Page 48 of Pack’s Prize

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“You wouldn’t,”Elias said later, “be worried about your child being… being the way we are? Loving the way we do?” We lay sprawled on his bed, all four of us. Theo and Michael had fallen asleep, I thought, their legs tangled together, but I was still awake despite my bone-deep post-heat tiredness.

“What do you mean?” I asked. “You mean, if they were an alpha, and they loved another?” I shimmied around to face him. “No, I wouldn’t. I would love them for it.”

“Mmm,” he said. His eyes were closed, but his face didn’t look relaxed and sleepy.

“Michael told me about his grandfather,” I said, and Elias’s eyes sprang open. “About how he disowned him for it.”

“I thought it must have been something like that,” the man mused, looking away, and I realized he hadn’t known the full story. Michael had shared that with me, but not his own pack mate? I didn’t know how to feel about that.

“And you?” I asked. “What about your family?”

“They know I’m here. They know I live with Michael and Theo, and that we met abroad. They think we’re just… That I’m still looking for an omega to settle down with.”

I raised my eyebrows. “You never corrected them?”

“I didn’t have to,” he said. “It was always sort of true.”

He reached out a hand and smoothed a strand of hair out of my face. My mind was still trying to process what he meant when he wrapped one strong arm around my waist, pulling me in close to him and planting a kiss on my forehead.

“You should sleep, omega,” he murmured, and much to my surprise, I did, easily and deeply.

CHAPTERFORTY-SIX

Michael

A short week later,I strode into the estate lawyer’s spacious private office feeling good. Ava was by my side, my fingers were itching to sign the paperwork, and then… and then, what?

I felt like I had my whole life ahead of me. The business didn’t matter, not any more. I would go to the florist this afternoon, maybe, and buy some lilies for my grandfather’s grave. I could say goodbye and good riddance, and move on.

I would get some flowers for Ava, too, not lilies, but roses, a hundred of them. A thousand.

Ava tensed beside me, her small hand gripping my bicep so hard I could feel each finger digging into my muscle, and I thought for a second that she was reading my thoughts, warning me off, but…

“Ava,” an unfamiliar alpha said. He smiled, all teeth and no warmth. “I’m so… surprised to see you here.” The way he said it made it sound like he wasn’t surprised at all. My eyes traveled from Ava, to the alpha, and back again. I didn’t like the way Ava was standing, too stiff, smelling of wine gone to vinegar. Panic. She hadn’t even been like this at the club, that first night. Who was this man?

“I’m afraid we haven’t met,” I said. I brought my other arm up, not to shake his, but to cover Ava’s hand on my elbow, my thumb smoothing back and forth over her white knuckles.

He looked at our joined hands and cocked an eyebrow, that unpleasant smile on his face growing, then shoved his own hands in his pockets, lifting his chin.

“I’m Roman,” he said, a shitty smirk on his lips that made the hair on the back of my neck stand on end. “Ava’s alpha.”

CHAPTERFORTY-SEVEN

Ava

Myalpha.

My alpha.

In that moment, all my fear, my panic, fell away.

Who was he to say that?

I couldn’t help it: I laughed.

One short burst of air from my chest, where it had been lodged behind my ribs for the past three years. I exhaled all of him, his scent, his pack, my dead dreams and crushed hopes and conflicted emotions in that instant.

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