Page 32 of Knot The Nanny We Planned

"They're probably listening at the door."

"Undoubtedly." I turn toward the door. My hand is on the knob when she speaks.

"Deklan."

I look back, and she's standing in the shaft of light from the hallway, silhouetted, rumpled, beautiful. Her hand rests over her heart.

"You said you couldn't feel anything since Mara died," she says. "Can you feel it now?"

I look at her. At the light in her eyes. At the tears drying on her cheeks. At the slight curve of her lips, uncertain, hopeful, and brave.

"Yes," I say. "I can feel it now." I open the fully door and step into the hallway.

JD is leaning against the opposite wall, arms crossed, jaw tight. Knox is beside him, his green eyes dark and unreadable. They've been listening. Of course they've been listening.

I look at them, my brothers, my family, the only people in the world who know me, and I say the only thing that matters. "She's not leaving."

JD's jaw unclenches, a fraction. Knox's mouth curves, a fraction. And behind me, in the dark room, an omega who smells like home hums a lullaby to a sleeping child.

The sound follows me down the hallway like a prayer.

Chapter six

Willow

The problem with being shown you matter is that it makes the possibility of not mattering so much worse.

Deklan knelt on that floor. Deklan Kros, the grumpy, spreadsheet-obsessed Beta who hides behind his laptop and speaks in clipped sentences and pretends he doesn't feel anything, pressed his mouth between my thighs and showed me exactly how much I matter. And for one perfect, shattering afternoon, I believed him.

I believed all of it.

But hours pass. And in the dark, when the penthouse goes quiet, and Lily's breathing evens out, and the men retreat to their separate rooms, Serena's voice creeps back in.

You're not a person to them. You're a function.

I lie in the cedar-scented sheets, Deklan's scent woven into the fabric like a promise, and stare at the ceiling. My body is still humming. Deklan's mark purples on my throat, a bruise I can feel every time I swallow. Between my legs, I'm still swollen, still sensitive, still slick with the aftermath of an orgasm that cracked me open.

But my brain won't shut up.

They shared me. All three of them. The match faded. They didn't even knot me.

I roll onto my side and press my face into the pillow. The cedar scent floods my nose, grounding, warm, Deklan, and for a moment, the voices recede. For a moment, I'm back in that room, back against the wall, back in his hands, and I'm not a placeholder. I'm not a function. I'm Willow, and I matter.

Then the moment passes.

Because here's the thing about Serena's words that Deklan couldn't fix with his mouth, no matter how talented that mouth is - she wasn't just talking about the match. She was talking about the Before. The thing that exists before biology kicks in, before the scent-match, before the pheromones and the slick and the knotting. She was talking about who I am when you strip all of that away.

And who am I?

Willow Lorelei Vasquez. Twenty-three years old. Small-town omega with a high school diploma and one incomplete semester of community college. A duffel bag full of thrift-store clothes. A mother who works double shifts at a diner and a father who left when I was four. A bank account with $312 in it. No property. No assets. No prospects beyond this job.

That's who I am.

And they are JD Blaine, Knox Dixon, and Deklan Kros. Billionaires. CEOs. Men who sit in boardrooms and move money like chess pieces. Men who live in a penthouse that costs more per month than my mother's house. Men who have a private elevator and a black SUV and a kitchen with more square footage than my childhood bedroom.

Men who, according to Serena, have done this before. Shared an omega. Used her. Discarded her.

Not like this, I tell myself. Not like this. What I feel with them is different. What Deklan showed me was different.