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“Rightfully?” Love asked, mildly, regarding Ebony with a raised eyebrow.
“You picked Rook, I picked Drake. And Drake’s better. Clearly.”
“Ah yes, I forgot,” Love said. “That’s all the Crimson Fury pack really is: the Hightower brothers and their pets.”
I giggled.
Rook nipped me on the ear. “Who said you don’t count, too?”
I felt the smile creeping on my lips as I watched them jump into another debate—this one on acting skill, to which I had no contribution—other than to add that all my favourite scenes involved them with their topsoff, and that was as far as I cared.
Stars peeked out from clouds above us, and—though the night air was warm—I was happy to accept Drake’s hoodie to keep me warmer as they talked. Rook spotted him passing it to me and hurried inside to grab me a plaid blanket (just in case the hoodie wasn’t enough).
I curled up in both, comforted by the smell of the crackling fire tangling with twilight grass, vanilla winter, black currant wine, and caramel brandy.
The trees across the garden rustled in the light breeze, and the shadow of the great maze loomed a little way away. The garden lights were on, and the pool glowed, its ethereal colours shifting across blues and purples.
Thiswas the dream I’d asked Rook to help me paint.
I sank into it as they talked, the conversation becoming more and more erratic as the night went on.
“You are changing us, Vex.” Love’s voice was rough, dragging me from my trance after a while. “We’re better for you being here. I know… I am.”
“Oh, he’s being vulnerable,” Rook snorted, squeezing me against him. “You definitely changed him.”
I snorted, but Love was smiling. “How do you think you’re going to settle in? There’s a lot of moving parts in a pack.”
“This part isn’t so new to me,” I said before thinking about it. “I grew up in a pack.”
I felt all their gazes on me in a moment.
“That’s unusual,” Love noted.
I nodded.
Omega-alpha pairings always had a chance at alpha kids, which meant pack experiences were often baked into them. Omegas, however, were born at random. The fact my mother had been one was pure luck. Or… well. She might not have seen it that way.
“I shouldn’t talk about them. It’ll kill the mood.”
Rook swallowed, glancing sideways at me. “I hated, when you were gone, that I didn’t know anything about you. I want to.”
I shrugged, hugging a knee to my chest beneath the blanket. “Very traditional. Four alphas, one omega. Normal bond. Middle class. Average. And uh… they weren’t…” I trailed off. “Good, you know?”
Their attention on me was suddenly… a lot. But they already knew so much. They’d seen my room. My posters and drugs. They’d already seen some of the most vulnerable parts of me, and they still wanted me.
That had been the heaviest burden, when I discovered I’d scent matched them: the fear of that rejection. The fear that there was nothing I could do to be good enough. And they’d managed to shatter that fear into a million pieces.
“Evan—pack lead—he was possessive in all the worst ways,” I said quietly. “Arrogant, always angry. There were constant pack lead fights when I was growing up.”
“Did you have any siblings?” Ebony asked.
I shook my head.
“I think that’s why they were so angry. After me, my mother didn’t have any others. She told me later it wasn’t until I was born, that she realised she couldn’t. Couldn’t bring any more kids into our family. When she took the injection, she never told them.” The same shot I’d been given as a gold pack. The injection that stopped an omega from being able to have children for years at a time. “Like I said. My dads weren’t good, and she was always afraid they’d hurt me. They threatened to sometimes.”
There was a silence, broken only by the crackling of the waning fire.
Love broke it. “It sounds like she did the right thing.”
