Page 36 of How to Lose a Pack in 10 Dates

Aimee

“I knew it !” Zara shrieks, nearly tipping backwards off the restaurant booth. “The second you said he growled in your face, I knew he was gonna ruin your damn life.”

“He hasn’t ruined anything,” I mutter, ears burning. “Except maybe my ability to think like a normal, non-feral, non-knot-drunk adult.”

“You’ve been scent-matched and lightly slut-claimed by two of them at once. You are not just holding hands and doing wholesome eye contact in different bedrooms,” Lex snorts into her cocktail. “You’re basically halfway to a pack claiming ceremony.”

“I haven’t been claimed . Jesus. And I wasn’t supposed to like them! That was the whole point!”

“Right,” Zara says, tone dripping with fake innocence. “You were just meant to infiltrate, sabotage, and emotionally annihilate three big, brooding alphas in coordinated hoodies. Instead, you accidentally nested and let them reorganize your spice rack.”

“Okay, first of all, I reorganized the spice rack,” I snap. “Perfect presentation is not a suggestion, it’s a lifestyle.”

Lex raises a hand. “Oh sorry, I forgot that while you were bringing down the patriarchy you also became their live-in domestic goddess. So what’s next: do you want us to send you a monogrammed pack apron?”

I try to glare at her, but I can’t help but laugh along with her dry tone.

“It’s not like I planned to—” I gesture helplessly, “— do any of this. Cam was just supposed to be golden-retriever background noise, a cute distraction. Jace wasn’t supposed to make me laugh until I got the hiccups.

And Wes ?” I sigh. “Don’t even get me started on that emotionally repressed alpha-hole. ”

“Oh, we want to get started on Wes,” Lex leans in. “We want the growl-by-growl breakdown.”

“I’m not telling you,” I say, already dying.

Zara waves her fork. “Just confirm the knotting. That’s all I care about.”

Lex nods in agreement. “Yeah. Did he knot you stupid, or knot you emotional?”

“ LEX! ”

“What?” she laughs, and Zara smirks knowingly. “Those are real categories and you know it .”

“I’m going to peel my own skin off,” I groan.

“ So…” Zara says, gesturing toward me. “Come on. Give us something. How bad was it?”

“It wasn’t bad. It was anything but. And that’s the point.” I sigh as I bury my face in my hands. “It wasn’t even supposed to happen. But then he was just there , turning up at my apartment all snarling and smug—”

“My god,” Zara cuts in, clutching her chest theatrically. “You hate-fucked your scent match.”

“I did not .” They both shoot me a look, and my shoulders sag as I relent. “Okay. Technically . Maybe.”

“Where?” Zara asks, narrowing her eyes.

“...Against my living room wall.”

Lex lets out an unholy screech. “WALL-FUCKED?! YOU WALL-FUCKED HIM ?”

“In my defence, I wasn’t the one doing most of the… you know.”

“Oh my god,” Zara gasps. “Aimee! This is… wow. So then what? You crawled into Cam’s bed for post-apocalyptic cuddles?”

She’s joking, but my silence says everything.

Lex drops her fork.

“OH MY GOD,” she squeals, and my eyes widen as I attempt to shush her. “You wall-fucked your scent match and cozy-morning-aftered the pack cinnamon roll?! You’re going feral in reverse alphabetical order!”

“I hate you both so much,” I whisper through my fingers.

Zara wheezes. “You let one knot ruin your serotonin levels and now you’re out here emotionally clinging to the sweet one like he’s a weighted blanket.”

“ He is, ” I hiss. “He folds my laundry and brings me snacks and tells me I smell nice even when I’m a hormonal disaster! Do you know what that does to an omega?!”

Lex wipes a tear from the corner of her eye. “It activates the nesting instinct and makes you want to schedule his dental check-ups, probably.”

“Exactly!”

There’s a moment of giggly, borderline unhinged silence as we all sip our drinks. My face is still warm, but I don’t even care that half the restaurant probably thinks we’re blackout drunk or in heat. My stomach hurts from laughing so hard, and I feel… well. Alive.

Zara finally exhales. “So what are you gonna do? About the article?”

“I’ve been thinking about it a lot. Since we spoke,” I tell her. “So… I’ve written two drafts.”

Lex leans in. “Spicy.”

“The real one and the fake one. Both titled How to Lose a Pack in 10 Dates. ”

They blink.

“The real one is… bad,” I admit. “It’s just me spiraling. Falling for them all—hook, line, and scent-matched sinker. It’s not funny. It’s not clever. It’s just honest .”

“And the fake one?” Zara asks.

“It’s half-finished, but it’s weak,” I frown. “I lost the bite somewhere between Cam making me tea and Jace giving me his good pillow. I know it sounds crazy to say, but I can’t even remember why I started this in the first place. It feels… kind of dumb. I don’t know.”

“It wasn’t dumb. It was funny,” Lex shrugs. “Is Rachel… mad ?”

“No. At least, I don’t think so. She says it’ll go viral either way; that omegas love drama, but they worship happy endings. Especially the kind that involves multiple hot alphas and slow emotional growth arcs.”

“I couldn’t agree more with that take,” Zara salutes with her wine.

“Cheers: to being emotionally wrecked and scent-matched by a three-man pack with Olympic thighs,” Lex grins.

“To accidental love,” Zara says with a rolls her eyes, before smirking over at me. “ And to knowing what a good knot can fix.”

We finish dinner in a haze of carbs and estrogen, cackling over alpha jawlines, scent triggers, and the horrifying realization that I might have accidentally landed in the only pack in the city that makes me feel like I’m not too much.

For once, though, I’m not actively dreading what comes next.

In fact, I’m kind of excited .

*

By the time I make it home, the house smells like heaven. And not just because someone’s baking something cinnamon-scented and borderline illegal—though that helps.

It’s the layered comfort of them. The faint trace of Cam’s warmth lingering by the door, the grounding spice of Jace’s cologne in the hallway, the sharper, cleaner scent that always follows Wes around. The way it all blends into something that smells like safety and want and—god help me— home .

I toe off my boots and pad into the living room, expecting chaos.

What I find is calm .

Jace is sitting on the floor in front of the coffee table, one hand idly rubbing his neck while Cam flips through a recipe book beside him, tongue poking out in concentration.

There’s flour on his cheek. Wes is on the couch, one ankle crossed over his knee, half-watching the others while pretending to be invested in his emails.

They all look up when I walk in.

Cam beams, Jace lifts a hand in greeting, and Wes… He just watches me, like I’m the only thing in the room worth seeing.

I shift, suddenly shy. “Hey.”

Cam’s already standing. “We were just talking about whether cinnamon rolls count as dinner.”

“They absolutely do,” I nod, wandering further in.

“You’ve got flour on your—” I reach up and brush Cam’s cheek. He leans into the touch, grinning.

“You smell good,” he murmurs. “Where’ve you been?”

“Dinner with Lex and Zara. There was wine. There were threats. Zara might be planning to adopt me.”

Jace laughs. “Please let her. She’d be a great Omega Godmother.”

“I’m not a baby,” I protest.

Cam pulls me into a hug anyway. “You’re our baby.”

I snort, even as I melt against him. He smells so good: warm and sweet and perfectly Cam. His arms wrap around me without hesitation, and I let myself breathe for a second—sink into the quiet, easy comfort of it all.

He lets me go with one last squeeze, brushing a kiss over the top of my head before walking into the kitchen. I follow his lead, lingering near the kitchen doorway, tugging at the hem of my skirt and trying not to feel too much.

Jace offers me a grape from the bowl he’d been demolishing on the coffee table. I throw it in my mouth and catch him smiling at me like I’ve just passed some kind of pack-level aptitude test.

And then, I feel it: the heat of Wes at my side. He’s close, but not crowding. He’s just… there , all broad shoulders and calm tension, and I glance up to find him watching me with an expression that makes my knees threaten mutiny.

“Hey,” he says lowly, voice just for me.

“Hey,” I whisper back.

His eyes flick to my mouth, and then, before I can second-guess it, before I can even consider bracing for impact, he leans in and presses a kiss to the corner of it.

He pulls back like it didn’t just detonate a small nuclear device in my chest, but I feel the weight of it all the same. The choice in it.

Cam glances over his shoulder at us from the stove and offers a quick smile. Jace doesn’t even blink.

“Finally,” he mutters, popping another grape.

It’s the first time Wes has touched me in front of them, the first time he’s let anyone see it—that instinct to claim, to want, to mark me as his without pretending he doesn’t care.

And the world didn’t end.

Nobody growls, or snaps. The hierarchy doesn’t shift, and the room doesn’t tilt into chaos. It just… is . Cam is still humming to himself, Jace is still lounging around, and Wes is just standing there, cool as ever, as if kissing me in front of his pack is the most natural thing in the world.

Maybe it is. Maybe this is what it’s supposed to feel like. Easy. Warm. A little ridiculous, a little messy, but ours .

I blink hard, trying to push the emotion down, but it bubbles anyway. It’s not panic this time, though; not guilt or fear or impending doom or anything else that I’m used to.

This time, it’s hope.

Somewhere between Cam’s smile and Jace’s muttering and Wes’s kiss, it hits me: I could stay. This could work. We’re rough around the edges, but we’re finding something real here. Something true.

And suddenly, I know how to end the article.

How to Lose a Pack in 10 Dates: Start by pretending you’re not falling, even as every instinct in your body tells you otherwise. Start by lying to yourself. And end by realizing you never stood a chance.

I smile; big and stupid and full of something I haven’t felt in years.

“I think,” I murmur, “I need my laptop.”

Wes raises a brow. “That sounds urgent?”

“Kind of,” I say, already turning toward the stairs. “I’ve got a happy ending to write.”