Page 31 of The Last Great Omegaverse

“For what it’s worth,” she says, into the dark, “I believe you. About wanting me to succeed. About it being real, even tangled up with the rest of it.”

“Thank you for that.”

“That doesn’t mean you’re off the hook for the balloon payment conversation.”

“Wouldn’t expect anything less.”

She laughs softly, settling closer. I lie there a long while after her breathing evens out into sleep, tracing the same slow circles, thinking about ledgers and deadlines and a woman who apparently decided honesty, even ugly honesty, was worth more to her than any lie I could’ve dressed up prettier.

I fall asleep before I finish the thought. First time in weeks I’ve fallen asleep without the numbers running underneath everything else.

Chapter 13

Wren

35 Days To Go

Silas leaves before I’m properly awake, a note on the kitchen table promising he’ll catch up with me later. It’s actually sweet that he left one.

I spend most of the morning smiling at it more than the situation probably warrants before I catch myself and put the note away in a drawer instead of leaving it out where I’ll keep smiling at it all day.

The warmth starts a day later, subtle at first, easy to blame on the weather turning or the extra blanket I fell asleep under. By the second day, it’s harder to explain away. I wake up too hot, kick the covers off, wake up again an hour later cold and irritable about it. By the time I’m dressed and downstairs I’ve already snapped at the kettle for taking too long, which is not, strictly, the kettle’s fault.

“You’re prickly today,” Dot observes, when I stop by for coffee on the third day, studying me with the attention of a woman who’s spent decades reading people over a bar top. “More than usual, I mean. No offense.”

“None taken. I feel like I’m coming down with something.”

“Hm.” She doesn’t elaborate on whatever that hum means, just refills my cup and lets it go. I decide not to examine why the sound of it lands somewhere uneasy in my stomach.

I chalk the whole thing up to stress. Thirty-five days left on the deadline, a harvest that still needs tending, a loan payment hanging over Ashworth Farm that’s somehow become my problem too now, and four separate, tangled relationships I haven’t found a single quiet hour to actually think through.

Anyone’s body would revolt a little under that kind of pressure. It doesn’t have to mean anything more complicated than that.

I keep telling myself that, right up until the afternoon Coop hugs me hello and the simple, ordinary contact of it lands like something closer to a livewire, heat flooding up my arms so fast I actually gasp. It’s not new, his hands have been on me plenty enough and were nothing my body needed to make a production out of.

This is different. Sharper. Turned up past anything a hello should reasonably cost me, and the not-knowing why unsettles me worse than the sensation itself does. He pulls back immediately, concerned, asking if he hurt me, and I have to lie and say I’m fine because the truth, that his hand on my back lit something under my skin that hasn’t fully gone out since, isn’t a truth I know what to do with yet.

The whole pack shows up the next day for what’s supposed to be a straightforward work morning, prepping the last rows before the Community Harvest Day, and it takes about twenty minutes before I notice something’s shifted, subtle but unmistakable, in the air between all five of us.

Coop keeps finding reasons to stand close. Not overbearing, nothing that reads as pushy, just a hand at the small of my back when we pass in the rows, a shoulder brushing mine when he leans in to check my progress, small, constant points of contact that used to feel easy and now feel like something building toward a question none of us have said out loud.

Asher’s worse, or better, depending which part of me is doing the judging. He’s found some excuse to be near me every twenty minutes, quick touches, a hand at my waist reassuring me over uneven ground I didn’t actually need help crossing, his voice dropping lower every time he leans in close enough to be heard over the wind. I catch myself leaning into it more than the moment calls for, chasing the radiance of him without fully deciding to.

Silas is more reserved about it, but no less present, finding reasons to work near wherever I’ve ended up, passing me tools with fingers that linger a beat too long against mine, and once, crouched beside me clearing a row, he goes very taut and looks at me for a long moment before seeming to catch himself and get back to work, jaw tight, like he’s fighting something he’s not going to talk about.

Even Cal ends up closer today than I’ve seen him manage lately, standing near enough at one point that I catch the honeyed scent of him over the turned earth and have to actually stop what I’m doing and take a breath before I trust my hands with a trowel again.

“Everybody’s acting strange today,” I say, mostly to myself, though Coop, closest, catches it and freezes.

“Strange how?”

“I don’t know. Twitchy. Watchful.” I straighten, wiping dirt off my hands, looking around the field at four Alphas who are all very deliberately not looking at each other, all very deliberately finding reasons to orbit closer to me than usual. “Is something going on that I should know about?”

“Nothing’s going on,” Coop says, too quickly, and Asher, a few rows over, makes a sound that’s almost a laugh and definitely not reassuring.

“Define going on,” Asher offers.

“That’s not helpful.”