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“Asleep? Yeah.” Dead to the world and clutching Daphne like she’s his lifeline. The man who barely sleeps is gone because of her.

“I don’t want to let her go.” Dez stares at her like she’s the end and the beginning. The everything.

My stomach twists, uncertainty pulling the last edges of my sanity around my ears. Without Daphne as a distraction, this is a one minute at a time situation. I can’t talk about forevers and futures right now. “Let’s talk later. For now, just enjoy this.”

The heat forces my knot down fast, but I hold Daphne until she wakes, rubbing against my body with a low, plaintive whine. It should scare me. It does a little, I think. I just don’t care.

Shifting my hips so I slide into her again, I submit to this omega and the rut she created.

It takes four days to surface, and I wake to a cool omega wrapped against my side.

Daphne’s a wreck. Covered in love bites, bruises and cum she refused to wash off for long. Tangled hair spread across my pillow, bandana long lost to the mayhem. She looks like she got into a fight with a honey badger and won, but there’s looseness in her limbs that wasn’t there before. A serene smile that peeks out even in her dreams.

Spun sugar sweetens the air but it’s no longer cavity inducing. The heat’s over.

I’m surprisingly sad about that.

Despite instinct making her mindless, she was gentle with us. Some omegas are fine with one alpha for a heat, especially if they’re older, but a scent-sympathetic omega needs an entire pack devoted to their care. Their pleasure. One alpha is not enough to sate them without serious consequences. Shelby didn’t understand that, and her refusal to try nearly killed me,but Daphne’s need for cum, pheromones and pleasure was easy to manage with my pack around.

If we were too tired, she found someone else. It was almost like there was a subconscious rotation in her mind: Nate, Dez, me. Sometimes together, sometimes alone. In between, she rested, offering us the chance to recover, too. The whole heat was more enjoyable than I expected, especially at the end when she wanted less sex and more snuggles. Intimacy, like telling stories about our childhood or feeding her in my lap.

There was no terror that it would go on indefinitely, no concern I’d be blamed for someone else’s pain. It was just amazing sex with an incredible woman that I can’t stop staring at.

Because Daphne’s spectacular. Beautiful and charming, even in heat. Funny and quirky. She’s also deeply nurturing, instinctively understanding how to handle three alphas equally without pause. Though we spoiled her, she’s done the same right back, and I don’t know what to do.

The idea of going back to a life without Daph hurts worse than I expect, maybe worse than my divorce did. Yet, my ex-wife nearly destroyed my trust in others to the point that I’m not sure I can do this again. So where does that leave us?

Nate shifts on her other side, looking down at her with the dopiest grin I’ve ever seen. The perma-bags under his eyes are gone for the first time in years, like the heat was a vacation for him. “It was real.”

The wonder he says it with cracks my chest wide. “It was.”

“I don’t want to lose her.”

“She may not be ready.” I hate to bring him down, but someone needs to be realistic. Between what little she shared during her lucid moments and the things we picked up on, it’s obvious Daphne’s wounds are deeper than any of us are prepared for.

“Then we wait however long it takes.” Nate shrugs like it’s perfectly reasonable to go all-in on a woman we just met.

“You can’t be serious. You’re going to court a stranger?”

“She’s not a stranger, Connor. I knew the moment I saw her that she was ours.”

“I want to court her, too.” Dez pokes his head up from Daphne’s thigh, which he’s been using as a pillow. “You ask her, Con.”

“No!” It’s too loud and Daphne shifts in her sleep. Lowering my voice, I try to think through the fear, but the walls feel too tight around us. “I can’t.”

Nate’s large hand grasps the back of my neck, hauling me forward until our foreheads touch. “Stop freaking yourself out. She may be an omega, but Daphne’s nothing like Shelby.”

My ex-wife’s name drops like a bomb, making all of us cringe. I look down, expecting a territorial fit, but Daph’s still asleep. The final stages of the heat knocked her out solid.

Dez pats myleg. “Nate’s right. We already know we’re scent-sympathetic and it’s obvious she likes to share.”

Why aren’t they freaking out? We’ve had this before. The dream house, the dream life, the dream omega. It fell into our laps before we had the brains to understand what we were doing and while we tried our best—whileItried my best—I can’t unsee the damage the last attempt caused.

A heat was one thing, but I can’t be part of forever. I promised myself I wouldn’t.

My head’s shaking before I can even come to terms with my answer. “If you’re courting her, you’re doing it alone.”

“Doing what alone?” Daphne asks sleepily, blinking bleary eyes at us.