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He opens his mouth, but I keep talking. “She’s our scent match, dad. Ours. Fated.” It’s not really my place to tell him more, how we know, but I can tell he’s not going to just let this drop. And God, do I need him to. Sylvie will forgive me later. “She has Rejected Mate disorder. The sickness that can only affect people who have found their mates and then been rejected by them. A rejection you forced on her, on us. She’s ours.”
His jaw clenches, and he glances away from me before looking back. He’s not the least bit surprised. I realize he wouldn’t be, would he? Vee told us he was working with Dr. Attersby. That he paid her for Vee’s hormones, her scent, and he gave it to the omega he wanted us to bond. One that he’d had made over to look vaguely like our omega.
“Jesus, you fucking knew, didn’t you?”
“Yes.”
“How long?” My brother’s gruff voice comes from the hall. He enters the room wearing joggers like me, but still smelling like sex and slick and cum. Still smelling like Vee. He didn’t take the time to shower before coming to help deal with our father.
He moves to stand next to me, folding his arms over his chest. “Vee?” I ask, breathing through my mouth because the last thing I want is to pop a boner in front of my dad off of my omega’s scent alone.
My brother’s face softens at our omega’s name alone. “Still in the nest, but she’s stirring. They’ll try to keep her distracted long enough for us to deal with this shit.”
I nod and look back at Maxim. “Answer the question.”
He sighs and runs a weary hand down his face. “Since just after she was diagnosed.”
“The fuck?” I shout and Jackson elbows me hard enough to hurt.
“Keep it down.”
I tip my head back to look at the ceiling like that will tell me if I disturbed Vee enough that she’ll come looking, but then I realize if my shouting didn’t rouse her suspicions, the bond between us sure as fuck will. That’s only solidified when she sends me a wave of concern and a single word. Okay?
I send back soothing vibes and try not to show on my face how weird it is that I can hear her in my head. Even if it was just the one word. I’m sure if we both concentrate we can have full conversations. I’ve heard about that with fated mates, a special gift just for them. Other bonded packs can sense each other, but can’t hear each other.
It’s just another thing that proves Vee is ours.
“Explain,” Jackson barks. Maxim flinches. It’s the first time I’ve ever seen an alpha bark influence Maxim, and I half wonder if Jackson’s is stronger now because he’s bonded to his fated mate.
Maxim’s mouth tightens, but he slumps down onto the stool. Seemingly suddenly exhausted. I can see it. He’s been hanging on to his dislike, of his hatred of Sylvie for years, almost as long as we’ve known her.
“I knew her mother, Brielle. Did you know that?” We did. It’s always been the vague reason why he dislikes Vee so much. “We met when we were teenagers, just like you all met Sylvie when you were kids. I-God, I loved her right away. Knew I wanted to spend the rest of my life with her. Knew that I wouldn’t be happy unless I had her. She was pure sunshine. So fucking good.”
My brows raise in surprise. The way he talks about Brielle is how we’ve talked about Sylvie. Pure and good and sunshiny. Brightening up our lives. We can’t live without her. God, we’ve been miserable for the last seven years without her. She is our happiness.
“I loved her so much. So damn much. I wanted to mate her right away, marry her, but we were young. So young and she was still in highschool. She convinced me to wait, to just be patient until she turned eighteen, until she presented, if she was going to.”
It sounds so familiar. Except for us, it was the opposite. Sylvie was ready, wanted to join us and would have let us bite her and bond her, but we wanted to wait. Wanted her to finish highschool, go to college.
We put the breaks on our relationship because we wanted her world to be wider than just us. Wanted her to have all of those experiences that you’re supposed to have as a teenager and young adult. We wanted her to have the fucking world with us and on her own.
Maxim shakes his head. “I’m older than her by a few years. Was in college while she was in her last year of highschool. And I… I wasn’t around enough. She made it clear I needed to keep my space, so I was giving her that.” He levels Jackson with a look. “It was a mistake. I found out from one of my friends that she made out with some random beta at a party.”
“She broke your heart,” comes Vee’s soft voice from the doorway. My gaze flies to take her in. She’s wearing Jackson’s button up flannel, and it’s swimming on her, falling to her mid thigh. Her hair is a tangled mess around her head. The faint pale gleam of her healed bond marks on her neck draws my attention, settling my alpha. Mine. She’s mine, ours, and the entire world will know it. God, the scents coming off her are enough to make me tent the front of my sweatpants, but she doesn’t look turned on. No, she looks… sad. For my father. For the asshole who nearly mated us to another woman. Who stole her hormones and scent to do it.
Asher, Ford and Topher are crowding the hall behind her, all of them glaring daggers at my father.
“Morning, baby girl,” Jackson says, holding out a hand to her, beckoning her closer. She pads over to him and lets him tug her into his chest, brush a kiss over her lips.
“Is it morning?” she asks, glancing at the windows. “It looks like it’s night.”
I follow her line of sight and see what she means. While we’ve been talking with Maxim, the outside world has darkened.
At that moment, the timer goes off. Sylvie glances at it, then at me as I move to pull the biscuits out of the oven. The rest of my pack wanders into the space, taking up spots between our omega and the threat in the room.
Maxim watches all of this with a wrinkle in his brows. I don’t know why he’s surprised that we would protect Vee, put ourselves between her and any threat. It’s an alpha’s instinct, especially when it comes to their omega. But then, I guess he’s never felt this way about our mother. Sure, she’s an omega and bonded into the pack, but I think my dad has been holding on to this perceived slight, this lost love for so long that it’s kept him from feeling love for anyone else.
Vee turns in Jackson’s arms and faces Maxim. “My mother broke your heart, and you decided to punish me for it, since she died before you got the chance to punish her.”
