Page 34 of The Last Great Omegaverse

“It’s absolutely a compliment.”

Cal reaches over without much ceremony and steals the last of Asher’s pie clean off his plate. Asher’s protest is loud enough that Brenda-the-goat, penned nearby for the night, lets out an answering bleat like she’s decided to take sides.

“That’s assault,” Asher says. “I’m telling Linda Pruitt you assaulted me. Right here at her sanctioned event.”

“Tell her. I’ll deny it, and she’ll believe me, on account of never once making her cry in a community meeting.”

“That was one time.”

“Once is apparently plenty, if the bit’s still running two years later,” I offer, and the whole group groans, well-worn, the kind of joke that’s clearly been run into the ground over years and still lands every single time, purely on principle.

“Tell the goat story,” Dot says to me, refilling her cup to the brim. “The real one. Not the version you’ve been telling volunteers all day.”

“There’s only one version.”

“There’s the version where you’re a hero, and there’s the version Silas told me at the bar three years back, involving significantly more mud and a great deal less heroism.”

“Silas exaggerates.”

“Silas has never exaggerated a single thing in his life,” Dot says, and Silas, to his credit, doesn’t argue the point, just allows himself a smile and goes back to his crates.

I watch Wren watching all of it, something soft and slightly stunned in her face, like she’s still getting used to being handed a front-row seat to whatever this is. Four men who built a family out of nothing but stubbornness and proximity, ribbing each other with the comfortable cruelty of people who know exactly how much weight a joke can carry without doing any real damage.

“This is what it’s actually like,” I tell her, quiet, under the noise of Asher and Cal still arguing about the pie. “Most days. Not the big moments. Just this. Somebody stealing somebody’s dinner, somebody getting teased about smiling, all of us too tired to do anything but sit around a fire and be annoying at each other.”

“I like it,” she says sincerely, the quiet honesty she uses when she’s not faking anything either. “I didn’t know I was allowed to like something this ordinary this much.”

“Get used to it. Doesn’t stop being ordinary. That’s sort of the whole point.”

Dot catches my eye across the fire, something knowing and pleased in her expression. She raises her cup a half inch in a toast and might just be her way of saying she approves, before going back to needling Cal about his smile like she’s got all night to get to the bottom of it.

We stay out there a good while longer, tired and full and unhurried, until Dot finally leaves with a wave and a warning not to let the coals catch the field. Watching the last of the light go from the sky, I think that this might end up being the moment I remember longest. Just an ordinary night that happened to have five people in it instead of four.

Wren finds me again once most of the crowd’s cleared out, firelight dancing across the emptied fields, the two of us finally alone for the first time all day.

“Thank you,” she says quietly, closer than the moment strictly requires. “For all of it. I don’t think I’ve ever had a day like this. People just showing up, working, not asking for anything back. It’s incredible.”

“That’s Hollow Creek for you. Slow to trust, quick to show up once they do.” I bump her shoulder with mine, the prior distance from after the storm feeling like a lifetime ago now. “You earned it, though. Don’t let anybody tell you the town did this out of charity. They did it because they’ve watched you fight for this land four weeks straight and decided you were worth backing.”

“You did it, mostly. The logistics, the momentum, keeping everybody moving even when the baler jammed and half the schedule fell apart. I watched you handle a genuine crisis today like it was nothing.”

“Wasn’t nothing. Just didn’t have time to panic about it.” I look at her, firelight catching in her hair, and something in my chest, searing and steadier than the chaotic, headlong rush of the storm weeks ago, eases into place. “I wanted today to matter. Wanted you to see I’ve got more in me than welcome muffins.”

“I already knew that.”

“Maybe. But I needed to prove it to myself, mostly. Guess that counts too.”

She reaches up, brushing a bit of ash from my jaw, her hand lingering a beat longer than it needs to. Something in the air between us shifts, softer than what happened during the storm, the quiet charge of two people who’ve already crossed the hard part and are just now figuring out how good it feels on the other side of it.

“Walk me to the house?” she asks.

“Always.”

I take her hand. The path from the burn pile to the porch is short, but every step feels charged. Ash still clings to the cuffs of my jeans and the ends of her hair. The evening air is cool against the heat still radiating off my skin from the work, and underneath the clean scent of woodsmoke is the softer, sweeter note of her. An Omega and open and already half-ready for me. My Alpha instincts notice. They always notice now.

We don’t speak on the walk. Don’t need to. Her fingers stay laced with mine, thumb stroking absently over the back of my hand, and by the time we reach the mudroom door the quiet between us has thickened into something deliberate. I push the door open for her. She steps inside, turns, and the look she gives me is pure invitation.

I close the door behind us. The latch clicks soft.