For the first time in days, the air feels still—no low Alpha voices murmuring in the background, no scent-thick heat pressing at my edges, no weight of someone’s hand on me to remind me I’m not alone.
I’m left with myself.
And that’s almost worse than being in the middle of it.
The flowers in the corner catch my eye again—soft pinks and whites, a few sprigs of eucalyptus tucked in for green. They’re in an actual vase, not one of my mismatched mugs. I remember Beau saying they came from Norah.
Pancake’s asleep in the chair next to them, his tail twitching like he’s dreaming of stalking something.
I get up slowly, every muscle making its complaint known, and sit back on the bed. The soreness is everywhere—a dull ache low in my belly, a tenderness in the muscles of my thighs, even the faint sting when I shift in a certain way.
And my clit? Still too sensitive, a sharp, almost electric reminder of how much they wrung out of me.
The mortification hits in a slow wave.
Three days. Three Alphas.
Every filthy, unfiltered demand that came out of my mouth—I remember most of it. And yet…
I touch my neck without thinking, my fingertips brushing over the spot where, in the middle of it, I was sure one of them would bite. Claim me.
There’s nothing there—no bruise, no mark. Just skin that still smells faintly like them.
They could have. I asked them to—more than once.
But they didn’t.
Instead, they stayed. They fed me, cleaned me up, held me while I came apart repeatedly, never once leaving me alone. And when they could have taken something permanent, they didn’t.
It should make me relieved. Maybe it does. But there’s a small, traitorous part of me that wonders what it would have felt like. What it would mean to wake up with their scent burned into my skin, no way to hide it.
I pull my knees up to my chest, chin resting on them, and try to piece together the timeline.
They’ve been here… what? Two and a half days? Almost three?
No one left for work. No one made an excuse to duck out. They were just here, at my beck and call, like it was the most normal thing in the world.
That’s not casual. That’s not just biology.
The thought makes my chest tighten in a way I don’t want to unpack.
I shift again, grimacing at the ache between my legs. My whole body is telling me to sleep, and I think if I let myself, I’ll be out before I hit the pillow. But my brain is still too loud.
What have I done? And why does the idea of them leaving—and never fucking me again like they just did—make my stomach sink?
I close my eyes and inhale, trying to ground myself. My sheets still smell faintly like them, even after they changed them.
It’s subtle, but it’s enough to conjure flashes of Levi’s rough laugh against my ear, Beau’s hand braced at the small of my back, Simon’s steady, grounding touch.
My pulse kicks up. Not panic this time. Something else.
I should feel ashamed. I should be cataloguing every reason this was reckless and dangerous and precisely the kind of thing I swore I wouldn’t do.
Instead, I’m lying here wondering when I’m going to see them again.
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
Simon
