“BABY, you don’t call. You don’t write.”
I mustered a smile for Yvonne as she stepped out of the back of the Center’s enormous black SUV, smoothing her wool dress down into place. Her lips pursed as she took in the LNH Plaza with the same derisive squint in her eyes as the first time.
“I suppose you may not get much cell service in this kind of area,” she mused.
Ryan coughed behind me and Bullet strangled his growl.
“It’s still the city, Yvonne. But I suppose you don’t travel out of Downtown much,” I said, shrugging one shoulder.
“Why would I?” Yvonne asked with a genuine note of confusion.
I snorted and shook my head. “Right, well come in and you can say hello to everyone again.”
Yvonne sniffed, glancing briefly at the two alphas who had offered to stand and wait for the Center representative out in the cold with me. Not that it was very cold out when I was sandwiched between Ryan and Bullet.
“As this is a…review of your situation, I’d like to keep it simple,” Yvonne said. “And private. I need to hear from you and only you today, Baby. Can you show me your nest please?”
I swallowed, feet twisting beneath me as I held my irritation in. Sure, Yvonne was used to working with packs that had penthouses and mansions in the country, but couldn’t she just…not be a dick? Apparently not.
“Absolutely, we’ll cut through the bar,” I said, turning on my heel and pushing Bullet inside ahead of me.
I had more than enough faith in this pack to prove to Yvonne that I was in good hands with them.
But if she only wanted to hear it from me, well then that was fine too. I was happy, I was enjoying myself as an omega, and I was being treated as much like a princess as I cared to be.
Still, my heart twisted in my chest as we went inside the bar and found the whole pack waiting at the tables, dressed in their version of the finest. Even the girls were sitting anxiously with their alphas, at my request. If they meant something to one member of this pack, they meant something to me.
Jonah stood as we walked in, shoulders straightening and chin lifting, and I forced my smile to stay even for him as I delivered the news, “Yvonne wants to make it a private meeting. I’m gonna take her upstairs.”
All around the room expressions fell. Jonah’s bracing stance sagged, and I wished I could toss a bucket of water over him to wash away the hopelessness that dragged him back into his seat.
“Of course, we’ll be down here.”
For his benefit, and for my own—and hell, even Yvonne’s—I stepped up to where he was seated and stroked my hand across his shoulders, waiting for his face to lift so I could bend and take a simple press and sip of his kiss. Seth’s stare was soft and appreciative on us as I turned to him.
“Make sure my alpha stays put so I can find him when I’m done,” I said with a wink, drawing chuckles around the room and an ease in the sinking mood.
“You got it, precious.”
Yvonne was better at her stony face than my own pack but at least she wasn’t rolling her eyes as I led her to the stairs up to the apartments.
The whole Plaza had been buffed and cleaned, and upstairs it smelled less of last night’s bar patrons and more of the pack. As the door to the stairs shut behind us, Yvonne started in on her interview.
Except she wasn’t really using questions. “The betas are an issue.”
“Not for me, they’re not,” I answered, just as quick and sharp. I ignored her lifted eyebrow as I unlocked the apartment. “There’s no conflict of interests with the alphas. I like the girls. And you know how I feel about Seth.”
Yvonne’s nose wrinkled as we stepped inside of the apartment, and it was as if her gaze actually traced the path of my sexual escapades—from the couch with Jonah to the kitchen counter with Seth last night right into the bedroom.
“Well, I certainly do now,” she said, huffing. “Have you been knotted?”
“Not yet,” I said, wondering if that was a mark for or against my alphas.
The hard set of her face revealed nothing. “And the nest…?”
Was my confusion completely obvious on my face? Probably, given my mouth was hanging open like a ventriloquist’s dummy who had missed its cue. I’d been nesting in this apartment for days, decorating it up like my old place, filling it with scents from my alphas. Was I supposed to be gathering twigs and sap and string like a bird?
“Um…” Figuring that the bed was the most concentrated area of nesty-comfort, I swept my arm toward the bedroom door and led the way there. “This is the coziest spot.”
I twisted and bounced once on the end of the bed, holding my breath at Yvonne’s calculating stare. Her nose twitched, her lips pressed together until even her lipstick seemed to lose color, and her eyes scanned every inch of the room.
“Baby. This is an apartment,” she said.
“Yyyyyess,” I agreed slowly, eyes narrowing.
“You built nests in the Center.”
“I mean, yeah.” I shrugged. They were just fluffy small rooms full of sterile pillows and blankets.
Yvonne inhaled deeply, slipping out of her high heels and padding silently to me, sitting gingerly at my side. “Can you sleep alone in here?” I opened my mouth, but no sound came out. “Do you wake up easily? Find the sounds of the street a little irritating? The morning light too bright?”
“I…” I did. It hadn’t bothered me aside from in a normal way. “I like it here.”
“You like your pack,” she said, head tipping. “Do you like this apartment?”
“It’s just an apartment!”
“Exactly.”
I rolled my eyes and shook my head, turning to face the windows instead of her. As if to help illustrate her point, a car honked for an extended run, and I cringed.
“I won’t lie, this is certainly an improvement on what they showed us during the interview. But I
have concerns, and I think you should too.”
I swiveled to face her, mimicking Bullet’s soft growl with a weaker effect. “I think you can’t imagine me wanting this pack exactly as they are. But I do. And they’re good to me.”
She only blinked at me. “Good to is not good for.”
“You are not going to riddle me into wishing I had, like,” I huffed and tried to think of the most ridiculous things possible, “Jacuzzi tubs, and stone fireplaces, and heated floorboards.”
“Baby, everyone wants a jacuzzi tub. Most omega’s want limited light in their heat. Also a bed big enough to share with their preferred alphas.” She raised her hand before I could offer my objections. “I’m not telling you this pack is wrong or bad, but I am suggesting that you take closer note of your own comfort. Surely these men have heard of renovations.”
I frowned. How could I ask anyone to remodel a bathroom for me when we’d only known each other for a few days? Maybe in a year, when we were bonded and I was really a member of the pack.
“Onto the matter of your heat,” Yvonne continued, standing and brushing herself off. “Are you experiencing heightened hormones? Extended bouts of arousal?”
“It comes and goes,” I said. “I’m still getting to know everyone—“ “But they’re taking care of…satisfying you?” she pressed.
I blushed and nodded, lips twitching with a giddy smile. “Yes. Satisfaction is covered.”
“Good. I know you don’t want to hear it, but it could be that the heat is not settling in fully given the…less than ideal surroundings,” Yvonne said. “Don’t be afraid to ask for what you need. Curtains certainly wouldn’t hurt the decor.”
I sighed and offered her a tight smile and a nod. The last thing I wanted to do was give Jonah a reason to doubt that this was the pack for me. Worrying about curtains didn’t feel like a priority. I would tough it out and prove to this pack that I wasn’t too delicate or prissy to be right for them every bit as much as they were right for me.
COLE, or Coal—I hadn’t gotten the story behind the alternative spelling, but it was plastered across the back of his leather cut—had been talking about his bike for the better part of twenty minutes. He was of the personal opinion that he had the best bike of the crew, for a number of highly detailed reasons that had to do alternately with style and function. I was getting the feeling that if I was going to have a downfall on connecting with my alphas, it might be on the topic of the actual machinery they loved so much. But he sure was pretty to look at. And if he noticed my eyes glazing over as he spoke, he didn’t seem to mind.
“When the weather warms, I’ll take you out for a ride and you’ll see,” Cole said, leaning over and bracing his hands on either side of the utility bench I sat on.
Dusty’s garage was loud, greasy, full of alpha pheromones, and covered in pin-up posters of scantily clad women straddling motorcycles and wearing sultry expressions.
Cole had a velvety voice and a buttery smile and a scent that made me feel like I was on vacation. It was heavier with vanilla as he closed in around me, but under that was a whiff of the bubblegum beta named Lizzie. She had banana yellow dyed hair and a cheerful smile, and I liked her except for when it came to smelling her on Cole. Not that I’d mentioned anything yet. I was feeling like I had my hands full when it came to Jonah and Seth and Ryan’s attentions. And I was pretty sure Mackenzie was making slow motions towards the same the other day as we read together in a sunny
spot of my apartment.
“Sounds nice,” I said, trying to resist the way my breath hitched at Cole’s proximity and thickening scent.
“Oh, doll, it will be,” Cole murmured, head leaning in.
“Hey! Dickhead. You finish with that carburetor yet? We ain’t getting paid double to just think about it,” Dusty barked from the office door.
“Sorry, Dust,” I said, laughing and trying to wiggle my way out of Cole’s trap.
“Not your fault, cub,” Dusty answered, cheeks pinking, but still glaring at Cole.
The younger alpha ignored the scolding and instead of backing off and getting back to work, Cole’s arm circled my waist, tugging me to his chest, and his mouth slanted across mine. I froze in surprise for the three seconds before Cole’s kiss broke through my shock. Well, okay then. At least he had an expert mouth, gentle and teasing until it was me chasing for more instead of the other way around.
“Coal, whad’I just say?” Dusty grumbled.
Cole’s tongue licked over my bottom lip and when I took a breath and invited him in for more, my fingers slipping on the smooth leather of his cut, he only purred and backed away, our breath mingling briefly. “Later,” he hissed in my ear.
I shivered as I was dropped back to the bench, and Cole strutted across the open garage to a souped-up sports car. Later what? I was equally nervous and excited to find out.
“C’mere, cub, I got something for you,” Dusty said, still hanging in the door.
I shook myself out of the growing ‘heat brain’ as I was calling it, and swung myself around to face Dusty’s front office of the garage.
“Whatcha got for her?” Cole hollered from the other side of the shop.
“Nun’ya business, dickhead!” Dusty called back. His snarling expression softened as he looked to me again and he smiled, nodding his head to the door.
I grinned and pushed myself up, following him into the office and watching as he shut the door behind me. His nostrils flared as I passed him.
“Better than a fancy air-freshener, cub,” Dusty muttered, and went to sit at his high stool behind the desk. “That one give you any trouble, you let me know, hmm?” He didn’t look over his shoulder through the windows to Cole, but I got his meaning.
I nodded and jumped up to the cleanest corner of the surface of the desk. “Gotcha.” I let my heels kick against the side, thumping lightly.
Dusty cleared his throat twice before looking up at me on his desk. “Gotchu yer courtin’ gift.”
The drum of my sneakers halted as my eyes grew wide. “Dusty… you didn’t have to get me a—“ “Yes I did,” he said, faster than his usual drawl. “Not courtin’ you like the dickhead, or Prez, or any of those others you start perfuming like a garden hot house for.” His fingers dug into his beard, scratching at the root, as I blushed and looked at my lap. “But you are my omega. And if it weren’t for you being stubborn and a real sweetheart, Candy would’ve been kicked to the curb. Woulda broke my heart.”
My legs started kicking again and Dusty didn’t make any moves to get me my present, which left plenty of time and silence for my thoughts to spin. “You wouldn’t have tried to stop her? Fight Jonah on it?”
Dusty sighed and leaned waaaay back in his creaking old office chair on wheels. So far back I wondered how he trusted the chair to keep him from tipping out. “I like to think I was working up to it. Woulda done something at the last minute. But who knows now. This omega thing is a tricky
business, cub.”
“How so?”
He hummed in thought, and I liked that he took his time coming up with his answers. That he was sweet to me, but his heart was somewhere else. It was a nice break from the heat, and all my swooning, and the scorching looks from some of the other alphas. Dusty was all the care and protection of an alpha without the lustful biology.
“An omega in a pack changes alphas for the better if you let ‘em. So with that comes givin’ up some of that feral dog we’ve learned to live with. I might not’ve been ready to lose Candy, but if it meant the others losing you in exchange, well that could’ve hurt the pack in ways worse than Candy or I would’ve hurt. Except you came in, and you saw how wrong it was, and you didn’t let it happen.
You did what was right for the pack because you are who’s right for the pack.” He sighed again and stared at me, and his eyes had a little bit of a teary sparkle in them. So did mine, my fingers wrapped around the ledge of the desk to keep from leaping at Dusty and wrapping him up in a hug. “We sure got lucky with you, Baby.”
My throat was too tight to speak and all I could squeeze out was, “Dusty,” in a little whimper of gratitude. How did such a grizzly looking man turn out so sweet?
He grinned, and one of his front bottom teeth was crooked and gold. “Scorch will have himself a jealous fit when he sees this, but he woulda taken too long to get you one. And you deserve it. You’re one of us, cub.”
And then he opened a drawer in his desk and reached in with both hands to pull out a leather collar. Attached to the collar was a satiny leather jacket that he raised to my eyes, back spreading out in display.
LATE NIGHT HOWLERS was stitched carefully onto a blue velvet patch with an enormous embroidered black wolf howling up at a silver moon. Beneath the wolf, words read Old Downtown.
I was holding my breath in my chest, examining the size of the jacket, knowing it was too small for any of the guys. When Dusty turned it around I immediately searched out the left side, right over the heart.
Baby with an extra curl on the ‘y’ stitched in silver. My hand raised to cover my mouth. I’d been with the pack less than a week. I’d only just managed to grab temporary scent marks from all the alphas I was considering as mates—Tornado, who preferred his club name, had been holding out on me, although he tended to keep close by when I wasn’t in the apartment. I hadn’t missed what Dusty said. Jonah hadn’t approved this. No one had voted me into the club. That wasn’t what this was about.
“I…Dusty… you shouldn’t have,” I said, swallowing the knot in my throat.
“Should have too.”
My answering smile was watery and Dusty was blushing. “Your coat’s not warm enough.”
I snorted and he grinned at me. I slid down from the edge of the desk and under the circle of his arms holding the jacket, pressing myself to his chest and wrapping my arms around his thick middle.
He squeezed me close, and I was enveloped in that warm blanket quality of his.
“She’s a lucky woman, Dust,” I said.
“Stop it,” he said, voice thick with a purr. “You’ll get me in trouble.” His arm stroked up and down my back twice, cheek nuzzling the top of my head and mussing my hair with his beard. I smiled.
Now I had his mark too. Good. We may not end up in each other’s beds, but all the alphas of this pack would play a part in my life. My heart too.
He settled the jacket over my shoulders and stepped out of my arms. “Thank you,” I whispered, blinking rapidly.
Dusty huffed. “Just don’t forget to remind the others that my courtin’ gift was your favorite.”
I grinned and nodded. “Deal. I might need to go show it off.”
He grinned back. “I might need to escort you just to see the look on Scorch’s face.”
The look on Cole’s face was entertaining enough. He was underneath the partially raised sports car when Dusty and I walked out of the office together, and he stood up straight so fast his head crashed into the underbelly of the car.
“Don’t you break shit you can’t afford to replace,” Dusty growled.
“What the hell’s she wearing?”
“A jacket, what’s it look like?”
“Who got it for her?”
“Who the fuck you think, dickhead?”
Cole’s eyes drank me in, but it wasn’t quite the reaction I was hoping for. He looked appreciative but wary. Maybe he was like Jonah, not certain how long I’d really want to stick around.
His mouth opened to speak, and then his eyes caught mine and he shut his jaw with an audible ‘snap.’ “Come on, cub,” Dusty said, wrapping an arm around my shoulders.
I fidgeted with the buckles on the cuffs of the sleeves, and then with the zipper, as Dusty led me through the back hall of the Plaza, a route connecting all the properties together and leading up to the apartments above. There was a gym in the basement under the garage, the opposite side of the building as the original nest they’d offered me. I hadn’t been down yet, but earlier I’d watched Bullet come up from it shirtless and sweaty and broad and delicious. So I thought it’d be worth checking out in the near future for that reason alone.
“What if Jonah doesn’t want me to wear a cut like yours?” I asked as we neared the back entrance of the bar.
“It’s not up to him,” Dusty said with a shrug.
“He’s Prez of the club. Cuts are club,” I said. I was learning the lingo. The jacket wasn’t quite a cut, the vests the guys all wore with the club colors and logo and their names, but it was as good as.
“We’ll outvote him,” Dusty answered, and then he winked at me and opened the door.
It was early evening and the bar was quiet, but there were customers in who weren’t club members, just locals looking for a drink. Seth was behind the bar and his eyes lit up as we walked in, lips twitching as he took me in, leather and all. From his perch near the hall leading to the front door, Bullet whistled and twirled his index finger in a circle in the air, instructing me into a spin. Dusty turned me out for the bar, and the club members—and even a few of the other random people I didn’t know—gave a soft cheer.
“Hey boss,” Seth shouted in the direction of Jonah’s open office door. A grunt echoed out.
“Come out and see this.”
“Why?”
“Because you’re gonna fuckin’ wanna,” Bullet answered shaking his head. His hair was down loose and shaggy, and I wanted to dig my fingers into it.
Tornado and Brody and Roger were in a booth together, pints in front of them and Roger’s girl on his lap. I wasn’t calling the betas sweet butts. No, sir. I needed a better name for them than something that tacky, even if they didn’t mind it.
Jonah appeared in the doorway of his office, and it took him one brief and sudden intake of breath to spot me in the center of the bar between the two pool tables. Apple pie slithered through the air to my nose, wrapping itself around me like tendrils, and I swayed forward.
“Damn, Dusty,” Jonah murmured. He crooked his finger and just like that, I was floating to him.
“You trying to stake a claim?”
“Only one that says I know who belongs with my pack, and who my pack belongs with,” Dusty said from behind me.
I wanted to offer him another smile over my shoulder, but I couldn’t break the lock Jonah had on my gaze as he waited in the door of the office for me to reach him. My steps were slow but steady, and it wasn’t just Jonah’s scent calling to me. All the alphas in the bar, even the somewhat oppressively smokey stranger at the bar, were appreciating the sight of me in Dusty’s jacket. Or maybe it was the perfume I was flooding the room with. I was glad to be wearing the jacket since it was hiding the sharp evidence of my arousal, nipples peaked and tight, scratching against the soft cotton of my t-shirt.
When I was within reach, Jonah grabbed a fistful of the leather and tugged me to his chest, my head craned back to catch the warm glow of his stare on my skin.
“Anyone ever tell you leather suits you, baby girl?”
I blinked, squeezing my thighs together and sucking in lungfuls of him with every breath. My pulse was loud in my ears and with it came a soft chorus of chuckles from the bar. “Not sure anyone’s had the opportunity yet,” I said, and I decided not to be embarrassed about the completely breathless tone of my voice.
Jonah rumbled and his lips curled up, and I thought if I so much as twitched I might just send myself right over the edge. “Well, allow me to be the first,” he said. With a quick yank he dragged me into the office and shut the door with a slam. He pushed me back against the smooth surface, crowding me and fitting his hips between mine as I tried to climb him. He was purring, the sound a vibration against my chest that ran through me head to toe.
“You really test a man’s control, baby girl,” Jonah purred against my lips, his hands cupping around the back of my thighs as he held me against the door.
“I’m certainly trying,” I answered and then I took the kiss I wanted, teeth snagging on that perfect, full mouth of his.
From the other side of the door I heard Seth shout to the others, “Think we’re gonna have a rowdy night in the bar tonight, boys.”
