A smile spreads across Hunter’s face. “We’ve all been dating the same omega? If she?—”
The smell of something burnt and acidic hits us. It’s a punch to my gut and with every intake of breath, a pounding in my skull takes over any thought I’m trying to say to Emilie.
It’s a natural omega defense mechanism, the only way to keep alphas at bay. One I’m thankful exists, but now the scent of her distress, her anger at us, nearly takes me to my knees. A horrible reminder that while we are out here planning a future that might never happen, she is trapped in a bedroom, terrified of us.
“We have to let her know everything is okay,” Alric says, his words strangled.
The hallway closes in around me. I can taste her anger and fear on my tongue and I’ve never hated anything more. It’s a scent no alpha would ever smell in their lifetime, if they kept their omega happy. The smell of an alpha’s failure.
“You two! Leave now!” I bellow at them.
We’re barely able to stay standing and they leave without fighting me on it. When they’re out of sight, I knock lightly on the door, my forehead pressed to it to try and alleviate the pressure there.
“Emilie?” I say loud enough so she can hear me. “Please let me in. Alric and Hunter have left, it’s just you and me, okay? Please let me in, and I can explain everything.”
I think she’s going to ignore me—I wouldn’t blame her—but finally, there’s a soft click from inside the bedroom. The door opens a few inches and I can’t stop my sharp inhale of breath. Her eyes are red, her cheeks tearstained, and it’s like a punch in the gut. It’s agony to know we’re the reason she’s thisupset, that we could have done something, even by accident, to bring her this much pain.
I’ll do whatever it takes to get her to forgive us.
She peeks her head out to ensure that Alric and Hunter are really no longer in the hallway. The door flies open and she grabs my wrist, pulling me into the bedroom before locking it again. The scent of her stress is even sharper here and shreds the inside of my chest with the wrongness of it.
I need her to feel safe and happy again. The omega distress pheromone is something I’ve never smelled, only ever heard about or read in books. Now that I’ve experienced it, I hope I never smell it again. It burns like acid in my chest. I’m desperate to pull her into my arms and tell her everything is okay, but she’s already locked herself in Alric’s bathroom to get away from me.
She may trust me enough out of the three of us to join her in the bedroom, but that trust doesn’t go nearly far enough.
“Explain,” she snaps. “And slide me your wallet under the bathroom door.”
I’ll do whatever she asks, so I pull it out and slowly lower myself to the floor, my back against the bathroom door, and shove my leather wallet to her.
“You can have as much money as you want. You can take all my credit cards if you’d like, but I need you to know that you’re safe. Okay? Hunter did an idiotic thing, but no one here would even think of doing anything to harm you.”
She’s quiet for a few minutes before she says, “I’ve booked myself a flight out of here. You need to ensure that I get to the airport by five p.m. tomorrow.”
Fuck, we’ve messed everything up. This could have been perfect.
“I’m so sorry this all happened like this. Of course, I promise to do everything in my power to get you on that plane,but there’s a storm happening and it’s getting worse by the hour. I completely understand why you need to leave. We’ll find a way to get you home.”
I mean it, too. I’ll hate it—a week with her sounds like the perfect vacation—but we would never keep her here against her will.
“You said you would tell me what’s going on?” Her voice is so small when she says it, breaking my heart. I need her to know that this has been a misunderstanding, but that we were all the same alphas who have been crazy about her for the past year, that we want to give her the world.
“Hunter, Alric, and I have been friends since college. Alric had this business idea to connect customers directly with his business from anywhere. He asked me to come on board, and that’s the app I’ve been working on for the past year. Then we thought, hey, Hunter is a super famous health and fitness guy, let’s see if he wants to join us on this, so he came on board. We had such a great time working together, we decided that we should start a pack. The subject of having an omega came up on Monday night and obviously, I wanted the guys to meet you. Then Alric said that he wouldn’t be in a pack unless you were the omega and of course, we didn’t know you were the same person. And then Hunter apparently decided thathisomega was going to be the one we selected. So he brought you here to meet us first to ensure you would win.” I let out a humorless laugh. “Turns out that was quite unnecessary, as we’ve all been seeing you for the past year.”
“That’s an understatement,” she says sarcastically, but it’s such an improvement from her sad voice, so I’ll take it.
“I swear, I had no idea you were going to be here. He didn’t tell us he was bringinganyone. He was supposed to fly out with us yesterday but convinced us he was about to shit himself so we would leave without him.”
She chuckles softly at that and I smile at the enticing sound. Her gentle generic omega scent has returned and I sigh with relief before continuing.
“This week was supposed to be an uneventful trip with just the three of us. The pack paperwork is drawn up and this is going to be the final test run of being a unit before we make it official. A little pause on everything before the craziness of the app launching and a new life together.”
I slip my fingers under the bathroom door where fluorescent light streams out, letting my purr rumble to try and bring her some peace. My hand is large, only half of it fits, but I need her to know that I’m here for her. “Please believe me when I say we never would have let him do this. Even if we didn’t know you, we would have said no. This isn’t one of those reality dating shows where everyone wears nothing but bathing suits and runs around an island trying to find true love or whatever those horny fuckers do.”
She snorts and it may be my new favorite sound of hers, next to her moans, of course. “This was a ludicrous plan on Hunter’s part. This isn’t a rom-com.”
Now it’s my turn to laugh. “Yeah, it was, but he has a really big heart. Sometimes he does things without thinking, which is probably the reason he makes all that money showing his pretty face on the internet. He’s genuinely a great guy, though.’’
Her fingertips touch mine and my heart stops at the gentle caress. “Yeah, I know that. He’s like a golden retriever who was granted a wish to become human and accidentally became famous.”
