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"His alpha got a little close to the surface during surgery," Leith says from the foot of the bed. "The chief of surgery wanted to speak with him about it."

Yeah, that must have been a shock. Meeting your scent match while she's unconscious and bleeding on your table. I almost feel sorry for the guy. Almost, because I'm the one with the IV in my hand and the exploded side, so my sympathy has limits right now.

"He'll be here soon," Finn adds.

I nod slowly. Then I make myself ask the thing I already know the answer to, because I need to hear it said out loud. "So, I'm the match for one of your packmates. But not you."

He shakes his head. It's small and solemn and looks like it costs him something.

"There's one more," Leith says. "Piers. He'll be here when he can."

"So it could be two," I say. "Or it could just be the one."

Neither of them says anything. Which is its own answer.

I close my eyes. Okay. Okay. I'm Cammie Fucking James. I have a master's degree and a fancy title, and I once secured a new client while drunk at Coachella. I can process this.

Way to make it complicated, universe.

I know I'm attracted to Finn and Leith. That's not even a question. It’s a fact I've been living with for nearly two weeks while they said absolutely nothing to me. But what if the feeling isn't mutual? What if whatever happened between us was just a night to them and nothing more? Pack up with alphas who don't want you to stay close to your scent match? Wake up every day next to people who tolerate you? Or worse, get rejected by all of them, scent match included? What if this Beck would rather keep his pack intact than complicate it with an omega none of them asked for?

And what if Piers doesn't match at all and the whole thing collapses before it starts?

Fuck me, I think, very sincerely, at no one in particular.

A knock at the door. It opens slowly, tentatively, a nurse peering in like she's checking the temperature of the room before committing to entering it. It's strange behavior for someone whose job it is to be in here. I’d comment on it, but my brain is busy with heavier things right now.

"Ms. James," she says, moving to my IV pole with careful efficiency. "Time for some medication."

I nod. She produces a syringe and pushes it into the line.

"This will keep you quite drowsy," she says, "but controlling your pain in these first few days is important. And the sleep will do you good."

I smile at her. It's weaker than I'd like but it's genuine, because right now sleep sounds like the single greatest gift anyone has ever offered me. Thank God, I think as my eyes start to droop. Later. I'll deal with all of it later.

nineteen

Piers

Idon't speed. I want to. The alpha riding just beneath my skin wants to floor it. If I allowed him, he’d close the distance between me and that hospital in half the time it's going to take at a reasonable pace. I want to let him.

I don't. I keep both hands on the wheel, and I stay three miles over the limit and not a single one more. If I give an inch right now, I'll give everything.

I didn’t see the text when I should have. I was in a meeting that had already run ninety minutes over schedule, phone face down on the table because I refuse to be the man who checks his phone in a negotiation, and by the time I picked it up there were eleven messages I hadn't seen.

Beck: Hospital. ASAP. I found our omega.

Sent hours ago.

I'd read it three times standing in the corridor outside the conference room while my assistant went over my schedule for tomorrow. The messages after it filled in the outline. Leith and Finn aren't her match. I may not be either.

I drum my fingers against the wheel.

May not be.

I don't love it.

I don't deal in maybes. I deal in information, in certainty, in knowing the shape of a problem before I walk into the room with it. Right now I know almost nothing. Her name. That she's in a hospital bed. That Beck operated on her and came out the other side a different alpha, which I would find amusing under literally any other circumstances. I know nothing else. I hate not knowing.