Page 47 of The Florist and Her Alphas

I’m at the top of the stairs in time to see the baker from next door coming through the shop’s front door at a dead run with a rolling pin raised over her head like a woman prepared to end someone’s bloodline, flour still dusting her forearm, her dark eyes wild.

“Mira, it’s okay!” Liana’s voice, thin and hoarse, calls from behind me. “Mira, stop, it’s okay!”

Mira skids to a halt three feet from me, chest heaving, the rolling pin still cocked and ready, her eyes flicking between my face and the stairs behind me like she’s trying to decide if I’m a threat worth braining.

“Why are you here?” she asks furiously. “She doesn’t want you.”

“You brought her old pack in here,” I growl. “They could have hurt her. Badly.”

The rolling pin drops an inch. Then another. All the color goes out of Mira’s face at once, the fight draining out of her shoulders so fast she looks like she might fold in on herself.

“Oh my god,” she says. “Oh my god, oh my god, I didn’t…the service…”

“It’s not your fault,” breathes Liana.

“I didn’t know,” Mira says, crouching by the bed. “Lia, I swear to god I didn’t know. I called a service; they said heat alphas…”

“It’s okay,” Liana whispers, her voice scratchy. “You didn’t know. It’s not your fault.”

“Did they hurt you, Lia? Did they touch you?”

Liana shakes her head, and something in my chest unclenches by degrees.

I move to the edge of the bed without deciding to. My hand finds her shoulder, and she’s shaking. I press my palm flat there, steady, willing my own stillness into her body the way I’ve never in my life tried to give anyone anything as I begin to purr.

Mira looks up at me.

Then past me, to Cole and August standing in the doorway. Her eyes are still wet, still wary, but something in her softens when she looks back at Liana.

“Are you okay with them here?” she asks quietly. “Him and his brothers. Do you want them to stay?”

Liana turns her head against the pillow. Her pale green eyes find mine, and she gives Mira a small nod. “Yes.”

Mira wipes her face with the back of her wrist, sniffling, guilt still written plain across her features. She presses one more look at Liana, then at me—assessing, weighing, filing something away for later—before she finally steps back from the bed.

“I’ll be working,” she says. “Call or text if you need me.”

She goes. Her footsteps fade down the staircase, and the bell rings once, distant, as the shop door opens and closes behind her.

I look back at Liana.

She’s looking at me.

Our eyes hold, hers glassy with fever and tears, mine burning with something I haven’t let myself feel in longer than I can remember, and the air between us goes electric, charged the way it does before a storm breaks over the water.

She’s in heat. And she needs our knots.

My cock hardens in an instant, full and aching against the seam of my trousers, and I don’t look away, and neither does she.

Twelve

LIANA

My gaze is locked with Ezra’s, and I can’t look away.

I’m shaking as my heart thumps hard with fear and arousal at the same time. I’m supposed to hate him, but I’m scared I might die if he doesn’t touch me right now.

The heat is eating me alive from the inside out.