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“No, it’s a long story.”

“I love long stories,” Sarah declares, and I don’t know why, but it makes me laugh.

“Do you really want to hear all about my relationship dramas?”

Evidently they do, and I guess I’ve reached the level of unhinged when it comes to this vacation that I just go ahead and tell them everything, starting from the fact that I’m currently unemployed and living off the money I inherited from my grandfather a year ago, all the way through to how I found out about Elaine and decided to travel to Queenstown by myself. It's nice, actually, to recount the whole thing to a third party.

“Holy shit,” husband-two remarks at one point near the end of my explanation of what my life looks like right now.

“What are you going to do now?” husband-one asks, folding his arms across his chest and practically pouting.

“That’s a great question,” I reply. “I’m still thinking about it.”

“Do you love them?” Sarah asks.

“Yes. Without a doubt.”

And that’s the crux of it. I love them. I’m upset—really fucking upset—that they didn't tell me everything about their own friendship, because while I didn’t expect them to ever go through every single ex that they’ve had, they had plenty of opportunities to explain the nature of the relationship that existed between themselves. That’s the part that is important, because if we’re forming a pack, we all need to be on the same page.

I’m less upset that they didn't tell me about Elaine, though I can’t fully switch off my omega nature. It’s hard to ignore the little twinges of jealousy and the paranoid thoughts—What if she leaves that cult tomorrow and comes back to take them?—but I know none of that is logical. Most people never meet their scent matches. Betas don’t even have them. And it takes more than a scent match to make a relationship.

It takes love. It takes trust.

“As I said before, I’m hurt that they didn’t tell me about their issues with each other, but, the tricky thing—or good thing—is that I can also see their point of view. I believe Matiu when he said he worried about the impression it would give me regarding Scott. Or even regarding him.”

“Yes,” Sarah nods emphatically. “It would have been off-putting for you.”

“It would have been, yeah, I can admit that. It would have made things really awkward and stressful for me if I’d been aware of it. I would have been analysing every single one of their interactions instead of just vibing with getting to know them.”

“So he was right to not tell you at first,” husband-two says.

“At first. I think they could have mentioned it after a few days…” I shrug. “I guess my one concern isn’t really about the guys at all, it’s whether I can even trust my gut, because I trusted my gut in the past and look where it got me with my old pack.”

Husband-one leans forward. “So what you’re saying is that you’re going to let a bunch of abusive wankers from your twenties ruin the rest of your life.”

“No!”

“It’s kind of what you’re saying,” husband-two agrees.

“It’s not what she’s saying,” Sarah interjects. “She’s being cautious. You’re supposed to try and learn from your mistakes.” She turns to me. “I just think you’ve taken the wrong lesson. The lesson should be don’t move in with a pack on the basis of being their omega before you’ve even revealed, right?”

I cover my face with my hands, snorting. “Yeah, that would be the first lesson.”

“And the next lesson would be that your intuition changes once you reveal as an omega. What felt safe before doesn’t always work after we’ve revealed. Once you revealed, what did your gut tell you about the men in your old pack?”

I think back to that time and it’s hard not to recoil. “Unsettled. I was unsettled, and I didn’t know why.”

“And what did you do? You got out. You felt unsettled, and you left that relationship. Yes they did those things to help you on your way out the door, but you made that decision to go. What does your gut tell you about your alphas now?”

I give her the side eye for calling them my alphas even though she’s right. “Safe. Home.” It’s hard not to whine when I think about how much I miss them.

She makes that universal so there you go gesture with her hands. “Look, I’ve been with my alphas for thirty years. I revealed when I was eighteen, and I got really lucky in that Ben here was one of my friends already and he revealed as an alpha a week later. We wanted to be together. It felt right. We built our pack over the next few years. Everyone clicks, if you catch my drift. Even with that really strong foundation, we’ve had our fair share of fuckups. I've done it. They've done it. You miscommunicate sometimes. You go through patches in life where you want slightly different things. Now, this isn't to excuse abuse, domestic violence, people being cruel to you, anything like that. No, kick them out the door if they’re like that. But for long-term relationships to succeed, people have to understand that we're all human, and we all make mistakes. And in the grand scheme of your life, when you've been together with these men for as long as I have, and you look back and you say ‘They didn't tell me about this until three weeks in out of thirty years,’ is that going to matter? And I think you already know this, and I think you're just waiting for someone to give you permission, so if you need that from four strangers on a boat, here you go. I give you permission to go have your happy ending.”

“You deserve to be happy,” husband-two says. “Don’t throw the baby out with the bathwater.”

Husband-three, who has been silent up until this point, frowns, stretches his legs out and cocks his head. “Really fucked up sayings aside, I agree with them, but.”

“But?”