Page 223 of Lonely Alpha

I wasn’t alone in my head, anymore. I could be. After the initial stumbling blocks with Kiara, I’d discovered how to keep my feelings to myself and keep her out when I wanted to. The Loranger pack was very… open, though. It was hard to block them all out when they seemed to want me to feel their excitement.

“What’s one thing you want to do to explore New Oxford?” Dash asked Kiara.

His head was resting on her chest. I was tucked against her other side, with Ambrose beside me and Mercury beside him. The couch had left us all a little sore, so we’d moved into the makeshift nest, with a bed that wasn’t really big enough.

“There isn’t just one thing,” Kiara said, shrugging. “There’s lots.”

“We should start tomorrow,” Dash said.

She nibbled on her bottom lip, her nerves obvious in the bond. All of us could feel it with this new pack connection, and Dash was quick to soothe her. “Or another day. Tomorrow might be best spent consummating the bond a few more times.”

I laughed, and so did she. Dash’s suggestion got an eye roll out of the other two.

“I should probably go to therapy like Leighton suggested,” Kiara admitted softly. “I thought… it would get better. You know? Since Tobias isn’t here anymore, and my father can’t take me back. But I feel so anxious at the thought of going out and being with normal people. I could say something horribly wrong.”

“You’re not going to,” I said.

“I stabbed Ambrose because I thought it was common to dark bond omegas who were dangerous. I still have to carry around a knife everywhere I go. There are so many things I could do wrong.”

“Nyla is more a friend than a knife, at this point.”

My attempt to lighten her mood worked.

She raised an eyebrow at me. “As if it’s normal to be friends with a knife.”

I grinned. “You don’t have to be normal to be out in the world, dove. There aren’t many normal people, anyway. I can get you an appointment with the therapist, though. He likes to see his patients in person for the first time, but after that you can do video appointments if you’d prefer.”

Hesitantly, she nodded. Her head slumped back onto the bed, her arms reaching to each side even though they weren’t long enough to touch all of us.

“I love you all,” she whispered.

My lips laid a kiss on her skin in response.

I loved this pack more fiercely than I’d thought I could ever love another human being.

I’d spent so much time forcing myself to be alone—half because I was scared of the consequences of love, and half because I didn’t know if I was capable of it. I could have ended up like my mother, only able to care about herself and her status.

As it turned out, I wasn’t like that at all.

There just wasn’t the right time or the right group of people until now.

Since I’d found this pack and this omega, there wasn’t a second of any day I would spend lonely again. None of us would be the lonely creatures we were before, and that—more than anything else—gave me a warm feeling in my chest.

“Love you too, dove,” I murmured. “I love you all.”

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