Page 115 of Savage Surrender

“I’ll be back,” I whisper, though I don’t know if he can hear me.

I peel his fingers loose one at a time, and then shuffle into the bathroom. There are voices coming from down the hall.

Ocean air comes through the open doors, but beneath it is the faint, tightly held scent of an omega who learned a long time ago not to let too much of herself escape.

It brushes the back of my throat before herbs thread through it. The scents tangle so completely I can’t find where one ends and the other begins.

Together, they’re as familiar as the path between my old cabin and the gardens. I could walk it in my sleep, without light or signs or anybody telling me where to step. Megan. Ezra. I can’t move fast enough.

Weller sees me first. He’s sitting forward in one of the chairs with his elbows on his knees, his gaze moving from my bare feet to my face. Tristan stands near the end of the couch, one hand braced on the back cushion. His fingers press into it.

Weller starts to rise, but Megan turns at the movement. Her copper-red hair swings around, and she gets to me first.

Her hair is half out of its knot. There are freckles across her nose and a little cut in one eyebrow, but her green eyes are the same, and when they go wide, tears spring to my eyes. Ezra is already getting up beside her.

They’re here.

Megan’s mouth pulls into a shaky smile as she wraps her arms around my neck, squeezing the life out of me. “Bitch, did you jump into a rip tide?” Ezra wraps his arms around us both.

I laugh. “Not on purpose.”

“Next time you want everybody’s attention, send a titty picture like a normal person.”

“Would you have gotten here faster?”

I needed this so fucking badly.

I miss Megan’s knock on my cabin door every morning before we’d walk to breakfast together. She helped get me through the only crisis that ever really mattered. Losing myself after losing them.

“You little asshole,” she whispers into my hair. Her breath shakes even though the rest of her doesn’t. “I missed you so much it’s disgusting.”

“Ditto. You have no idea. I’ve been dying for girl talk.”

“Ezra said the crazy girl came back to life?”

“Even if I killed her again, she’d come back to haunt me. I’m positive.”

“Oh. She totally has a Bianca voodoo doll.”

“That would explain a lot of things.”

Ezra clears his throat, but the chuckle gets out anyway. “Girls.”

“Missed you too, Ez.”

“Hi, Bianca,” he says. “It truly hasn’t been the same without you around.”

Megan shifts, and I notice the gauze from her tracker is tucked beneath her hair, while the other side of her neck is covered in deep purple... hickeys.

I pull back far enough to look at her. Then Ezra. Then her again, even though their scents already told me everything.

“Holy shit. Are y’all fucking?”

“Bianca,” Weller says behind us.

Megan looks over my shoulder at him. “Oh, he’s gonna be fun.”

“Don’t change the subject.” I hook a finger into her collar and pull it down another inch. “Your neck looks like Ezra tried to eat you.”