about thirty seconds from losing the fight against tears.
“That’s it,” he says. His voice cracks on the second word. “We’re done. We call off the sale. All of it. Forget the buyout, forget the redevelopment, forget the ninety days. We are not doing this to her.”
Nobody argues with him. For a second, nobody says anything at all.
“We can’t just walk away clean,” Ezra says finally.
His voice has recovered some of its ice, but it’s a thinner ice than before.
“There’s still a lease. Still ninety days on the books.
We go see her tomorrow morning. All of us.
We give her the actual choice this time.
She keeps her shop, full stop, no acquisition, or she takes the buyout if she ever wants out on her own terms. Her call. Not ours.”
“What the fuck?” Julian’s up off the sofa now, hands spread. “You know which one she picks, Ezra. You know it. That shop is the last piece of her family she has left. Why are we even pretending there’s a decision to make?”
“Because I want to hear it from her,” Ezra says. “The money will help her. She deserves to choose. Even if we already know the answer.”
Julian stares at him a long moment. Then some of the fight goes out of his shoulders, and he nods once, short, and drops back onto the sofa like his strings got cut. “As long as you don’t force the sale, then I’m good.”
I stand. There’s nothing left to add.
I’ve delivered all the information about Liana that I know as I leave the quiet living room, all my brothers in silence.
My room is dark when I get there, the way I like it.
There are no lamps except the one over my weapons safe, bare walls, a single chair by the window I never sit in.
I strip on the way to the bathroom, shirt over my head, jeans kicked into a corner that I’ll deal with later.
The shower’s already hot by the time I step under it, steam curling up around the black tile, water hammering down over my shoulders and spine.
Liana is still on my mind.
I remember her at her workbench this morning, sleeve pulled to her elbow, showing me the worst thing that ever happened to her.
Her pulse jumping under my fingers when I held her wrist. The scent of her—rose, thick and warm, spiking sharp the second I got close enough.
I had smelled the slick and desire rolling off her before she even understood what her own body was telling her.
I had fought my erection so hard in that moment.
I brace one forearm against the tile and let my other hand drop to my cock.
I’m already hard.
Have been since I left her shop this morning, if I’m honest with myself, a slow ache I’ve been carrying under my ribs for hours, patient the way I’ve trained myself to be patient with everything except this.
I wrap my hand around my cock and stroke, slow, water sluicing down over my knuckles.
I imagine myself going upstairs to her apartment above her shop and her naked on a bed of petals.
Roses, armfuls of them, soft and cool, and scattering them across her bed. The scent of her, naked in the middle of it, her dark auburn hair spread out against all that pink and white.
A nest.
That’s the word that comes to me, unbidden, primal, an instinct older than anything Frostwood Holdings ever taught me. I want to build her a nest out of every flower she’s ever grown and lay her down in the middle of it and show her, with my hands, with my mouth, that not every alpha takes.
My hand moves faster.
Water pounds down my back. I picture her spread out in that imagined nest of petals, her pale green eyes half-lidded and trusting, her thighs parting for me. Her pussy would be so pink, like the roses on the bed.
My grip tightens. My hips start to move, driving my fist harder, water running into my open mouth as I tip my head back against the tile.
Mine.
Mine. I want to be the one holding her wrist when she finally stops flinching from a touch. I want to be the one she comes to when the shop goes quiet, and the loneliness gets too loud. I want to be her alpha.
The alpha to knot, claim, and impregnate her.
The orgasm builds low and hot at the base of my spine, climbing fast, faster than I want it to, and I bite down against a groan.
It hits me all at once.
My whole body locks, every muscle drawn tight as wire, and I come hard over my own fist with a silent roar clenched behind my teeth, hips jerking once, twice, my forehead dropping forward until it presses flat against the wet tile.
Water keeps running. I stand there a long time, breathing hard, my pulse hammering in my ears louder than the spray.