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My head snapped up, and I looked around, not that I thought Yun was lying but more so surprised we’d been making out that long. Ulysses let me slide down his body until I stood on my own but immediately took my hand, threading our fingers together.

“Yun, I’m sorry,” I apologized. “You guys shouldn’t have had to clean up everything after setting it all up.”

Yun-Sun gently gripped my chin, urging me to tilt my head back and meet his gaze. “Sweetheart, it’s no trouble. Don’t fret over the small things. It was clear to us that Ulysses needed you, and we were more than happy to make that possible. We are a family, and that means we do things to support each other. Now if you’d like to help me out, Gareth is getting rather hangry.”

I smiled as Yun dropped a kiss on my lips and headed for the car with the two of us right on his heels.

Sprawled out across Ulysses and Warrick on the couch, I groaned. “I think I’m going to burst.”

Warrick placed a hand on my stomach and rubbed it, talking to it in a baby voice. “Aww, look at the food baby.”

I swatted his hand away halfheartedly, only to squeal in laughter as he pulled up my shirt and blew raspberries on my stomach. A fart so loud it echoed off the living room walls rocketed out of me. It shocked everyone, including myself, but it wasn’t long before Warrick started to snicker. He slapped a hand over his mouth to keep the laughter in, but it was too late. Gareth lost his shit a moment later, nearly falling off the couch, he was laughing so hard. This set everyone else off, and I joined in, refusing to let a normal bodily function upset this amazing night.

A knock at the door had us trying to pull it together, but it wasn’t going well.

Yun stood and did his best to collect himself as he answered the door after the person on the other side knocked even more insistently. Wriggling around, I managed to sit up with Lysses’ help, curious to see who was at the door. A middle-aged man dressed in a suit with the Scent Matchers emblem on the breast waited for Yun to sign whatever was on the clipboard. When he handed it back, the man in the suit gave him a letter, saying something I couldn’t hear, but seemed serious. Yun said goodnight, giving the man a friendly wave before closing and locking the front door.

My gaze tracked Yun-Sun as he rejoined us, yet didn’t take his seat. Instead, his whole attention was focused on the letter in his hand. “What is it?” I asked.

“The man said it’s an official summons to meet with the Scent Matchers,” Yun answered as he carefully opened the letter that was sealed with a sticker bearing the organization’s emblem. He pulled the letter free, slowly unfolding it as he read, his brows furrowing. “They require our presence tomorrow, one o’clock, at the Windermere hub.”

“What? Why?” Gareth demanded, holding his hand out for the letter. Yun-Sun gave it to him, seemingly lost in thought. “The fuck, we’re to attend this meeting without Bailey-Rose? None of this makes sense, I’ve never heard of something like this before.”

Ulysses took the letter out of Gareth’s hand as he started to crumple it in his grasp. I read over Lysses’ shoulder, trying to make sense of this as dread grew in the pit of my stomach.

“Gareth, you didn’t read the whole thing,” Ulysses pointed out. “It says right here, ‘due to the unusual nature of matching, we require additional information before the scent match can be officially recognized.’ ”

“Hold on, who alerted the Scent Matchers we’d found our Omega?” Warrick questioned.

Yun-Sun paused in his pacing to raise a hand. “I did.”

“Really? How did that go, and why are you just telling us now?” Gareth challenged.

Rubbing a hand over his buzzed hair, Yun sighed. “I didn’t think it was a big deal. They were still sending us notifications of new Omegas and followed up on the email we sent about possibly adding in male Omegas. Seeing as we’d just found Bailey-Rose, I informed them that we no longer needed to use the database and to remove our pack from the system. I didn’t hear anything back from them, so I assumed there were no issues, nothing to tell.”

“How long ago?” Vili inquired.

“Ah…” Yun paused, pinching the bridge of his nose. “Oh, it was the day we moved her into the house. I got an alert on my phone, so I ducked into my room to answer the email from my computer.”

Gareth dropped his head into his hands. “Oh, thank fuck. If there had been a major issue, they would have moved way faster than this to get their answers.”

“It make sense,” Vili interjected. “Kitten not in system, no, rejected from system. I think they want to know how we feel or if we know she rejected.”

Gareth scoffed, flopping back against the couch. “Those elitist pricks don’t deserve to know any of that stuff. Bailey-Rose isn’t one of their clients, and it’s not like it’s the first time a pack has found their Omega on their own. The damn system has only been around for fifty years. We just went old-school.”

“However, our pack was in the system,” Yun-Sun reasoned. “Plus, you know they changed the laws that even in cases where packs and Omegas naturally find each other, they must be registered with the Scent Matchers. While I feel it’s odd to be given short notice, there isn’t a reason we can’t go. I don’t know about you, but I’m not going to risk there being an issue and giving them a reason to deny our bonding.”

Fear struck me like an arrow to the chest. “C-can they do that?”

“I don’t know, sweetheart, but I’d really rather not test the possibility. I’m sure all they want is to meet with us, hear our story, answer a few questions, and make sure everything is on the up and up,” Yun assured me.

Ulysses pulled me onto his lap, cuddling me close, giving me the comfort I desperately needed right now. “Hey, I have an idea. We wanted to go to the studio, right? What if we went over after breakfast, took a look around the place, and while we have this meeting, you can paint? This way, you have a little breathing room and don’t worry about us as you get lost in your art. I saw the way you disappeared into that sketch today. You haven’t done any art since we showed up, so I bet your creative side is begging for you to let it free.”

That did sound like a rather perfect idea. Being able to draw at the lake had pulled the cork from the bottle, allowing my creativity to run wild. “Sounds like a hard offer to pass up. I suppose if you guys have to leave me on my own, it’s better to have my art than be all alone in the house.”

“That’s the spirit,” Ulysses cheered, kissing my nose. “There is nothing to worry about. This is all going to blow over, you’ll see.”

Everything in me wanted to believe him, but I’d be lying to myself if I hadn’t been wondering when the shoe was going to drop. Things have been perfect, more than I ever could have dreamed of. It only made sense to me that it was time to wake up from the dream I’d been living. However, I would keep that line of thinking to myself and enjoy soaking up every second of my time with the men I was hopeless to live without.