“Said I’m their scent match. All three.” I shove the rest of the macaron in my mouth, suddenly needing something to do with my hands. “Just said it straight out. No preamble. Just ‘Did you ever think you’d find your scent match at a petting zoo?’?”
Lily is around the counter in a flash, grabbing my shoulders. “That’s incredible! That’s amazing! Do you know how much that means?—”
“I know.”
“Then why do you look like someone died?”
I set down my coffee, suddenly exhausted. “Because my life is imploding, Lily. My career is destroyed, my partnership is over, Scot is actively sabotaging me, and now three Alphas I barely know are claiming that we’re destined mates? The timing couldn’t be worse.”
“Or it couldn’t be better.” She’s moved back to her side of the counter. “Maybe this is exactly when you need them. When everything else is chaos. To balance things out.”
“I don’t want them to see me failing.”
“They’ve already seen that, and they’re still here.” She picks up her towel. “Hannah, you can’t control when you meet your mates. Biology doesn’t care about your five-year plan.”
“Well, biology has shit timing.”
“Biology always has shit timing. That’s kind of its thing.” She’s grinning now. “But seriously. What are you going to do?”
“Avoid thinking about it until my brain stops screaming.”
“Solid plan.”
“Thank you.”
“That was sarcasm.”
“I know.”
I take a sip of my latte, desperate to redirect the conversation before Lily starts rewriting my entire life again. “Oh, speaking of disasters, I talked to Dad this morning. He said you bailed on Great-Aunt Martha’s Christmas dinner tomorrow.”
Lily freezes, lowers her gaze.
I level a betrayed stare at her. “How could you leave me alone at their mercy? At least when it’s both of us, the interrogation gets split fifty-fifty. Now it’s just me. Solo. Unarmed. Walking straight into a firing squad.”
She winces. “Yeah… about that. James’s friend has a wedding out of town, and we can’t get out of it. Sorry.”
“You’re abandoning me,” I accuse, pointing a macaron at her like it’s evidence in court. Then I devour the dessert.
“In my defense,” she says slowly, “I have a very real allergy to Great-Aunt Martha’s casserole and her personality.”
She’s quiet for a moment, and I can practically see the wheels turning in her head. That’s never good.
“I have an idea,” she finally says. “You might think it’s insane, but hear me out.”
“Your ideas are always dangerous.” I grab another macaron. “Does it involve me doing something stupid?”
“It involves you being smart.” She’s got that look now, the meddler’s glint, pure sin distilled into human form. “Take one of those hot bounty hunters to the family Christmas dinner tomorrow.”
I choke on my macaron. “Are you crazy? I need distance from the Alphas to work out my own feelings, not spend more time with them. I have to figure out what I want before I dive into their pack dynamics and scent matching and all that complicated stuff.”
“Or…” Lily is scrolling through her phone now, and I recognize that look. She’s plotting something. “You use this as an opportunity to get to know one of them better. Low stakes, supervised by Dad, plenty of distractions. See if he can handle our terrible relatives.”
“That’s not a selling point.”
“It absolutely is. If he can survive our family, he can survive anything.”
I’m about to argue more when she hits a button on her phone, and suddenly it’s ringing on speaker.
