Page 158 of Roulette Rodeo
The keys are still in the center console where I left them two years ago. The interior smells musty, abandoned, with anundertone of the pine air freshener that's long since given up trying. I slide into the driver's seat, and muscle memory takes over—adjusting the mirrors, checking the gauges, all the automatic movements that don't require thought.
The engine turns over on the third try, coughing to life like it's surprised to be needed. I let it idle, warming up, while I sit here surrounded by ghosts and trying to breathe normally.
I need to take a few breaths to prepare for the drive. Deep, measured inhales that my therapist—the one I saw exactly twice before deciding I didn't need help processing grief—would probably approve of.
Being around Red this last month has forced me to confront things I've successfully avoided for two years.
The way she's inserted herself into our lives with such easy grace has highlighted, in painful clarity, just how forced everything with Sophia had been.
It's weird to think about because it didn't seem that way in the beginning.
Sophia had been everything an omega was supposed to be.
Beautiful, refined, eager to please. She'd decorated her nest with expensive precision, attended every pack dinner with a smile, worn our marks like jewelry. I'd genuinely believed we were building something real, that the awkwardness was just adjustment, that love would grow from proximity and time.
I'd genuinely felt destroyed when she died, knowing I'd pushed her to that brink. The guilt had eaten me alive, consumed every waking moment with what-ifs and if-onlys.
But watching Red navigate our pack dynamics, seeing how effortlessly she's beginning to fit, makes me understand the difference between forcing something that was never meant to be and something that just... is.
Red doesn't try to be perfect.
She steals Duke's attention, demolishes sandwiches with zero grace, makes inappropriate jokes at inappropriate times. She doesn't defer to us, doesn't perform the role of omega. She just exists in our space like she's always belonged there, like we've been holding her place without knowing it.
And I dare to admit how refreshing it is…
I put the truck in gear and start the treacherous drive toward town.
The wheels grip where the Range Rover's would have spun, the higher clearance clearing water that would have flooded a lower vehicle. This truck was built for this, for harsh conditions and difficult terrain.
Just like Red was built for us—not the polished version we thought we wanted, but the real us.
The damaged, dangerous men trying to play at being normal.
The windshield wipers work overtime, barely keeping up with the deluge. I navigate by memory more than sight, twenty years of driving these roads serving me well. The radio crackles with weather warnings, flash flood alerts, recommendations to stay off the roads unless absolutely necessary.
But Red's alone in that coffee shop, and something about that knowledge sits wrong in my chest.
Not just protective instinct, though that's there too. Something deeper, more primal. The same feeling that made me shoot down three million in profitable trades just to drive her to book club.
How smooth things have been since she arrived surprises me, even though I've fought it every step of the way.
I wasn't surprised when Red gave Shiloh her virginity. Had been expecting it from the moment I saw them together, the way she looked at him like he was salvation and damnation combined.
The jealousy that burned through me was unexpected but manageable.
It only makes sense she'd choose him first. He found her, saved her, claimed her before the rest of us even knew she existed. But what's really been eye-opening is how Shiloh's changed since then.
All this while—two years since Sophia, five years since I've known him—he's operated like a robot on military time.
Wake at 0500, workout until 0700, breakfast at 0730, then whatever tasks needed doing, executed with mechanical precision. He did what needed to be done for the sake of doing it, because routine was safer than thought, motion better than stillness.
Now?
He has purpose in his movements. Still efficient, still precise,but there's life in it. He rushes through his security rounds not because he's on a schedule but because he wants to get home. Wants to be in the same space as Red, even if they're in different rooms, just existing in proximity like that's enough.
The same shift has happened with Talon and Corwin.
Talon used to spend eighteen-hour days at the garage, coming home covered in grease and exhausted, only to go back the next morning like work was the only thing keeping him sane. Now he does what's mechanically necessary and comes home at a reasonable hour, usually with some ridiculous gift for Red—fuzzy socks, specialty coffee, a book he thinks she'd like based on zero evidence.
