Page 18 of The Last Great Omegaverse

Coop, for his part, doesn’t seem to notice anything’s shifted, not right away. He pulls his shirt back on, humming something off-key, finds me another towel from a hall closet I didn’t know existed, and drapes it over my shoulders with a gentleness that undercuts every word of the story I’m trying to tell myself.

“You want food?” he asks. “I make a decent grilled cheese. Not going to win awards, but it’ll warm you up.”

“I’m fine.”

“You sure? I don’t mind sticking around a while, if you—”

“I said I’m fine, Coop.” It comes out sharper than I mean it to, sharp enough that his hands freeze on the towel. I watch something flicker across his face, quick, there and gone, before he steps back and gives me room the way he always seems to know how to do, even when he clearly doesn’t understand why he’s being asked to.

“Okay,” he says, mindful now, all the easy affection from twenty minutes ago folded away somewhere I can’t see. “Okay. I’ll just head out, then. Let you get dry.”

“Thank you.”

The silence that follows is the kind that didn’t exist between us an hour ago, the kind that shows up uninvited the second one person decides to start protecting themselves. He gathers his boots by the door, pulls them on standing on one foot in a way that would’ve made me laugh an hour ago and now just makes the whole scene feel unbearably ordinary, like something ending before it’s had a real chance to become anything.

“I’ll bring eggs tomorrow,” he says, at the door, not quite meeting my eyes now either. “If that’s still wanted.”

“Sure.”

“Wren—”

“I’m just tired, Coop. Long day.” I fold my arms around the towel like it might actually protect me from something. “Goodbye.”

He goes. I watch him walk down the drive through the rain-streaked window, shoulders a little lower than they were when he arrived. I tell myself the tightness in my chest is relief, is distance reestablishing itself the way it’s supposed to, is me finally getting a handle on whatever my Omega decided to do without permission in that mudroom.

I don’t believe that either. I just don’t have anywhere better to put the feeling yet.

I stand on the porch afterward wrapped in a blanket that smells like woodsmoke, watching the last of the storm clear off toward the hills, and let myself feel, for a few minutes, entirely too calm for a woman who’s spent her whole life making sure she never gets that comfortable anywhere.

Silas’s truck rattles up the drive not long after, some errand about fence posts he mentioned days ago and apparently didn’t forget. I watch him work in the fading light, quiet and competent, the same low, deliberate warmth I’ve been noticing more than I’d like to admit humming under my skin every time he’s within twenty feet of me.

He doesn’t stay long tonight, doesn’t linger the way Coop does, just fixes what he came to fix and gives me a nod on his way out that somehow carries more weight than most people’s whole sentences.

Cal I catch once more, right at dusk, standing at the far fence like he does most evenings, watching the property. He doesn’t come closer tonight either. I don’t call out to him. But something about the shape of him out there, patient and unclaimed and entirely too aware of everything happening on this land, sits with me long after the light’s gone and the porch has gone cold enough to send me inside.

Do either of them know what I did with Coop earlier? What would they think if they did? Will he tell them?

Four alphas. One farm. A countdown to the harvest festival that I didn’t ask for, and a warmth in my chest I’m no longer entirely sure I want to talk myself out of.

I go to bed smelling like rain and Coop’s soap, and I sleep better than I have since I got off that bus.

Chapter 8

Cal

The bees don’t care what kind of morning I’ve had. That’s part of why I keep them.

I’m out at the hives before the others are up, veil down, smoker going, moving through the hive rows with the kind of slow, deliberate calm that took me years to learn and still costs me something every time I have to fake it before I feel it.

The orchard’s quiet this time of day, mist still sitting low between the trees, apples heavy enough on some branches that I’ll need to get them picked before the first hard frost decides the timeline for me.

I like the work because it doesn’t forgive carelessness. You rush a hive, you get stung. You handle it wrong, the whole colony pays for your mistake, not just you. There’s an honesty in that I’ve never found anywhere else. Not in people, not in a town full of neighbors who mean well and still manage to complicate everything they touch.

Coop was quiet at breakfast. That’s not nothing. Coop doesn’t do quiet, not naturally, and whatever kept him that way this morning has got Silas throwing him looks over the coffee pot and Asher pretending not to notice while noticing plenty. Nobody asked him about it. I didn’t either. Some things a man needs to sit with on his own before he’s ready to hand them to the rest of us, and I’ve learned the hard way not to push before that readiness arrives on its own schedule.

I’ve got my guesses about what happened out at Calloway Farm yesterday, given the state of him when he got home last night, soaked through and smiling in a way that didn’t survive past this morning. I keep the guesses to myself. He will come to me as pack leader when he’s good and ready.

I built this place out of what was left after I nearly lost it.