Page 56 of Scent of Home

It’s interesting to watch from the outside.

Erin leans against Finn, her fingers playing with his. Anywhere else, I might feel like a fifth wheel, but this feels right. I don’t feel aggression, resentment, or jealousy as the other’s touch each other. I can see everyone cares. It’s tense and new, but the potential for it to work is right within our grasp.

This is a pack. This is my dream.

I don’t get to keep it.

Fuck, that’s not fair.

Erin glances at me and frowns. I can see she’s going to ask me, but I shake my head and force a smile.

“I’ll be back in a minute,” I blurt out and escape the cabin as quickly as I can. Because when you find your heart’s desire and know you can’t have it, you need a minute.

Chapter sixteen

Shane

I feel high ontheir scents, pulled in a million directions, but when Bray slips outside, I follow purely out of habit. My head is full of explicit images, and my body and mind’s demands that I pull Locke to the ground and make him come until he screams my name, or bite him, are getting hard to control.

Bray is a question mark in my life. A very attractive, addictive question mark, but fighting with him is familiar and safe.

The fresh air only dulls the desires a little, but as soon as I catch that minty scent, I’m following it unerringly. Where is he going? Why? How dare he leave?

I catch sight of him leaning against a tree. I don’t make a sound, I just stand and watch him from the shadows. There is something heartbreaking about Brayson. He’s always smiling, always charming until he’s alone in the dark, and his mask slips. Until you see the lonely alpha. He wears his leather jacket like a shield. His carefree arrogance is a sword. But here, when he’s raw, his hands in his pockets, his hair a mess, this is when he’s the most deadly. This is where he can hurt me.

“What do you want, Shane?”

I don’t know how he knows that I’m here. It doesn’t really matter. It’s just another reminder that he sees me when no one else does. I want to ask him a million things, but talking always ruins things between us, so I stay silent.

Bray whips around and stalks towards me. “What is this? This thing between us, what is it? What was today?”

It’s a good question. One I don’t really have an answer to. I don’t know how I ended up there; I don’t know what possessed me.

“It’s one night, over several nights. An illusion. A reprieve before we go back to what we had before.” The words slip out of me, hungry and deep, an offer I didn’t even know I was going to make.

His face spasms before going into the same familiar mask that I used to know. He’s not happy.

“Sure, Shane. We’ll go back to the way it was before.”

My mouth waters as I stare at him. The words he says barely register. I can’t stop looking at him. I don’t allow myself to stare at him like this. Oh. He’s angry with me, he’s always mad at me, though, and I low-key love it. The way his words get snappy, his expression turns into this mask that I want to fuck off his face. His hands clench and muscles tense.

“You’re not going to fight, are you, because that omega needs us?” Finn snarls as he steps into my view, glaring from one of us to the other.

“We’re not fighting,” I point out absently, too busy dragging my eyes over him to really think about what I’m saying.

But thoughts of Locke have my whole body reacting. Those thoughts lead to the immaculately oblivious beta, and then to Erin, the edge of violent sexual need retreats, leaving me able to breathe.

Bray doesn’t answer Finn, but he’s always had a lot more tolerance towards Finn’s nagging than I have. Or is it? I’ve often wondered if perhaps Finn’s words hit Bray deeper and that’s why he appears so immune.

“Bray, you need to behave-”

“Don’t you dare tell me to behave, Finn. In case you missed it, I’m an actual adult alpha, all grown up and everything,” Brayson spits the words with more venom than he usually would. Am I having an effect on him?

Finn scowls. “I just don’t want you two fighting around-”

Bray shoulder-checks Finn. “You know what you should do, Finn? Climb down from that throne of morality and perfect behaviour once in a while. Stop trying to live up to the reputations of your family and, oh, I don’t know, stay the fuck out of my life.”

“My family's reputations are everything,” Finn says coldly. “This town doesn’t deserve-”

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