Page 38 of Knot Forever

Defeated, I shrug weakly. “I… I can’t find a good place for my nest.”

My heat is creeping up, and I feel like a failure. Ineeda nest. It’s pulling at me like a thorn in my skin, and although the drapes around my bed help a little, it’s not enough.

Nesting should be instinctive. Asher told me to nest anywhere I wanted, but nowhere feelsright.All of my lovely things from the nesting store are piled up in a corner of my bedroom, still in bags and boxes and making my skin itch whenever I look at them.

Seth studies my face, and whatever he sees makes him soften. “Nova. Why didn’t you talk to us, baby?”

I look away. “I’m supposed to know these things, Seth. This house is huge, and I can’t even find a little corner to set up a nest?”

He wraps his arm around my shoulders, nudging me away from the door. “Well, you won’t find it in there, since that’s a bathroom.”

Anotherbathroom. At this point, I’m losing count.

When I sigh, Seth’s fingers tap my arm. “Don’t worry. We’ll find the perfect place. We should have done this with you to start.”

“But nesting is supposed to be private.”

“Is it?” He looks down at me, surprised. “Says who?”

My mother. Who, come to think of it, is probably not the best person to ask for any omega-related advice.

With Seth next to me, I start to feel a little more positive as he takes me on an in-depth tour of the house.

“You really do have too many bathrooms, you know,” I complain good-naturedly when he shows me yet another one. This one has pretty green-blue tiles set like a mermaid’s tail, dark flooring and gold furnishings with a clawed bath that I’m considering sneaking back to later, though, so I don’t complain too much.

But this house is insane.

We work through various rooms, bedrooms, spare rooms, offices, and none of them feel right.

“Don’t worry,” Seth assures me. “Lots more rooms to go.”

But none of them feel right. The only flash of possible inspiration I have is when we walk past a door upstairs. My feet slow as I catch a hint of clean, fresh scent.

Nest.

My hand drops to my chest. Seth doesn’t stop at this door, his feet moving ahead a few meters before he turns back to me. “You okay?”

Nodding, I point at the door. “What’s this?”

“That’s Marcus’s room.” Seth’s eyes slide back to me. “He has it set out in a certain way.”

So a nest would not be a good idea.

Nodding, I swallow down the sadness. “I get it.”

But that’s the only possibility, and as we finish the tour, I can sense Seth’s worry as my shoulders drop. “We’ll find somewhere, sweetheart. Hell, we’ll build something. The right place.”

My gut is telling me that the right place is a flight of stairs, one left turn and approximately thirty feet away from me, but there’s no way I can invade Marcus’s space like that. I force a smile for Seth. “It’s fine. It’s not urgent.”

I don’t know why I haven’t told them my heat is coming. I keep meaning to bring it up, but something is stopping me.

Heats can be… intense, to say the least. I’ve never had one, thanks to my suppressants, but I know that the first heat can be especially forceful because of coming off the meds. I’ll need Seth, Asher, and Marcus, all of them, to help me through it.

But heats also mean mating marks. A permanent bond. And even though my thoughts have started to turn in that direction, none of them have mentioned a mating mark to me yet. I don’t want to force the topic or make them feel trapped just because my heat is coming.

And if I don’t have a nest when my heat arrives, I’ll spend the whole time in a panic, wanting somewhere safe and not having it.

My fingers twitch again.

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