Page 54 of Knot That Delicate

It was too much. My battered pussy loved every second of it, and I was falling off the ledge, coming in his arms so forcefully that I babbled incoherently—but one thought did slip out.

“I fucking love you,” I moaned as I came so hard, I passed out from the intensity of it all.

In my humble opinion, it was totally worth it.

It had been five days, and finally, Juniper's heat was starting to break, her periods of lucidness getting more elongated and regular. First time it had happened, she had been lucid for nearly two hours before the cramps had overtaken again. “I think it's over now,” Carter said, looking down at the omega snuggled up in his arms.

“Thank God,” I muttered. “Don't get me wrong—I'm having the time of my life, but she can't handle much more of this.”

We had all heard her declaration of love, but we were also pointedly ignoring it. She had said it in heat, so surely, she had just been feeling emotional?

I didn’t want to let myself hope.

Juniper had been going nonstop for five days. She had hardly been able to rest, and getting her to eat had been a nightmare. “I am going to get some food going in the slow cooker, so hopefully, we can feed her. When she wakes up,” I said, but I didn't make a move to get off the bed, where we were all lying with Juniper. Every one of us was covered in her scent, and it was perfect.

We sat in silence for a moment, looking at her. She was splayed across Carter's chest, sleeping deeply, making an adorable little snoring noise with every breath. He was looking down at her in abject wonder, and my chest tightened at the site. Was this the life we could live if we had an omega? Is this the life we were so cruelly denied? “This changes everything,” I said, looking at my pack mates.

Carter grimaced and Dylan nodded his head.

“There's no going back from this,” Dylan said in agreement. “There's never going to be anyone else but her.”

Carter groaned. “But there's going to be an end to this. She’ll go home. We can't keep her here.”

“Yeah, we definitely can't keep her here,” I said. “She deserves to be in the city where there are people, where she can socialise.”

Carter nodded. “Do you think she’d really want to stay with us?” he asked, cocking his head to the side. “I mean, you've seen the way she looks at us. We all knew there was something growing here, and this has just made those feelings a hundred times stronger,” he said.

Dylan shook his head. “No, she needs to leave,” he said sadly. “We can't let her make that choice.”

I turned my head towards him. “What do you mean, we can't let her make that choice? It's her choice to make,” I said, mad that he was even insinuating that he would send her away. We had the key to ultimate happiness in front of us—a family, anomega, children, a life that we all desperately wanted and were too scared to admit it.

“Do you think for one moment she is in sound mind to make that decision?” Dylan asked pointedly. “She needs to see doctors, therapists. She needs time to see what else is out there in the world.”

Carter grimaced. “But you heard what she said. She said she loves us.”

I nodded my head, hearing those words from our omega's mouth had been downright magical. We weren’t exactly knowledgeable on scent matches and what made a scent match. For all we knew, she could just be a very good-smelling omega, but there was something about her scent that pulled us in. Especially now. As soon as we smelled her during her heat, it was like we had been hit by a lightning bolt. Our entire worldview was changed. Nothing else mattered. Only Juniper.

Dylan looked down at Juniper, gently brushing a strand of hair out of her face as she snuggled into Carter. His face was pained. “If she chooses us, she has to do it on her own volition,” he said. “Imagine if we asked her to stay now and just be our omega—would we really be okay with that?”

I nodded. “I'd be pretty fucking ecstatic with that.”

Dylan shook his head. “I wouldn't. I would want to be sure that she made the choice with a completely sound mind and reasoning. Yes, I would fucking kill for her, don't get me wrong. And I definitely have very strong feelings for her. Fuck, I might even love her,” he said. “But she could choose us simply because we're the best of a bad situation to her. She doesn't fully understand her own feelings, purely because she hasn't had a chance to experience the world. I want an omega to pick us because they know. They know what the world has to offer and they would still choose us. If Juniper can acclimate to normal life and still wants to be with us, yes, I would be fucking beatingmy chest and singing from the rooftops,” he said empathetically. “But in this situation, she escaped a madman, who we don't even know if he's still alive, and she's spent years in captivity. She needs a chance to breathe.”

“She has that here,” I told him.

Dylan shook his head. “No, she doesn't know. Does she? She has minimal choices here. She’s stuck,” he pointed out.

I couldn't help my grimace. He was right. I just didn't want to admit it, because admitting it meant that, eventually, we would have to let Juniper go, and I wasn't ready to face that possibility. It was like I had just had my perfect life dangled in front of me, only to be cruelly ripped away moments later.

Carter huffed and threw his head back, wincing when the bottom of his skull hit the headboard. “Goddammit, Dylan, why do you always have to be so logical? Couldn't we just have this for once?”

Dylan shook his head. “You and I both know that, if we're going to have this, it needs to be right.”

“And what do we do for now?” I asked.

Carter shrugged, the movement jostling Juniper ever so slightly. “For now, we enjoy ourselves. It's not like she's going to be leaving soon. There's still probably a few weeks, at least, until the landslides clear. Speaking of which, I'll probably go out in a few days and check on those, but for now, we will just be happy together.”

I grimaced in pain, turning to Dylan with a frown. “You know what? Sometimes I really fucking hate your logic.”

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