I don’t like it. I’m worried about her. But until I learn more about her mate, there’s nothing I can do.
So, I take Beep’s advice. I close my eyes and crawl under the bedsheets. I smell Silas’s rainy scent first. He’s usually the first one to bed with me, the last to get up. He’s attached in a way I never expected, in a way that might scare me if I couldn’t read him through the bond. He watches me constantly, lit with awe that he gets to keep me.
It’s almost overwhelming, but I don’t let myself get swept up in his intensity. Orion helps balance things, and Grayson is too much of a bulldozer to offer any nuance or subtlety to the situation.
The truth is, we’re all finding our footing as a family.
It’s perfect.
Almost.
Maybe that’s the problem. I have my mates’ scents, but one is missing.
On a whim, I hop out of bed and tiptoe down the hall. I can hear their voices carry up the stairs. They cease talking to listen, to see if I call out for them. I don’t, and it’s sweet that they all stop what they’re doing to see if I need them.
“Don’t mind me,” I mutter to them as I slip into Grayson’s room and steal a dirty t-shirt. I do the same to Orion, and when I get to Silas’s room, I pause.
The backpack.
The one Silas carried from the cabin in Canada. The bag is tucked under the bed. I pull it out, emptying the contents. Ghost’s scent is missing, but the blanket is his. At least, he was the one who wrapped it around me. He even folded it up and made a pillow, offering it to me when I was hurt and trying to shrug him off.
It’s pathetic that I’m clinging to something he touched. It only carries Silas’s and my scent, faintly, but it’s enough.
I gather all four things and head back to the bedroom.
But as I enter the room, something makes my steps slow. I glance down the hallway to the nest. Magic, Beep said. The five of us together would be magic.
Carrying their stolen things, then stuffing my arms full of blankets and pillows off my bed, I can barely see over the mound in my arms and wander into the nest.
The sheets are already made and clean. I just toss everything into a pile, and I do what I wanted to from the very first time I walked into this room that seems to glow all on its own.
I jump into the pile and bury myself in the sheets and their scents. I wrap the blanket Ghost held around me, sink my nose into the worn material, arrange everything until I feel comfortable, and close my eyes.
I don’t speak to Beep or my omega. I just think about being whole. Having my entire family with me, and how lucky I am to have found them.
Just knowing Ghost is out there feels like a gift. I’ll always look out for him, I’ll always want what’s best for him. And maybe he isn’t ready for me right now, but someday he might be. And I’ll be here waiting when he is.
And I think about how much I want that for Andrea. For all the shifters, really, but the ones who are in pain, who are missing the pieces that make them whole—I want their families together, too.
And then I fall asleep.
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Chapter 26: Mona
I’m afraid if I cling too hard to Ghost’s instructions, the dream might slip away. So I try to relax, opening my senses to whatever surrounds me.
The scene fills in slowly, like a watercolor coming to life. A woman, again. A delta. But she’s not my strawberry friend. This woman is tiny, barely five feet tall, with wiry arms corded with muscle. She’s chopping wood alone in the forest, her axe whizzing through the air before landing with a satisfying crack into the stump. The trees are reedy, thin and high, and when I look up, I notice the sun is melting into the horizon. Present time? I’m on the East Coast, it was dark when I fell asleep. California maybe? Where are we?
She smells like clean cotton. That warm, fresh laundry scent, with hints of grapefruit. I take a step closer, but I step on a stick, and it cracks like a gunshot into the quiet forest air. She gasps and looks up.
The second I realize she can see me, her pink bow-shaped mouth dropping open, eyes wide like saucers, the scene tearsapart. It’s more jarring this time, and I land in someone’s kitchen. It’s dark, the glow of the kitchen light contrasts against the blackness outside the windows. A new woman sits at her kitchen table, sipping tea, her fingers wrapped around a ceramic mug painted with daisies.
I shout, “Can you see me?” before I lose her. Her eyes dart up from the steaming cup in shock, tea sloshing over the rim, but then the vision dissolves.
A new scene. A new woman.
Deltas, every one of them.
