Page 25 of My Knotty Mountain Men

“Oh.” I glance back out the window, my gaze fixated up the mountain in the direction of a certain cabin. “Yeah, I’m fine.”

“Sure, don’t look like it.” She pulls out a chair, taking a seat across the table from me. My attention shifts back to Macy, and I grin at the Omega. She is only twenty-three, but she has the weight of the world on her shoulders. “You seem to forget I know you, Nolan. Better than anyone else, apart from your pack.”

She isn't wrong there. Macy is my cousin and has been working for me for the past five years.

When she was eighteen, my aunt and uncle passed away, leaving her to raise her two siblings, a little brother and sister. Her teenage years were gone, forcing her to grow up overnight and be the parent to a three-year-old little girl and an eight-year-old little boy.

But as Snow Valley does, we rallied together to make sure they had everything they needed. Macy knew she wasn’t alone. My pack wanted to take her in, help raise the kids, but Macy was insistent she could do it on her own. She didn’t want to take the kids away from the house they grew up in. It was the only thing they had left of their parents, and we understood.

I did insist on giving her a job, however. Raising kids isn’t cheap, and she needed the money. Thankfully, she took the job with no questions asked. Do I often add more to her tips andmysterious bonuses every now and again? Yes, but she hasn’t called me out on it, and I don’t plan on stopping.

It’s been five years, and now she has a teenager on her hands and a little girl who looks up to her sister like she is her hero.

“You're thinking abouther, aren't you?” Macy gives me a sympathetic look.

“When am I not thinking about her?” I sigh, lowering myself in my seat.

For the past month, life has been hell.

Finding Violet was literally our dream come true. But we went from having our Omega, the guys’ scent match and the one meant for our pack, to losing her in the blink of an eye.

All because of a woman who couldn’t understand that we weren’t the ones for her.

After Sylvia lied, causing Violet to take off without a word, we spent days trying to find her. That was proven to be a lot harder than we thought because we had little information on her.

All we knew was her first name and age. So a simple search wouldn’t do.

We contacted the people that are hired to take care of her cabin, but because of confidentiality, they couldn’t tell us anything about the owner of the property.

We tried asking around town, seeing if they might know of who lived there at some point, but no luck. Even the people who have lived in this town the longest didn’t seem to know anything.

I’ve woken up in cold sweats, wondering if it was all just a dream, if she was ever really at our cabin or in our beds.

Then I smell the blankets she used during her heat, and I’m reminded that she was very much real.

The guys refuse to wash them, and it fucking breaks my heart when I find them cuddled up to them, seeking her scent.

Her leaving has hit them a lot harder than it has me. I miss her, I crave her, I need her, but they have a connection I don’t. Their hearts and souls are tethered to her.

The pain of being away from her is not just physical; it’s mental and emotional, too.

I’ve never seen them cry before in my life, but the day we realized we were out of options and we might very well never find her, they tore apart the cabin in rage before crumbling to the ground in a fit of deep, heavy sobs.

Someone from the outside might think it was a drastic overreaction, but they don’t know them like I do.

They haven’t seen the years of disappointment, the years of thinking we would never find our Omega. Years of watching everyone else around them find their packs and have kids.

They didn’t have to see the guys’ realization that they may never be dads.

We could have hired a surrogate, or we could have adopted, but it’s not the same. Alphas have a strong biological need for an Omega, to have that kind of pack dynamic.

The bottom line is that I’m a male Beta and am unable to give them what they desire.

That doesn’t make me feel any less loved or wanted; I know I’m their family, their pack mate and lover. It will always be the three of us, no matter what.

But she was it. She was everything they needed for so long. Just when they gave up hope, she brought it back only for it to be taken away and everything to come crashing down around us.

Sylvia hasn’t been around, thankfully.

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