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“You say that now, Swift, but you don’t know how you’ll feel in the future,” I whisper. He wants to argue, but he must sense the same stubbornness in me that I see in him. “Besides, I don’t want to be bonded like this. Just because there may be a threat to our pack. I don’t want to feel forced or rushed because she’s here. If we decide to go through with this to actually bond and be together forever, I want it to be because we’re sure.”
“We are sure,” Logan says.
“So fucking sure,” Maddox adds.
“I think we should listen to what Sadie wants,” Luca says quietly. He hasn’t said much during this conversation, likely because he can feel my emotions and how fucking hard this is for me.
“Of course you’d say that,” Swift snarls at him, a knife appearing in his hands out of freaking nowhere. He brandishes it in Luca’s direction, his gaze going a little feral. “You’re already bonded to her. You can feel her whenever you fucking want. The rest of us want to feel her too!”
Luca arches a brow at him, unimpressed with the implied threat at the arrival of a weapon. “I can feel her,” he says evenly. “Which is why I know how much this means to her. Beyond that, she’s starting to feel you’re pressuring her into something she’s not sure she wants.” He runs a weary hand down his face. “Believe me, you don’t want to feel her anger or uncertainty because you bonded her without her fucking consent. I know what that feels like.”
“Luca,” I whisper. I’d never realized he can feel all of that. All of my anger at him for this situation he put me in. But of course he can. It’s not like I had a grasp on shutting down the bond right away.
He gives me a shaky smile. “It’s okay, Vixen. I deserved it.”
I shake my head. “No, you don’t. You don’t deserve it. Never.”
His smile turns more genuine, brighter. Likely because he can feel how much I mean the words since I’ve opened our bond completely. I move over to him and press onto my toes to kiss that smile. When I pull back, I look at the other men. My men. My pack.
“I just want you to be sure, and I want to be sure too.”
“How many times do I have to tell you, Cherrybomb? I want you. Only you.” Swifts brandishing the knife in my face now. Pointing the knife at my eye like he’s so frustrated with me he’s thinking about stabbing me there.
He won’t do it. I know it in my bones. He may be a psycho who had no problem hurting my mother, but Swift would never do anything to hurt me.
It’s on the tip of my tongue to say I believe his statement. That I believe him. My omega is pleading with me to make this right, to let my pack claim me, but the beta that I’ve been for fucking years, the sad little girl whose own mother couldn’t abandon me to the arms of Dr. Schwab fast enough, who spent her time getting pampered while I was in pain, she’s terrified of actually believing this. Of going along with it. Of giving them everything and then having them decide ‘actually, you’re not what we want for the pack.’
“Let’s give it a week,” I say, not meeting Swift’s eyes and the hurt I know I’ll see there. “A week for you to get to know Claudia, and then we’ll have this conversation again.”
Luca tugs my back into his chest, sliding his chin on the top of my head. “I’m sure nothing is going to change in a week for us, vixen. But if you need time…”
Again, I bite back the words that I don’t need time, that we should all fuck and knot and bite right this second.
“I do. We do.” I reach out and curl my fingers around Swift’s wrist and Logan’s shirt, tugging them closer. Maddox and Ethan follow suit until I’m at the center of all their hot, hard bodies, surrounded by their scents. “I don’t want you to think this means that I don’t want you. I do want you. But I don’t want you to regret-”
“Never,” Maddox snarls at me with so much vehemence that it stalls everything in my chest. He cups my jaw tenderly. “We’d never regret you, Sadie.”
“Luca did,” I say quietly. “After we bonded, Luca regretted it.”
My bonded alpha tugs me tighter. “Not that I bonded you, vixen. Never that. I regretted…. How it happened. That we didn’t go through the courting process. I regretted rutting you and biting you while we were both… a little out of it. I regret we didn’t do it right.” He nuzzles into my neck. “But never you.”
Logan runs a knuckle down my cheek. “Take as much time as you need, mo chuisle. We’ll wait.”
Chapter 27: In which my omega gets jealous
As much as I hate having Claudia here, her arrival sparked a conversation between my pack that needed to happen. Having Sadie open up to us about her fears around bonding with us was so fucking eye opening.
In that moment, I’d been prepared to tell her we’ll wait for years if that’s what she needs.
Fuck.
I hope it doesn’t take years for her to come around.
I want her.
I want a bond with her in the worst way. Every day that I go without being connected to my girl is a day that the Sadie shaped hole in my chest grows a little wider. A little bigger.
If it takes years for her to decide this is what she wants, I’ll wait. But I might not be much of an alpha by then.
