Page 133 of How to Lose a Pack in 10 Dates

“You broughtchaos,” Wes says.

She grins and tosses a peanut at him. “Same thing.”

He catches it, eats it, shrugs. “Fair.”

Jace’s arm tightens around her shoulders, and her head tips to rest on his. She’s soft tonight in a way that makes my chest ache, and she laughs.God,she laughs. Loud and messy and full-bellied. At Jace misidentifying a constellation, at Wes getting genuinely mad that his marshmallow collapsed into the fire after twenty minutes of precision, and at me tripping over a log while trying to act nonchalant when I was really watching her.

She shifts to look up at me, hair lit by the firelight, eyes soft and impossibly wide.

“Thanks for bringing us out here,” she murmurs.

“Anytime,” I nod, squeezing her hand. “But next time, you’re bringing a real pillow.”

“I broughtvibes,” she says.

“You brought a feral energy and a stick you called your emotional support branch,” Wes deadpans.

“And yet,” she says, stretching like a cat, “I’m the coziest one here.”

“Because you’re wrapped in three blankets, Jace’s hoodie, and enough smugness to power a small town,” I mutter, watching as she tucks her cold toes under Wes’s thigh.

We fall quiet after that. Not in a heavy way, but in that way that only happens when everyone’s warm and fed andhome.

The fire crackles. Jace hums something tuneless under his breath, and Aimee picks at the edge of the blanket and leans into every touch we offer.

My head drops back against the log behind us, and I look up at the stars.

I don’t know how we got here. I don’t know how we didn’t ruin it for good. But somehow, after the arguments and the heartbreak and the god-awful scent-matching disaster that kicked this whole thing off…

We’re still here.

Still stupid, still soft, and most of all, stillhers.

And for the first time… it feels like we might just make it.

Chapter Thirty-Six

Jace

If anyone had told me two weeks ago that our pack’s first real bonding moment would involve mosquito bites on my ass, three grown men sharing one godforsaken sleeping mat, and an omega using a tent pole as a sword to fight off imaginary bears, I’d have laughed them off the property and probably told them to seek immediate psychological help.

And yet, here we are; fresh off a weekend so emotionally feral and logistically cursed that it’s either going to bond us for life or end up as a cautionary tale in a group therapy session.

I wake up to the sound of Wes growling at the tent zipper.Again.

“Why the fuck does this thing bunch like that?” he mutters, yanking at it roughly. “Is it alive? Is it mocking me? Did I wrong its family?”

“It’s azipper,” Cam mumbles. “Not a boss-level villain.”

“It’s a personal attack,” Wes hisses back, half in, half out of the tent like an angry crab.

I don’t move, mainly because I can’t. I’m too warm, too happy, and pinned under what I can only describe as a deeply smug omega-slash-human heater. Aimee’s curled up on my chest, her nose smushed into the crook of my neck, legs tangled with mine. Cam’s draped over both of us, and there’s no space.

No complaints, either. (Except maybe the lack of remaining s’mores.)

(And also the fact that Wes is currently conducting a full-blown verbal argument with an inanimate object.)

Aimee sighs against my throat. “Too hot,” she mumbles.

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