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She laughs softly, and he beams at her. “She deserved it.”
“She deserves worse,” I mutter. “Definitely worse than a few uncomfortable hours on the toilet with a burning anus.”
Sadie laughs harder and we all relax. Fucking good. I was worried she would let that awful woman’s words get to her.
“You’re diabolical, baby,” Maddox murmurs into her hair.
She chuckles and shakes her head. “Feels a little petty, but what are you gonna do about it?”
Ethan stands up and stretches, drawing Sadie’s hungry gaze to him. “I’ll tell you what I’m gonna do about it. Take you upstairs, lay you out on the bed and give you a bunch of orgasms for being so fucking brilliant.”
Sadie’s cheeks flush a bright pink as she lets out a breathy, “yes, please.”
In a second, Ethan has her off Maddox’s lap and wrapped around his body. He gives us all a significant look and then carries our omega up the stairs.
My gaze follows them, noting that he’s murmuring something into her neck that makes her blush. “We can’t keep this up,” I murmur. “Claudia’s only going to get braver with her advances toward us. She thinks we’re hers and her omega is pushing her to claim us.”
Maddox nods, running a hand down his face. “Sadie’s is too, she’s just-”
“Scared,” Luca finishes for him. “She’s scared.” His hand presses against his chest, over his heart. “Fucking terrified. And I’m not sure what we can do about it.”
Swift flips his knife in the air, his eyes glinting. “We bond her. That’s what we do about it. Once we’re all connected, she’ll see we don’t want anyone else. She’ll feel safe then.”
My teeth and jaw ache just at the thought. Fuck, what I wouldn’t give to climb those stairs right fucking now, knot my omega and bite her.
“I’m telling you we can’t force that on her,” Luca says. “She’ll withdraw even farther.”
Swift scowls. “She’s not withdrawing now.”
I shake my head. “She’s not. You’re right, but she might if we press the issue with her. We’ve told her how we feel. She knows. There’s nothing we can do to convince her to move forward with it.”
Maddox scrubs his fingertips across his lips. “We just have to keep resisting Claudia, and in a few days we’ll have done that for a week and Sadie will see that we’re serious.”
“A few more days?” Swift snarls. “I don’t want to fucking do this for a few more days. I want to stab that other omega and watch her bleed out. Which I know Cherrybomb will fucking hate. I can’t do this for the foreseeable future.”
I grit my teeth. I don’t particularly want to do this for longer either. It wouldn’t be so bad if we were meeting Claudia in public, getting to know her over dinner or some bullshit, but having her in this space, living with us, is… disconcerting. My alpha is so fucking torn.
And it makes me feel guilty as hell.
But I don’t know what else we can do, besides what Maddox has said. Stick it out, show her we mean it when we say we want her and only her. We can tell her repeatedly. It doesn’t mean she’ll believe us. Not until she comes to terms with what she truly wants.
She needs to talk to an outside party, someone who really truly only has her best interest in heart.
A thought pops into my head. One so fucking obvious I have no clue how we didn’t think of it before.
It’s a gamble, for sure, because it could go either way, but I prefer to think it’ll swing things in our direction. In helping Sadie figure out and admit she wants us just as bad as we want her, that our pack is worth the risk.
“I have an idea,” I say, cutting off the conversation between the other alphas in my pack.
When I don’t elaborate, Luca arches a brow and motions at all of us with a hand. “Care to share with the class?”
“Not really. I’ll follow up on it and let you know if I’m able to work it out. If not, I guess we’ll just move forward with the ‘wait and see’ plan. Which, by the way, can I say I hate?”
Swift jabs his knife in my direction. “Thank you! It’s the worst fucking idea ever.”
“Well, I’m also not on board with your ‘just bond her’ plan,” I say drily. “I’ll let you know what I figure out,” I call over my shoulder as I head upstairs to shower. I’m ready to put my plan into action.
A few hours later, I get a call from the security desk downstairs that my guest has arrived. It was actually a lot easier than I thought it would be to get them to come. Next to me on the couch, Sadie shifts. She’s stretched out between me and Maddox, her head on a pillow resting on his lap, and her legs draped over mine. She’s been dozing, her sweet omega purring coming and going. Maddox’s fingers are tangled in her hair, while my hands have been gently massaging the muscles of her thighs.
