Page 64 of Knot Unwanted: Part One

“You’re not listening! Both of you.” Stone runs his hands through his hair, pulling on the strands in frustration. “I’m not saying our bond with Finn isn’t real. I’m not saying your choice was wrong. I’m saying that somehow, impossibly, there’s room for both.”

“That’s not how this works,” I say, but Stone barrels on.

“When I found her, when I first caught her scent…it was like finding a piece of ourselves I didn’t know was missing. The same way?—”

“Don’t,” I warn, but he persists.

“The same way we all felt with Finn. The same thing.” He draws in a ragged breath. “But I was afraid. Of this, I guess. Of hurting us. Of hurting Finn. Of making everything worse than it already is.”

The admission hangs between us. Another omega. Another mate. In any other circumstance, it would be a blessing. But now, with our bonds already strained to breaking point, with Finn still healing, with Ren’s words from last night still raw in our minds…

“So you hid her,” Ren says flatly, but I can feel the dark energy from the emotion just beneath his words.

“I was wrong,” Stone admits, and the self-loathing in his voice is painful to hear. “Fuck, how many times do you want me to say it? I was wrong. Alright?! I should have trusted you—trusted us. Should have brought her home immediately.”

“Yeah,” Ren agrees, but there’s less bite in his tone now. “You should have.”

“None of that matters if we can’t find her,” Stone bites back. “She’s gone. She’s out there alone, thinking we’ve abandoned her. Thinking she has to keep running, and we’re here wasting time arguing.” He runs his hands through his hair again. “Fuck, if you won’t help me, I’ll do it alone.”

He’s already storming toward the back, probably to get supplies from the shed, when I call out to him.

“Wait!” I look at the brightening sky, my mind racing through possibilities. We can’t leave an omega—even if she’s not ours (though Stone believes she is)—alone in these woods. But we also can’t leave Finn alone, not after spending the entire fucking day away yesterday. Not again. The complexity of our situation threatens to overwhelm me.

“We need to organize a proper search,” I say finally, falling back on practicality when emotions become too much. “The three of us can cover more ground if we do this systematically.”

“What about Finn?” Ren asks, voicing the question we’re all thinking. “He’ll wake up soon.”

Fuck. How do we explain this to our omega? How do we tell him we’ve found another potential mate when we can barely hold together what we have?

“We tell him the truth,” I say finally. “All of it. About the accident, about why everything changed. And about her.”

“It’ll destroy him,” Ren whispers, and I hear the echo of his words from last night in the car. The guilt that’s eating him alive.

“No,” Stone says suddenly, turning to face us once more. “It might save us all.”

We both look at him, and for the first time, I see a glimmer of hope in his eyes.

“What do you mean?” I ask.

His throat moves, Adam’s apple bobbing. “There’s something about her… She’s different, Jax. The way she responds to my scent, I…I tried not to make it obvious I noticed but, it’s like she’s meant to be part of this. Part of us.” He runs a hand through his hair again, dislodging some leaves. “I’ve been so afraid of breaking what we have that I couldn’t see what we might gain.”

“Or what we might lose,” Ren counters.

Stone’s jaw clenches.

“Alright, listen.” I point toward the back. “You get supplies. Anything that will help us comb the forest. And Ren, you bring the SUV around.”

The air stills.

Fuck. I’m a fucking asshole.

Wincing, my gaze shoots to Ren. He’s gone still again. Two years of carefully navigating around this, of pretending we don’t notice how he walks the long way around the garage, how his hands shake at the mere mention of driving, and I just blurted it out like it was nothing.

“Scratch that.” I try to backtrack. “Stone, you get the car. Ren, you head to the shed.”

Ren swallows hard enough that I see it. For a long moment, he doesn’t say anything and then his shoulders stiffen. “I can do it.”

I blink at him. “You’re sure?”

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