Page 29 of Pack’s Pledge

I glanced at Britt. She was blushing.

“Brunch at home sounds delicious,alpha,” Beau said, and dropped his eyes in a display of mock deference that made my instincts purr, even as my brain understood he was teasing me.This fucking crew,I thought, not for the first time–or even the thousandth.How thehelldid I end up here?

But as we moved together in the kitchen—eight hands slicing strawberries, stacking waffles, frying eggs—it felt so right that I opened my foolish mouth again.

“Let’s get dinner, tonight, too,” I said, and Beau neatly flipped an egg off the frying pan and onto the grate of the gas stove.

“Shit,” he swore, lifting the pan with the remaining eggs. Britt moved aside and Adrian switched off the flame. She grabbed a spatula from the drawer, passing it to him, and he slid the utensil under the now-charred egg, lifting it from the surface of the stove and depositing it in the trash.

“Sorry, what were you saying?” Adrian asked. “Something about dinner? Beau’s not cooking.”

“Of course I’m not cooking,” Beau said, fiddling with the flame on the burner again. “YouknowI can’t cook, A, that’s how my sorry excuse for an omega ass ended up with you three... Should this size burner be set to medium or medium high do you think?”

With you three.

“Dinner tonight,” I said. “The four of us.”

“A date.” Beau said, and his eyes glinted. I swallowed, tracking his gaze from me to Britt, whose eyes were wide, the hint of a smile flickering across her face.

“Britt? Is that good with you?” Adrian asked, and I loved him for it.

She nodded.

“Then it’s a date,” he said.

There was no turning back now.

But—as I looked at the three of them, wondering why I had been so scared of this for so long, had wasted so much time—why the hell I would ever want to?

CHAPTERTWENTY-TWO

Beau

We’d never,ever,ever, dated someone as a group.

As apack.

Courting?

Was that what this was?

I wasn’t sure: I’d never been one for the whole traditional-pack-dynamics thing, and courting fell squarely onto that spectrum, somewhere between “asking a girl’s dad permission to date her” and “being chased through a forest by an alpha.”

Although, of course, it was usually the omega being courted, and not the other way around.

I adjusted the collar of my shirt. We weren’t going anywhere fancy tonight–this was allcasual, Conall had insisted, firmly ignoring the raised eyebrows he’d gotten in response. He’d taken her toChez Valentinon a first date, and now the girl practically lived at our house.Casual. Sure.

Whatever it was, it was a first date, and not just for Adrian and I, but for Conall and Britt, too: it was their first datewith us. A double date? Britt and Conall, Adrian and I? I smiled to myself in the backseat.

“What’s so funny?” Adrian asked, glancing at me through the rearview mirror from the passenger seat.

“Mm, nothing,” I demurred. “It’s just cute that we’re all going to pick up a girl and take her to dinner. This must be what you alphas feel like, huh, taking me out on the town?” I fluttered my eyelashes, and Adrian rolled his eyes.

“Yeah, you keep thinking that, Beau.”

We pulled up outside Britt’s apartment building. Conall had been spending nights here, but I hadn’t been back since we’d dropped her off late that first night, and it looked grungier in the early evening than it had then.

It just made her look more gorgeous by comparison as she opened the door and stepped onto the small landing, smiling in a deep grey sweater dress. The charcoal lingerie we’d bought for her--and about which I’d spent many evenings wondering desperately—had been a good choice for her; the color make her glow, all bright eyes and pink cheeks.

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