AllFreeNovel
Share Us
I chew back a smile. Today is not the day a fuzzy bunny throws me off my game. “You write about them?”
“Read.” Her eyes widen. “I meant I read and read about them. I read about them so much that I said it twice.”
Uh huh.
I didn’t snoop through Dany’s stuff, but one night in her bedroom, and I couldn’t avoid seeing the bookshelf and stacks of handwritten story notes.
Girl has a fanfic addiction worse than mine.
All I have to do is squint and Dany panics, twirling a strand of hair like she can helicopter to freedom. “Um. More importantly, do you want to come to the beach? We’re going to barbecue—Jinnie makes the best kebabs—and yeah… The guys have been digging for hours so they want to swim to cool off. Mom said we should give you the option to join but let you know there’s no pressure because my brothers probably already did ten stupid things this morning, and even a saint needs a break. And, um, we left a watermelon in the surf to chill, so it should be pretty juicy by now and—”
“Dany,” I cut her off. Didn’t mean to deflect so hard I set her on a ramble. “Is it safe to have a beach party?”
“Why wouldn’t it be?” Puzzled, she stops twirling her hair.
“Redfangs and Triad and—” Secret agents, oh my.
“Ohhhh. Them? They’ve been after us since forever. We still get to have fun.”
Her words explode like I tripped Bish’s C4.
We still get to have fun?
Well, shit.
I’ve been living with the wrong motto.
All smiles, Dany skips to tug my hand.
The only betas I reluctantly spend time with are chippy-dick Simon and Brandon’s assistants in the mad-science lab.
They know better than to reach for me.
After my last injection, I’m cranking kitchen cleaner lemon strong enough to melt skin. “Don’t my pheromones bother you?”
“No? They’re nice.” She smiles shyly. “Besides. You’re my brothers’ pack. That means you’re my pack until I’m old enough to find a mate. From what I’ve read, you would’ve made me go all beta-freezey if you didn’t recognize the bond and read me as a threat.”
Prairie dogs are more threatening than Dandelion D’Artagnan Meadows—bless her bunny heart.
“I mean, if you’re okay with me being in your pack. You’re the omega, so it’s your choice. I should’ve asked if it was okay before I said you’d be my sister, but I was too excited to finally meet you after so long, and—”
“Dany. Breathe.” The girl couldn’t bully a paper bag.
That’s what makes her so much harder to handle than the guys.
Only one version of me was ever nice—the Marisol that still had Lilah.
It’s my least favorite era, but not because I wasn’t happy.
Because I was never happier.
And I never will be again.
I have to scrape the back of the vault to remember how to bend my lips in gentle kindness. The effort rips something in my heart, but a few breaths through the pain, I manage a real, rabbit-soft smile. My spiked shields fall, and the Sol buried in a ditch of ash-dusted wildflowers resurrects to pet Dany’s hair. “We can go to the beach.”
A sharp breath whips my head to the door.
Jinnie.
