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“My relationship with Betty is none of your business, sir.” Avery barely gets the last word out before they both dissolve into huge, gasping bursts of laughter.

After several moments of barely breathing, Sascha can feel his face burning red, and his stomach hurts. Just as he’s coming down, he accidentally knocks his phone into Avery’s cheek. Avery smacks the phone out of his hand, then his mouth drops open in surprise when he misjudges his strength and sends the device skidding across the tired hardwood. Sascha laughs until he’s howling, laughs louder than the situation deserves, and Avery laughs at how hardhe’slaughing, until they’re a wheezing lump of tangled limbs sprawled on a shitty old mattress.

Sascha smiles wider than he ever thought possible and informs Avery in the most serious voice he can manage, “I don't think I have the lung strength to go down on you after laughing like that.”

Avery lets out an exhausted, hysterical chuckle and pats Sascha’s thigh. “I'll give you ten minutes to recover.”

“You're a saint.”

“No, I'm your mate, and dealing with your dumb jokes is my job.”

Smiling, tired and fond, Sascha strokes Avery's cheek. “You're good at it.”

“Does that mean I get a pay raise?”

“Is oral sex a valid form of payment?”

“Maybe if you’d actually get around to it!”

It takes them so long to stop goofing around that Sascha hasn't been naked for more than two minutes when Beryl hollers for them all the way from the third floor, despite their bedroom being on the main level.

Grinning helplessly, Sascha says, “I owe you one,” and they both get dressed without complaint.

Leading a pack without the resources Sascha grew up taking for granted hasn't been easy, but learning to share the challenge with Avery has been Sascha’s greatest accomplishment. He carries the weight of being a pack alpha with reverence, valuing it all the more because one wrong move, and he'd have never gotten the chance.

Until now, no one thought Sascha or Avery deserved packs of their own, but Avery was right. Being an alpha is about more than perfect, impenetrable strength. Most importantly, a pack shouldn’t feel controlled by their alpha because no amount of alpha magic can force trust, and without trust, loyalty is brittle. Without the pack’s loyalty, an alpha is never far from being abandoned.

On his own, Avery was lost, and though Sascha had his family in theory, he was no less alone. Beyond having slipped into a mate bond, beyond finding love, the two of them—outcast, imperfect—discovered purpose in leading as a team. Watching each other’s backs, finding balance with their individual strengthsandweaknesses. It means more than the sculpted, perfect image Sascha was raised to envy.

The Concorde pack is everything the world told Sascha and Avery they’d never have because alphas like them aren’t good enough to lead.

Together, they’re proving those fuckers wrong.