Page 7 of The Last Great Omegaverse

Sixty days. I look out the kitchen window at the ruin of a farm I inherited three weeks ago from a woman I barely knew, and feel something in my gut go very cold and twisted.

“I’ll sign whatever I need to sign,” I tell him. “And I’ll be here on day sixty with a full crop and a very long memory.”

Warren, to his credit, doesn’t smile, though something at the corner of his mouth suggests he wants to. “I’ll leave the paperwork with you. Take your time reviewing it. And Ms. Calloway, your grandmother thought highly of your capability. She spoke of you more than you might expect, given the distance.”

That lands somewhere soft under the anger, and I don’t know what to do with it, so I say nothing at all, and walk him out. I stand on the porch a long time after his car disappears down the drive before going back inside.

I’ve barely gotten the kettle on when the front door opens without so much as a knock, and a voice booms through the house like it owns the place.

“Knock knock! Brought muffins, hope you like blueberry, also bacon, also I made too much coffee so now it’s your problem!”

A man fills the kitchen doorway. He’s big, broad-shouldered, has a mop of sandy hair, and is wearing a flannel that’s seen better decades. He’s carrying a paper bag already dark with grease at the bottom and a thermos under one arm like it’s the most normal thing in the world to arrive uninvited at a stranger’s house with breakfast.

He’s big enough that the doorway looks built for someone smaller, and something low in my belly reacts before the rest of me catches up. It’s a flush of heat, a prickle down both arms, my pulse picking up in a way that has nothing to do with fear and everything to do with the simple fact that a strange Alpha just walked into my house like he owns a piece of it.

I’ve spent my whole adult life in places that this never happens, that no one Alpha ever takes up enough space to matter. Here, apparently, one grin and a bag of muffins is enough to fill a room. My traitorous Omega purrs to life. I straighten instead of stepping back, chin up, because whatever thread just pulled tight under my skin, I’m not about to let it decide anything for me.

And, dammit, I forgot to replace my suppression patch this morning. I’m not going to be able to un-ring that bell now.

“I’m Coop,” he says, setting the bag down on my counter before I’ve said a word. “Cody Ferris, but nobody’s called me Cody since I was nine and got caught letting the goats into the church picnic. You’re Wren. Eleanor talked about you. Not a lot, but enough that I feel like I already sort of know you, which… sorry, that’s probably weird to say to someone’s face, I do that.”

I open my mouth to respond and don’t manage it before three more people appear in the doorway behind him. The kitchen, which felt small a moment ago, now feels like it’s been built for a family half this size. Four Alphas crowd a doorway meant for one person, and the air in the room changes with them. It becomes honeyed, denser, every hair on the back of my neck standing up at once. I grip the edge of the counter and remind myself I’ve survived worse rooms than this one.

One is tall, dark-haired, mouth set in a flat, unimpressed line before he’s even said a word. His arms crossed, boots muddy, looking at my kitchen like it’s personally offended him by existing in its current state. Even standing still he takes up more room than seems fair, shoulders set like he’s braced for an argument nobody’s started yet.

The other is more subdued still, hanging half a step behind the rest, watching me with an attention that feels different from the others’. He’s less curious, more delicate, like he’s cataloguing something rather than merely looking. He doesn’t crowd the doorway the way the other two do. If anything, he holds himself back from it, like he’s already decided how much space he’s allowed to take up in a house that isn’t his, and it’s less than the others seem to think about at all.

The last one is Asher, now clean-shaven.

“This is Silas,” Coop says, hooking a thumb at the unimpressed one, “and that’s Cal. And you already met Asher, apparently, judging by the state of things this morning. Which, for the record, I did not ask him about, he just came home looking like that and I put it together myself, I’m very perceptive.”

“Coop,” Silas says as a warning.

“What? I’m being friendly!”

“You’re being a lot.”

“I’m being the correct amount.” Coop turns back to me, entirely undeterred, already pulling mugs down from a cabinet like he knows this kitchen better than I do, which, given the last twenty-four hours, he probably does. “Anyway. We saw the lawyer’s car in the drive, figured you’d want backup, or food, or both, so here we are.”

“You heard a car,” I say, “from your farmhouse, and decided that meant I needed muffins?”

“We heard a car and decided it meant Warren was finally telling you about the will,” Silas says flatly. His voice drops low on the last words, a register that seems to come from somewhere lower than his chest, and something in me answers it before I can stop it, a small, traitor shiver I resent immediately. Not unkind, exactly, but not soft either. “Figured you’d want to know what you’re dealing with. Us included.”

There it is. I look at him and feel the morning’s anger find a fresh place to focus.

“You mean you figured you’d want to know if I understood that my house goes to you if I fail.”

The kitchen silences enough that I hear the kettle start to whistle behind me. Coop’s face falls, fast, real hurt flickering across it before he smooths it into something more skilled. Silas doesn’t flinch, doesn’t look away, but holds my stare like he was expecting exactly this and isn’t surprised to have earned it.

“That’s not why we’re here,” he says.

“Isn’t it, though? Convenient, all four of you showing up the same morning I sign paperwork that says you inherit if I don’t.” I cross my arms, mirroring him without meaning to. “I don’t know any of you. I met one of you last night at a bar, and he conveniently forgot to mention he lives next door and has a vested interest in whether I sink or swim. Forgive me if muffins don’t fix that.”

“Nobody’s asking you to forgive anything,” Cal says.

It’s the first thing he’s said, and his voice is more guarded than I expect, rough around the edges like it doesn’t get much use. Everyone in the kitchen looks at him, including Coop, including Silas, like his speaking at all is a small event.

Coop’s shoulders ease down from around his ears. Silas’s jaw loosens, slightly, the fight going out of his stance without a word exchanged between them. I’ve never seen three grown men rearrange themselves around a fourth’s silence like that, but I clock it anyway, filed next to everything else today.