Page 33

Chapter

Twenty-Three

DMITRI

T he clock on the wall ticks like a metronome, marking each second of this torturous wait. Twenty-six minutes since Darren's text. Twenty-six minutes of sitting in this living room with three other alphas, all of us pretending we're not counting the seconds.

I shift in my armchair, the leather creaking beneath me.

The sound draws Jax's attention, his gray eyes flicking toward me before returning to the bourbon glass balanced on his knee.

He hasn't taken a sip. Just holds it, turning it slowly between his fingers like it contains answers instead of alcohol.

"He'll be here," Aidan says for perhaps the dozenth time, pacing the length of our living room. His nervous energy fills the space, making it feel smaller than it is. "He said he would."

Zayn snorts from his position by the window. "Because Darren's been so reliable lately."

"Enough," Jax says, voice quiet but carrying the unmistakable weight of command. Not his alpha bark. He wouldn't use that for something so trivial, but the tone reminds us all who leads this pack.

The silence returns, heavier than before. We've been like this since Darren's text came through.

DARREN: Coming home. We need to talk.

Six words that sent us all into a tailspin of preparation and anxiety.

Jax called an emergency pack meeting. Aidan had already stress-baked enough muffins to feed a small army since that's how he deals with things.

Since Darren's been gone, it's gotten out of control and if he doesn't actually come back, this place will be more muffin than house.

Zayn disappeared for a bit and returned smelling of cigarettes, a habit he'd supposedly quit two years ago. Proof he's not as unaffected as he so desperately wants the world to think he is.

And I... I've been sitting here, watching, waiting, cataloging every micro-expression and scent shift from my packmates.

It's what I do. Observe. Analyze.

The sound of tires on gravel cuts through the silence. Car door slamming. Footsteps on the porch. We all tense, four pairs of eyes fixed on the front door.

The lock turns. The door swings open. And there he is.

Darren stands in the doorway, backlit by morning sun, looking simultaneously exhausted and... satisfied. His hair is disheveled and his clothes are wrinkled, but there's a looseness to his shoulders I haven't seen in weeks. Not since before the concussion. Before everything changed.

And the scent. Bozhe moi . Even from across the room, it hits me.

Pumpkin spice, layered over woodsmoke. Lexie's scent, intertwined with Darren's in a way that can only mean one thing. They've been intimate. Very intimate.

The knowledge sends a complicated surge of emotions through me. Protectiveness. Jealousy. And a far more primal recognition that feels like rightness and wrongness simultaneously.

Darren's eyes sweep the room, taking in our solemn expressions, the untouched drinks, Aidan's nervous fidgeting. His post-coital glow dims, replaced by wariness.

"What is this, an intervention?" he asks, closing the door behind him with a bang.

Zayn's lips twist into something that's not quite a smile. "You're always off at odd hours doing who knows what. Wouldn't be out of place."

"That's intentional," Darren says, crossing his arms over his chest. The defensive posture makes him look smaller somehow, despite his imposing frame. "I've been avoiding you fuckers, in case you haven't noticed."

The words sting more than they should. To hear him admit so bluntly that he's been deliberately staying away from us, as obvious as it already was…

Jax sets his glass down, the soft clink of crystal against wood drawing everyone's attention. "Were you with Lexie?" he asks, though we all know the answer. It's written all over Darren. In his rumpled clothes, his slightly swollen lips, the scent clinging to his skin driving us all crazy.

I inhale deeply, letting that scent wash over me again. Aidan is right. Pumpkin spice. Warm, sweet, with an edge of spice that tingles in my nose. Combined with Darren's woodsmoke, it creates something new. Something that makes my alpha instincts take notice.

"Yes," Darren says, chin lifting slightly in defiance. "By some miracle, she was actually willing to talk to me. No thanks to your psycho performance at the Terrace."

The accusation lands, justified and damning. We failed him at the restaurant. Failed him as packmates, as friends. The guilt sits heavy on my shoulders.

Zayn pushes away from the window, moving closer with that catlike grace that makes him so dangerous on the ice. "Smells like you did a little more than talk," he says, voice dry as desert sand.

So much for thinking he'd made progress.

The change in Darren is instantaneous and violent.

One moment he's standing in the entryway, the next he's across the room, shoving Zayn against the wall with enough force to rattle the framed hockey jerseys hanging there.

His forearm presses against Zayn's throat, not hard enough to cut off air but definitely hard enough to make a point.

"Who I do or don't fuck is none of your business," Darren snarls, face inches from Zayn's. "Or any of yours."

I'm on my feet before I realize I've moved, body responding to the threat of violence between packmates. Jax is faster, inserting himself between them with the ease of someone who's broken up countless fights on the ice. Between the two of them often enough, even if we are on the same team.

"Stand down," he says, one hand on each of their chests. "Both of you."

Zayn, to his credit, doesn't fight back. Just stands there, eyes locked with Darren's, a muscle jumping in his jaw. "That's not true," Zayn says, voice strained against the pressure on his throat as he ignores Jax and focuses on the omega. "We're pack. Whether you want to acknowledge it or not."

The hesitation in Darren's gaze lasts only a second before it becomes anger. "If you were pack in any way that matters," he says, voice dropping to a dangerous growl, "you could have been counted on to do the one thing I asked of you."

He's right. We failed the most basic test of packhood. Showing up when a packmate needed us.

Even Zayn doesn't have a smartass response for that.

Darren releases Zayn with a disgusted sound, stepping back. The chaos energy in the room is thick enough to cut with a knife, four alphas and a newly minted omega, all bristling with unresolved emotions.

"We owe you an explanation," Jax says into the charged silence.

Darren laughs, the sound bitter and hollow. "What explanation could you possibly have for humiliating me in front of Lexie? For treating her like she was invisible? For ruining what might have been our only chance at—" He cuts himself off, jaw clenching.

At what? A relationship? A mate? The unfinished sentence holds many possibilities, each one life changing.

Jax looks around at each of us, his expression grave. A silent question passes between the four of us. Do we tell him? Now? Like this? The plan was to wait, to give him time and space, but that only seems to have made things worse.

I give a small nod, barely perceptible. Aidan does the same. Zayn's lips thin, clearly unhappy, but he doesn't object.

Decision made, Jax turns back to Darren. "There's something you need to know," he begins, voice steady despite the gravity of what he's about to reveal. "Something we should have told you immediately at the restaurant as soon as we met Lexie, but... things got complicated."

"What about Lexie?" Darren demands, suspicion narrowing his eyes. I can tell he's defensive already, even though he barely knows this woman. Even though he doesn't know who she is to us yet.

The silence stretches, none of us quite sure how to articulate the bombshell we're about to drop. How do you tell someone that the woman they're clearly falling for is also the scent match for your entire pack? Especially when you might have fucked things up royally.

"Lexie is our scent match," Aidan blurts out, the words tumbling over each other in his haste to get them out.

The statement lands in the center of the room like a grenade, and for a moment, we all just stare at each other in its aftermath.

Darren's face goes through a rapid series of expressions. Confusion, disbelief, shock. "What?" he finally manages, voice cracked.

"At the restaurant," I say, speaking for the first time since he arrived. My voice sounds rough to my own ears, unused after hours of silence. "When we first smelled her. Pumpkin spice, like the kid said."

Aidan shifts awkwardly, looking afraid to meet Darren's eyes.

"That's why we all left the table," Jax continues, picking up the thread. "We needed to... process what was happening."

"Why didn't you say anything?" Darren demands, looking from face to face like he's searching for a punchline to a joke he doesn't understand.

"There wasn't really a good time," Aidan says nervously. "She walked out, and you were pissed?—"

"Yeah, of course I was pissed!" Darren exclaims, throwing his hands up in frustration. "You all acted like complete assholes, and then disappeared without explanation!"

He's right about that, too. We handled it terribly. But the shock of finding our scent match combined with the complication of Darren's obvious interest in her... It was overwhelming. We panicked.

"We should have told you immediately," Jax acknowledges, shoulders slumping slightly. "That's on me. As pack alpha, I made the call to wait until we could process what it meant, to give you space. It was the wrong call."

Darren runs a hand through his already disheveled hair, pacing a short line in front of the door like he's considering bolting again.

"So let me get this straight," he says, voice tight with controlled emotion.

"Lexie—the woman I've been seeing, the first person who's made me feel normal since this whole omega thing started—is your scent match? All of you?"

"And yours too, most likely," Zayn points out, rubbing his throat where Darren's arm had pressed. "You just can't tell because of the suppressants."

Darren stops pacing, his expression shifting as he processes this new information. "I... guess that makes sense," he mutters, almost to himself.

And it does. Darren's been on heavy suppressants since his presentation, dulling his newly enhanced omega senses to manageable levels. If Lexie is indeed our collective scent match, he wouldn't have recognized it the way we did.

"So what now?" Aidan asks, voicing the question we're all thinking. "Do we tell her?"

Darren's head snaps up, eyes narrowing. "No," he says firmly. "Not yet."

"She has a right to know," Zayn argues, crossing his arms over his chest.

"You already made a terrible first impression," Darren counters, gesturing to encompass all of us. "You owe her an apology, at the very least, before dropping this on her. All of you."

Another fair point. Our behavior at The Terrace was inexcusable, regardless of the circumstances.

And Lexie, from the little I observed, seems like a practical, straightforward woman.

The kind who values actions over words. But an apology would go a long way toward establishing trust. Getting our foot in the door to prove ourselves with actions.

"Darren's right," I say, drawing surprised looks from everyone. I rarely weigh in on pack disputes unless absolutely necessary, preferring to observe rather than participate. But this feels important. "We approach her as people first, not alphas seeking a mate. We apologize. We earn her trust."

Jax nods slowly, considering. "Agreed. We do this right. No rushing, no pressure." He looks directly at Darren. "And we respect what's already developing between you two."

The acknowledgment seems to take some of the fight out of Darren. His shoulders drop slightly, the tightness in his jaw easing. "Thank you," he says, the words clearly costing him something in pride.

"So what exactly is developing between you two?" Zayn asks, unable to help himself.

Darren's eyes narrow, but he doesn't rise to the bait this time. "That's between me and Lexie," he says firmly. "But I care about her. And I'm not going to let anyone, pack included, mess this up."

The declaration is both challenge and plea. He's asking us to respect his boundaries, to give him space to explore this connection without our interference. But he's also making it clear that Lexie matters to him. That this isn't just about sex or comfort or novelty.

"No one's trying to mess anything up," Jax assures him, voice gentle but firm. "We want you to be happy, Darren."

"Funny way of showing it sometimes," Darren mutters, but there's less heat in the words now. The anger that propelled him across the room at Zayn seems to have burned itself out, leaving exhaustion in its wake.

"We'll make it right," Aidan promises, earnest as always. "With both of you."

Darren studies each of our faces, searching for sincerity or deceit.

Whatever he finds must satisfy him, because he nods once, a sharp jerk of his chin.

"Good," he says. "I'll ask if she's willing to hear out the apology you all owe her, and if she is, we go from there.

If she's receptive, we can tell her about the scent match. If not…"

He trails off, but the implication is clear, even if he isn't spelling it out. The future of our pack hands in the balance, and we'd better not fuck it up.

Again.