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“Frustrating,” Elijah observed.

“One word to neatly encompass the last few years of my life,” I agreed.

Elijah nodded to himself. Then, he squared his shoulders as though bracing for something unpleasant. “I guess since I’ve got you here, I’d be remiss if I didn’t bring up the scent match again. I get that there’s a lot on your plate already—but I’m not sure this is something the five of us can just ignore. At least, it doesn’t feel very ignorable from where I’m standing.”

My stomach sank. At the same time, something primal and wholly unwanted rose up in my chest, whisperingour omegas, ours.

“I don’t know how something like that could work under the current circumstances,” I managed. “Not without putting you in even more danger. Then there are the optics of it—Ipaid moneyfor you two. I essentially bought you on the slave market.”

Elijah was silent for a moment. Then he snorted. “I swear, you and Emma are like mirror images sometimes, and you don’t even realize it. Nice speech and all, but there’s one serious problem with that.”

What kind of pro—” I began, only to be cut off mid-word when Elijah grabbed my shirt front and hauled me forward, pressing his lips to mine.

I made a startled noise. An instant later I had him pressed up against the wall with a thigh jammed between his legs and a growl rumbling up from my chest. Optics and half-healed bullet wounds were just about the farthest thing from my mind as my cock surged to full hardness, slotting against the crease of his hip.

Elijah made a littlemmphsound against my lips, like maybe this was a bit more of a reaction than he’d been expecting. Thatwas fair. It was a hell of a lot more thanI’dbeen expecting. I ground against him, feeling an answering twitch from the smaller omega cock pressed against the front of my thigh.

I didn’t even register the sound of footsteps ascending the stairs from the first floor, or the familiar scent of amber and myrrh cutting through the miasma of soap and randy omega surrounding me. Only when a gruff voice reached my ears did I abruptly return to myself enough to stumble backward a step from the lanky frame pinned beneath mine.

“Am I interrupting something here, Blondie?” Curran asked, his tone caught somewhere between irritation and dark amusement. “Because I’d offer to come back later, but I’m not too sure you should be fucking someone against a wall with that arm still in a sling.”

THIRTY-SIX

Curran

GOD, I WAS TRAPPED with a pack full of idiots. Gabriel abruptly pushed away from Elijah as though his skin had become red-hot—leaving the omega panting with his shoulders braced against the wall, like the white plaster was the only thing keeping him upright.

“S-sorry,” he said. His green eyes were wide as he lifted an arm and swiped the back of his hand across his swollen lips. “I was trying to make a point, and, well...”

“You succeeded.” Gabriel’s voice had dropped into a lower register than I was used to hearing, and the front of his tailored trousers looked like a pup tent.

Any relief I might have gained from popping a knot after my sparring session with Onyx had fled the moment I smelled the two of them rutting in the hallway. However, it was pretty clear that my appearance had snapped Gabriel back to something approaching his usual stick-up-the-arse control. Meanwhile, Elijah looked like he was on the cusp of either making a run for it or bursting into tears from sheer sexual frustration.

Possibly both.

I shot Gabriel a meaningful look.

He cleared his throat. “You’re both right. I see now that we can’t put this on a back burner while we’re trying to come upwith a strategy regarding the Huntwells. Nevertheless, I’d take it as a personal favor if you’d all give me a little more time. I don’t...cope wellwith making decisions about personal matters before I’ve had a chance to overthink them to death.”

“That’s god’s own truth, right there,” I said, mostly for Elijah’s benefit. “In the meantime, the toys from the boat are in the bathroom cabinet if you need them. Everything’s been sterilized.”