Page 22 of Knot Baked Out For This
"Not the worst hello I've ever gotten. Though you might've ruined my only clean shirt."
I have ninety responses loaded, but they all die in my throat.
Instead, I focus on safer things—the glaze pooling at the basket's edge, maple on my thumb, anything except Rowan Cambridge's Alpha pheromones dismantling three years of carefully constructed walls.
Around us, the bookstore stirs back to life. Browsers pretend not to stare at the scene: the local Omega baker, shaking like a leaf, face flushed, and the giant Alpha firefighter looming over her, soaked in seasonal shame.
My cheeks burn hot enough to bake on.
I risk looking up.
He's still staring—two parts concern, one part something my ego wants to call longing. His gaze drops to my lips for just a heartbeat, then back to my eyes.
"Hazel—really, it's fine. You doing okay?" There's a softness that wasn't there before. An apology for things neither of us can say.
I want to say yes. I want to say, "I'm a professional, nothing affects me, especially not six-foot-six firefighters who smell like my next breakdown." But the words get tangled in late-night memories, muscle memory, the ghosts of pack dynamics gone wrong.
Instead, I say nothing.
Just hold the embarrassment close and pray for the floor to open up and swallow me whole.
My hands keep moving without permission—smoothing napkins, realigning cookies, stacking promotional cards. I focus on the work, on fighting back against Rowan's pheromones with pastry scents, on looking busy enough that maybe no one will notice my complete dissolution.
But his scent lingers, stubborn and supernatural.
He's close enough to reach across and pull me to him if he wanted.
He doesn't.
But he doesn't leave either.
The standoff lasts one heartbeat. Two. Three.
If this were a horror novel, the narrator would say: "She'd survived the first wave, but the storm was just beginning..."
The bell chimes.
The pack.
They move in perfect synchronization—Levi Maddox charging ahead like sunshine weaponized, Luca following in his shadow, silent and twice as dangerous.
The space they command is obscene. Neither has spoken, but the air changes, pressurizes, becomes something you could drown in.
Their scents hit like a fucking train.
Levi strikes first: honey butter biscuits and vanilla chai, whipped cream and orange peel. It should be comforting. Instead, it's overwhelming—aggressive sweetness that makes my teeth ache and my omega instincts whimper. If someone weaponized comfort food and gave it hunting instincts, this is what it would smell like.
Then Luca—darker, meaner. Molasses gingerbread and black coffee, bitter enough to hurt. Smoked oak and allspice, not trying to comfort anyone. It's the scent of the storm's eye, the calm that comes before everything goes to hell, the voice in your head that saysyou should have known better.
All three together—Rowan's smoke, Levi's false sunshine, Luca's calculated darkness—create what can only be called an Alpha convergence. My knees call it a threat. My omega hindbrain calls it something else entirely.
The bookstore is too small for this much predator.
Levi zeros in on me immediately. His smile is practiced, performative, designed to disarm.
"Oh, this is perfect. Getting into hot water already?" He doesn't wait for Rowan to explain, suddenly beside us, examining the coffee stain with theatrical disappointment. "I thought you preferred your coffee black, not... wearing it."
I snort—involuntary, automatic.
