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“Because I know what it’s like to not have any meaningful contact with your family. I don’t have any blood relatives left, Ford. The last thing I want is to be the reason any of you stop talking to yours.”
“They’d deserve it,” Davis mutters.
“You deserve to have your family, Davis,” I say gently. “In whatever form you can.”
Jackson leans over and presses a kiss to my lips, soft and sweet. “You are our family, baby girl. Always have been. Always will be.”
I can’t stop the flush of pleasure at his words. I knew they all felt that way to some extent, but it’s so fucking nice to hear it. “And you’re mine,” I say back softly, even as my heart thunders in my chest. I’ve felt that way since the moment I met them. Since I was twelve and they all took me in, became my friends, took care of me when I had no one else. At the time, I thought they did too, but I can’t forget the pain of realizing that maybe they didn’t.
I’m terrified it’s going to happen again.
Being here is really not helping.
There’s a faint acrid tint in the air, burned nectarines, scalded honey, and all of them move closer to me, reaching out to touch and soothe while a purr rumbles from Jackson. “Say the word, baby girl, and we’ll leave.”
Having them all near me helps so fucking much. I take a deep breath and shake my head. “Just don’t leave me.” I’m sure they hear the double meaning there.
Topher presses a kiss to the back of my head. “Never, baby. We’re in it for the long haul.”
At that moment, the front door opens and Belinda Werth steps onto the porch, bouncing on her toes in excitement. She opens her arms wide as Jackson moves up the steps, and the rest of us trail behind, the four of them creating a barrier around me like I’m some kind of celebrity and they’re my bodyguards.
Jackson bends to wrap his mother in his arms. She’s small even for an omega, a few inches shorter than me, barely breaking five feet, but she hugs him fiercely, thin arms banding around his tree trunk of a body. He presses a kiss to her hair. “Hi, mom.”
“My boy.” She pulls back to grin up at him, before glancing at the rest of us. “My boys!” She beams at the men around me, but her smile falls when she sees me nestled between them. I’ve never got the impression that Belinda dislikes me. More like she never wanted to get attached to me because she knew I wouldn’t be a part of her family. Her prime alpha wasn’t going to allow it.
There’s a flicker of guilt in her eyes as she looks at me, and I wonder if she knew everything Maxim did back then. Does she feel bad for not stepping in, for letting her sons be miserable without me for the last seven years?
Or maybe they weren’t miserable, and she thought what they did was right.
I don’t fool myself into thinking she might care about how I felt when they broke my heart. I don’t mean shit to her.
“Sylvie.” Her smile strains around the edges, but she grants me one.
I do the same. Hopefully, it’s more genuine than hers. More real. “Belinda.” I step forward and take both her hands in mine. Surprise flashes through her eyes. “Thank you for inviting me.”
She eyes me warily, like she expects me to grow a second head at any moment. “Well, when I heard you were back in town, I knew I had to invite you. You were so close to my boys when you were children.”
I clench my teeth over the words in my throat, not letting them escape. Children. Jackson was twenty-one when I left. An adult. Sure Davis and I were younger, but she makes it sound like it was some childhood romance and not something lasting.
But then, I guess she’s right. It didn’t last.
Because her prime alpha and my grandmother clipped it before it could flourish.
Davis gently nudges me out of the way and back into the arms of my pack so he can greet his mother. He murmurs something to her I can’t make out, but that has her stiffening in his arms. Whatever it was, when he pulls back her lower lip is wobbling and tears are shimmering in her eyes before he presses a soft kiss to her cheek and then turns her toward the house, glancing over his shoulder at me.
I flash him a smile to reassure him, but my fingers are twisting in the skirt of my dress, deep purple with a sweetheart neckline and cap sleeves. It’s not something I would normally wear. Not by a long shot. But it’s something I know they’d expect an omega to wear. Asher closes his hand around one of mine, carefully untangling it from the fabric and lacing our fingers together, while Jackson does the same on the other side.
“You look beautiful, angel,” my quiet alpha murmurs to me.
His reassurance calms me somewhat, but I’m still anxious as hell as they guide me through the front door. I have a brief flash of the last time I was here, of the pale pink dress with flowers I was wearing, the drag of my grandmother’s nails on my arm as she pulled me into the ballroom.
I let out a quiet breath when we don’t head to the left, instead making our way to the right side of the house where the formal living and dining room sit. I won’t be visiting the scene of my literal heartbreak today. Thank God.
There are already people here, guests I wasn’t expecting. By the quiet curse Jackson mutters, he wasn’t expecting them either. I recognize some of them. Not all though.
But they all look at me exactly the same way, like I’m a sideshow freak. Like they’re waiting for me to have a mental break and start whining, and crying and sobbing. Like I did when I was seventeen and the younger Werth pack ripped out my heart of all of them to see.
I feel all of my guys straighten, bristling slightly. Their glares find every person who is looking at me with derision and practically dare then to say something.
