Page 65 of A Heart in Knots

Crux

Just come home after your shift.

Home.

Did he mean to tell me it was my home or was he just not thinking so deeply? Was it an invitation? A welcome?

Coming back to the Heller house after work felt, well, not really strange exactly. Unfamiliar, maybe. I walked through the front door and to my complete surprise, the Heller pack were sitting at the table, as if waiting for me.

“What’s going on?” I asked. “Have I screwed up somehow? What is this?”

“An intervention,” Crux quipped with a smirk. He received a nudge from Halo.

“Tell us about Indigo,” she said. “We want to know what she was like.”

“Oh.”

“Why don’t we move this conversation to the den, where it’s more comfortable?” Halo suggested as she rose gracefully from her seat.

“We made snacks,” Skye said, pride lighting up her face. She abandoned us and picked up the tray from the dining table. The four of them headed for the living room. I followed.

The den had plenty of sitting room, with two full three-seater couches that were so stuffed a person sank into them. Two matching love seats flanked the couches, and several armchairs stood vigil in this furniture monument. It was all in service of the hearth, and of the big screen television. The coffee tablewas roomy enough for plenty of snacks and drinks. Everyone claimed seats without a second thought, probably their usual spots. I chanced a seat in one of the armchairs. I sat forward, elbows on my thighs and squeezing my hands as I gazed at this unified pack.

“Can I ask a question, first?” I prodded gently.

“Sure,” Skye said.

I looked at them all in turn, briefly studying each of them. “How did you become a pack? You don’t seem like you’d normally fit together.”

Of course, I expected them all to rally around Skye, a pack congregating around their omega. Instead, Halo and Severen looked at Crux.

“You’re not wrong,” Halo said. “Many packs have an interwoven romantic, or at least sexual subtext. Even if I wasn’t exclusively into women, these two are more like brothers than lovers. Big brother,” she pointed at Severen. “Little brother,” she gestured to Crux.

“The three of us grew up on the same street,” Severen expanded.

“Shitty homelife,” Crux added. “When we were kids, Halo and Sev would hang out with me. Keep me distracted. Have me over for lunch or dinner, help with homework. Shit like that.”

“We promised that if none of us had found packs by the time we were twenty-one, we’d form our own pack together,” Severen said.

“Severen presented as an alpha first,” Halo said. “Then Crux. Naturally we expected I would present as an omega, but instead I was an alpha.”

“Obviously I’d be a shitty pack lead,” Crux said. “Halo was just as qualified to be lead as Sev, but wasn’t interested, and since Severen presented first, it made sense for him to accept the role.”

“Big brother,” Halo said again with a small smile. “We were a pack for about two years.” Her smile turned warm and she reached out, threading her fingers through Skye’s silky hair. “Then I met Skye and everything came together.”

Slowly, I nodded, rubbing my palms together almost as a way to self-soothe, to get myself in order.

“Makes sense. Explains a lot, actually.” I took a deep breath, steeling myself for a trip down memory lane, or maybe an interrogation. I wasn’t sure which one I wanted less. “So. Fair’s fair. What do you want to know?”

“How did you two meet?” Skye asked, dipping a cracker into her helping of spinach dip, then popping it into her mouth.

“A marathon, actually. We were both running in a fundraiser to cure cancer. We met just before the run, and smelled one another of course. We spent the whole run just outracing each other, seeing if the other could keep pace.”

“She was athletic?” Halo asked.

“Yeah. She loved tennis, weirdly. And she was very competitive for an omega. She was on the track team in school, long jump. Every time we got a chance, we’d go down to the beach and play volleyball. We did mountain climbing together, camping…”

“That explains how her heart is so healthy,” Severen said.

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