Page 36 of Knot The Nanny We Planned

JD walks toward me. Not running, walking. Each step deliberate and measured, the walk of a man who is holding himself back from something violent. His eyes never leave mine.

"Don't," I whisper.

He stops. Three feet away. Close enough to touch. Close enough to scent, pine and smoke rolling off him in waves, thick and possessive and angry.

"Don't what?" His voice is gravel.

"Don't, don't make this harder than it already is." My voice breaks. "Please, JD. Just let me go."

Something crosses his face. Something raw and wounded and terrible. "You want me to let you go."

"Yes."

"You're sitting at a bus stop at 3 AM with a duffel bag and no plan." His voice cracks on the last word. "You're wearing a shirt that smells like us. You're producing enough slick for me to smell it from ten feet away. Your nesting instincts are screaming so loud I can feel them in my chest, and you want me to let you go."

"Yes," I say again, but the word is barely a whisper.

"Why?"

The question is simple. Three letters. And it shatters me.

"Because I can't stay." The tears come again, hot, fast, and unstoppable. "I can't stay and hope and believe and then wake up one day and find out it was all just, just chemistry. Just a match. Just biology pretending to be love."

JD stares at me. Behind him, Knox makes a sound, a sharp, wounded inhale. Deklan is motionless, his dark eyes fixed on me with an intensity that makes my skin prickle.

"Who told you that?" JD says. His voice is quiet now. Dangerously quiet.

"Serena." I swallow. "She said the match fades. She said you'd get bored. She said I was just a… a placeholder. A function. A warm body."

Silence.

Then JD moves.

He doesn't lunge. He doesn't grab me. He closes the three feet between us in one step, drops to his knees on the wet pavement, and wraps his arms around my waist.

And I freeze.

His face presses against my stomach. His shoulders, heaving, massive and trembling, shake. And from somewhere deep in his chest, a sound rises. Not a growl. Not a roar. A whine. Low and broken, the sound of an Alpha in distress.

"Don't," he says against my stomach. "Don't leave."

"JD…"

"You're not a placeholder." His voice is muffled, rough, and I feel his arms tighten around me. "You're not a function. You're not a warm body. You're Willow. You walked into our house and made it warm. You held Lily, and she called you omega. You made Deklan feel. Deklan. The man who hasn't felt anything in six months."

"JD, please."

"I'm begging you." He looks up. His black eyes are wet. JD Blaine, billionaire, CEO, the man who controls everything, is kneeling on a wet sidewalk at 3 AM, looking up at me with tears in his eyes. "I have never begged anyone for anything in my life. I built an empire from nothing. I survived foster care. I survived the streets. I survived everything the world threw at me by being too stubborn to break. But this, you, if you walk away, I will break. We will break. And I am begging you. Stay."

I can't breathe.

Behind him, Knox drops to his knees. Not in front of me, beside JD, his hand on the Alpha's shoulder, his green eyes fixed on my face. He doesn't speak. He doesn't grin. He doesn't whisper filth. He just looks at me with an expression so open, so raw, so desperate that it steals the last of my resolve.

And Deklan. Deklan steps forward and stands behind the two Alphas, looking down at me with those dark, unguarded eyes. He doesn't kneel. He doesn't beg. He just says one word.

"Home."

One word. That's all.