Page 40 of Nesting With My Three Alphas
The suppressants I'd been taking religiously since leaving Chicago felt less effective lately, their chemical dampening growing weaker against whatever was building in my system. Ipressed my hand to my abdomen, trying to quiet the flutter of anxiety that had nothing to do with the approaching storm.
I'd counted the days twice already. I had maybe four left before my cycle started knocking louder than fear.
Not yet, I thought desperately. Please, not yet.
I was still half a block from home when I saw it. A plain brown box sitting on my front steps like it belonged there. No delivery truck in sight, no neighbors walking dogs or checking mail. Just the box, waiting.
My steps slowed as I approached, every instinct I possessed suddenly screaming danger. The package was unmarked. No postage, no shipping label, no return address. Nothing to indicate how it had gotten there or who had left it.
But it was positioned too carefully, too deliberately, right in the center of my top step where I couldn't miss it.
I looked around, scanning the empty street for any sign of movement, any lingering scent that might tell me who had been here. Nothing. Just the faint smell of approaching rain and the distant scent of woodsmoke from someone's chimney.
My hands shook as I picked it up. It was heavier than I'd expected, and something rattled softly inside as I lifted it. The plain brown cardboard felt ordinary, innocent, but my omega senses were practically vibrating with unease.
Inside my duplex, I set the box on my kitchen table and stared at it like it might explode. The rational part of my mind insisted it could be anything. A gift from one of my new friends, a package delivered to the wrong address, some kind of community welcome basket I hadn't expected.
But the primal part of my brain, the part that had kept me alive through two years with Marcus, knew better.
With fingers that trembled more than I wanted to admit, I tore open the tape and folded back the cardboard flaps.
Photographs. Dozens of them, scattered loose in the box like leaves.
Of me.
My breath caught in my throat as I spread them across the table with shaking hands. There I was, walking down Main Street with a coffee cup. Laughing with Charlie outside the hardware store. Sitting in the park. And worst, through the window as I sat sketching, completely absorbed in my work.
Some were taken from across the street. Others from closer, too close. Behind me as I walked, like someone had been following just a few steps back. All of them recent. All of them here, in Hollow Haven, in the life I'd thought was safe.
I'd been watched. Followed. Someone had been close enough to see me laugh, to capture the exact moment when Charlie had made me smile, but I'd never noticed. Never felt the weight of those eyes on me.
The violation of it hit me like a physical blow. My scent spiked sharp and acidic with panic, and I could taste copper in my mouth where I'd bitten my tongue.
I slammed my hands down on the table, scattering the photographs, then immediately began gathering them up again like I could somehow contain the evidence of my exposure. My vision blurred at the edges, and I realized I was hyperventilating.
The walls of my kitchen felt like they were closing in. Every window suddenly seemed like a vulnerability, every shadow a potential hiding place for watching eyes. I stumbled from room to room, yanking curtains closed with desperate efficiency until my home became a cave.
He knows where I am.
The thought hit me with sickening certainty. Marcus. It had to be Marcus. No one else would do this, would violate my privacy this way.
My body temperature was climbing, sweat beading on my forehead despite the coolness of the approaching storm. The suppressants I'd taken that morning felt useless, my biology overriding chemistry as stress and fear triggered responses I'd been desperately trying to delay.
I wasn't ready. Not for this. Not with him still out there, watching, waiting.
My legs gave out somewhere between the kitchen and the living room, and I found myself on the floor, back pressed against the wall, trying to remember how to breathe. My nest called to me from the bonus room, the safe space Charlie and the others had helped me build, where their scents still lingered like promises of protection.
I didn't even realize I was nesting until I was already surrounded by blankets, Jonah's flannel pressed against my face as I tried to absorb every trace of cedar and comfort. His scent grounded me slightly, the phantom presence of pack safety helping to calm my racing heart.
But the photographs were still scattered across my kitchen table. The evidence of violation, of being hunted in the place I'd started to think of as home.
My phone sat beside me on the nest, and I stared at it through tears I didn't remember starting to cry. Jonah. Reed. Micah. I could call any of them.Shouldcall them.
My fingers moved without conscious thought, typing out a message:Something happened. Can I come over?
I stared at the words for a long moment, then deleted them character by character.
They'd done so much already. Protected me. Fed me. Treated me like I was theirs to care for. And I kept handing them mess after mess, my trauma, my fear, my broken past that wouldn't stay buried.
