Page 94 of Knot Baked Out For This
"We sitting around feeling sorry for ourselves, or are we actually going to talk about this?" I pull out one of the mismatched kitchen chairs—this one painted green sometime in the 70s—and drop into it. The wood creaks but holds. Everything in Rowan's place is like that: old, worn, but solid.
"Since when do you want to talk about feelings, Callahan?" Rowan shoots back, but there's no real heat in it. Just that familiar pattern of giving each other shit that we've perfected over twenty-odd years of friendship.
"Since Hazel looked like she wanted to disappear into the fucking ground today." My hands clench on my knees. I can still smell the fear that rolled off her in waves, sharp and acrid, cutting through her usual vanilla-and-cardamom sweetness. "Since those assholes thought they could corner her like?—"
"Like Korrin used to?" Luca finishes quietly, setting three mugs of coffee on the scarred wooden table. The smell fills the kitchen—strong enough to wake the dead, just how Rowan always makes it.
Another silence. This one heavier.
Rowan pulls out his own chair—the red one with one leg shorter than the others that he's shimmed with a folded napkin—and sits down hard. "We need to talk about what we're doing."
"Finally, some fucking sense," I mutter, wrapping my hands around the hot mug. The ceramic burns my palms, but I don't let go. The pain helps focus my thoughts, keeps them from spiraling into memories of Hazel's laugh when Muffin stole her gardening glove, or the way she leaned into me for just a second at the haunted house before catching herself.
"I mean it," Rowan continues, his green eyes serious in a way that reminds me why people trust this man with their animals, their livelihoods. "All three of us circling her like..." He pauses, searching for words.
"Like Alphas around an Omega in heat?" Luca supplies dryly, earning a growl from both of us. "What? We're all thinking it. The way we acted at the market today—we might as well have pissed a circle around her."
"We protected her," I protest, even though my Alpha wanted to do exactly what Luca describes. Wanted to snarl at those assholes, tear them apart for even looking at her.
"We did," Rowan agrees slowly, "but barely coordinated. If we keep this up…all of us wanting her, all of us acting on instinct…we're going to make things worse. Scare her off completely."
The truth of it sits heavily in my chest. I take a sip of coffee—Christ, it really could strip paint—and force myself to say what's been eating at me since the flower delivery.
Hell, maybe since before that.
"I'm all in."
Both men look at me. Luca's eyebrows climb toward his hairline while Rowan just studies me with those too-knowing eyes.
"I mean it," I continue, setting down my mug harder than necessary. Coffee sloshes over the rim, adding to the collection of ring stains on the table. "I've been falling since that first damn flower delivery. Watching her laugh with that ridiculous cat, seeing her at the haunted house trying so hard to be brave..."
I scrub a hand over my face, feeling the rasp of stubble.
"Christ, the way she lights up when she talks about her sourdough starter like it's a pet. I want to court her properly. Build something real."
The admission hangs between us, raw and honest in a way we rarely are, even after all these years. I can smell my own scent spiking—cedar and smoke, probably broadcasting my emotions to the whole damn county.
Luca is quiet for a long moment, turning his mug in careful circles, leaving new rings on the already marked wood. When he speaks, his voice has lost its usual clinical detachment.
"I've been researching."
"Shocking," Rowan mutters, but fondly.
"Shut up." Luca doesn't look up from his coffee. "Omega care. Trauma recovery. How to approach someone who's been..." He pauses, jaw working. "Been bonded and broken."
The words send a spike of rage through my chest.
Bonded and broken.
Because that's what that bastard Korrin did—marked her, claimed her, then systematically destroyed her confidence until she had to run.
The bond might be severed now, but the scars remain. We all see it in the way she sometimes flinches at sudden movements, the way she apologizes for taking up space.
"I've been methodical about it," Luca continues, and now I can hear it—the emotion threading through his voice, turning it rough. "Telling myself it's just professional interest. That I want to understand the psychology, the biology of it." He finally looks up, and his eyes are dark, intense. "But that's bullshit. I want her safe. Happy." A pause, barely a breath. "Mine."
The possessive growl that underscores the last word has my Alpha stirring in response, recognizing a rival's claim. I force it down.
This isn't about competition. Can't be.
