Page 43 of How to Lose a Pack in 10 Dates

Cam

I f I had to organize the last seventy-two hours, I’d file them under: disaster narrowly avoided via group therapy, knotting, and accidental emotional maturity.

Now it’s Friday night, and somehow, we survived the worst of Aimee’s heat.

We’re back at the pack house, where she’s currently curled up on the couch wearing a t-shirt I’m pretty sure used to be mine, though everything smells like her now, so who knows. Her cheek’s pressed to Wes’s pillow, and her feet are tucked under Jace’s old team hoodie.

Even in her sleep, she’s surrounded by us. We’re not going anywhere .

Well. Unless it’s outside, with tents, and fire, and ideally someone crying in a sleeping bag out of sheer emotional progress.

“So,” I announce, “I have a plan.”

Wes looks up from the laptop he hasn’t stopped glaring at all afternoon, while Jace is mid-fold with a fleece blanket, which is probably a euphemism for something.

“Camping,” I grin at them. “We go camping .”

Wes blinks rapidly, his expression utterly horrified. Meanwhile, Jace has the face of a man already mentally packing.

Aimee is… to be decided. Her eyes are still very much closed.

“Camping.” Wes repeats, lowering his laptop. “Is this a joke?”

“Nope,” I say, cheerfully. “Just imagine it: trees, a tent, a cozy fire. S’mores . It’ll be healing, and full pack song potential.”

“We are not pack singing anything ,” Wes practically growls.

“Well, maybe we can teach Aimee how to make hot dogs without burning her eyebrows off.”

“I can hear you,” she grumbles.

I grin. “And you love it.”

Jace’s face lights up. “I’m in.”

Wes groans. “No.”

“Yes,” Jace repeats, already rolling up his sleeves. “I’ve got the gear.”

Wes gives him a long, exasperated look. “You say that the way serial killers say ‘ I’ve got the basement .’”

“It’s organized by category.”

“That doesn’t help.”

Aimee groans from the couch. “Do I get murdered or cuddled?”

“Both,” Jace and I say at the same time.

Wes sighs, but I keep going. Mostly because no one’s yelling.

“Look, I think we need it,” I tell them. “A break. No screens, no articles, and no rehashing . Just—us. A weekend to prove we’re not running away this time.”

There’s a long moment of silence.

“...Also, I bought s’mores ingredients, and if I don’t use them, I will cry.”

“You already cried this morning,” Jace says.

“Yeah. But I want this one to be s’more related.”

Aimee covers her face with Wes’s pillow and mumbles, “Someone please stop him.”

“No one’s stopping me,” I say. “I’m unstoppable. I’m powered by second chances and marshmallows.”

Jace disappears into the hallway, already muttering something about thermal socks and folding shovels as Aimee peeks out from behind the cushion. “Are there bathrooms?”

“Nope,” I reply, cheerfully.

“Sold,” Jace calls from another room.

Wes rubs a hand over his face. “You’re all insane.”

“But are we wrong ?” I ask.

He stares at the ceiling for a long time before saying, “If one mosquito touches me, I will sue the outdoors.”

“Deal,” I say. “But you’re going. We all are.”

He glances at Aimee, then softens a little. “ Fine . But if there’s singing—”

“I already started writing lyrics,” I interrupt.

Aimee lets out a sound that’s suspiciously like a laugh. It’s quiet, but it’s there; and better yet, it’s ours .

We’re getting her back. We’re making this real.

And we are definitely singing.

*

Jace has packed enough gear for an actual military operation.

There's a water filter, an axe, and something that looks suspiciously tactical.

I made two playlists—one for the drive, one for the firepit. One’s called Scented Bangers Only, the other is Omega Snuggle Jams, and I’m not ashamed of either.

Aimee’s in leggings, an oversized hoodie, and the kind of sleepy-glowy post-heat haze that makes me want to wrap her in sixteen blankets and guard her like a cursed jewel.

“Who put me in charge of snacks?” she says, holding up a plastic bag full of gummy bears and trail mix. “Because this is a disaster.”

“You assigned yourself,” I say, sliding into the backseat beside her. “And I stand by your choices.”

“I regret it deeply.”

“You’re the omega equivalent of a gas station,” Wes laughs from the front seat.

“Yeah, well, you’re the alpha equivalent of a parking ticket,” she shoots back, not missing a beat.

Jace chuckles from the driver’s seat, eyes flicking to the mirror. “Incorrect. She’s the omega equivalent of a national treasure, actually.”

“Oh my god,” Wes groans. “I’m jumping out at the next light.”

“Says the man who cried during her heat,” I chime in.

“That was one tear.”

“A bonding tear,” Jace adds, too quickly to be innocent.

“I hate this car,” Wes grumbles.

But Aimee’s grinning now, tucking her face into the sleeve of her hoodie as though she’s trying to hide it. I bump her leg with mine, and she bumps it right back.

Progress .

The first half of the drive is chaotic in a way that only feels good now. We argue over snacks and then slide into an overlapping debate about scent-matching tech and whether it should be regulated like pharmaceutical-grade chaos. Jace argues yes . Aimee argues arson .

I back her, obviously.

“She makes a compelling case,” I say, flipping the trail mix bag upside down and watching three rogue M and, more than anything, there’s absolutely no chance Wes will be able to check his emails before 9 a.m.

Which is probably why he looks like he’s either about to cry or build a makeshift cell tower out of sticks and shame.

Jace, on the other hand, is in his natural element.

His shirt was off within minutes of us arriving, and he’s wearing a pair of sunglasses despite the questionable cloud coverage.

We’ve barely been here an hour and he’s already hung a bug-repellent lantern, started a fire and organized our granola bars.

I don’t know if I want to kiss him or sedate him.

Wes is less enthusiastic.

“These poles are defective,” he announces, glaring at a bundle of tent rods.

“Or maybe ,” Aimee says, perched barefoot on a rock and swinging her legs, “you’re just being outwitted by a pack of bendy sticks and some canvas.”

I nearly choke on my water.

“And here we have the alpha,” she continues in her best David Attenborough voice, “desperately attempting to assert dominance over a structurally unsound nylon dwelling. Watch closely as he fails.”

Jace wheezes.

“I swear to God,” Wes mutters, shoving a stake into the ground with far more aggression than necessary. “Say one more thing.”

She gasps theatrically and bolts, laughing as her bare feet pound through the dry grass.

“Aimee!” I shout after her. She’s not even wearing shoes . “You’re gonna step on a pinecone and blame it on the patriarchy!”

Wes dusts his hands off and straightens up. “I’m not chasing her.”

I blink. “That’s personal growth.”

“She’ll come back,” Jace shrugs. “Eventually. Probably when she gets hungry.”

“She’s like a cat,” I muse. “Sarcastic, unpredictable, and occasionally violent. But she purrs if you scratch behind her ears.”

“I heard that!” she yells from somewhere beyond the tree line. “I’m a wolf, bitches!”

“Sure you are!” Wes calls back. “Try not to imprint on a chipmunk while you’re out there!”

We all pause, listening.

There’s a beat of silence. Then a faint, “You take that back!”

Jace’s grin stretches. “Her instincts are still intact.”

“She’s a menace,” I mutter, unable to stop smiling.

“She’s our menace,” Jace says, quieter now.

And just like that, the teasing dies down for a second. Aimee’s laugh still echoes in the distance, and Wes is standing there with dirt on his pants and something like guilt in his eyes, and I feel it too.

That what if we’d lost her weight.

Before it can settle, Aimee comes charging back into view, holding a long stick above her head like it’s a sword.

“I found a branch,” she declares.

Jace gives a solemn nod. “Impressive.”

“It’s for whacking anyone who says I don’t contribute.”

“Babe, you haven’t helped set up anything,” Wes says flatly.

“I’m providing essential morale.”

“You narrated my emotional breakdown over a tent peg.”

“And I stand by that performance,” she says proudly, dropping the stick next to the campfire pit and flopping down beside me.

I hand her a protein bar. She peels it open and sniffs it suspiciously. “This tastes like anxiety.”

“It’s peanut butter,” Jace says, lying badly.

“Are you sure?”

“...No.”

Wes finally finishes tying down the last corner of the tent and collapses next to us with a dramatic grunt. “If this thing collapses in the middle of the night, we’re blaming Cam.”

“Wait— me ?”

“You’re the only one who looked like you knew what you were doing.”

“I was just holding the instructions!”

“Exactly.”

The fire crackles softly as Jace starts poking it with a stick, and Aimee leans her head on my shoulder, quietly chewing her possibly-anxious protein bar.

Her scent—still sweet, still just hers —wraps around us, mingling with smoke and pine and the faintest edge of heat that’s been ebbing and flowing for days now.

None of us say it, but we feel it: the quiet click of everything slotting back into place.

Like maybe, just maybe, we’re okay.

Even if the tent isn’t. Even if Wes still looks like he wants to fight it in a parking lot, and even if Aimee’s now holding a second stick and calling it “the emotional support branch.”

We’re here, together .

And that’s what matters.

*

There’s hardly a huge variety of things to do, and so we sit around the fire that night, talking and laughing and sharing stories.

Jace has started poking at the logs with the world’s longest stick again, although this time, he’s wearing a headlamp he definitely doesn’t need, claiming it’s for emergency visibility .

Aimee is curled between us, tucked into the cocoon of my arm and his; her hair a mess, her hoodie half-unzipped, and her legs draped across Wes’s lap.

“I’m just saying,” Aimee says, mouth full, “if the Girl Scouts had let me start a fire with a lighter and a tiny bit of lighter fluid, maybe we wouldn’t have had to sleep in a moldy canoe that night.”

Jace chokes on his beer. “You slept in a canoe ?”

“It was that or the mud,” she says proudly. “And I’m sorry, but ten-year-old me wasn’t about to let raccoons claw my face off for a soggy s’more.”

Wes finally breaks. “Did you at least win a badge for that?”

“I think they gave me a ‘Most Unsupervisable Camper’ sticker and sent me home early.”

“That tracks,” Jace mutters, grinning as he leans in and presses a kiss to her temple. “You’d bite a troop leader and then demand a leadership position.”

She shrugs. “I have initiative.”

“Yeah, well, you also have a marshmallow in your hair,” I say, leaning over to pluck it out.

“Great,” she sighs. “I’m a walking snack.”

“You’re our walking snack,” Jace murmurs, fussing with the blanket around her shoulders.

“Oh my god, stop fussing , I’m not a burrito.”

“You’re my burrito.”

Wes makes a quiet, disgusted noise and goes back to methodically toasting his marshmallow.

I raise a brow at him. “You okay there, soldier?”

“This marshmallow’s my redemption arc,” he mutters.

“You’re terrifying,” Aimee tells him sweetly. “In like… a crunchy suburban dad way.”

Jace snorts. “You’ve weaponized domesticity.”

“I did bring the good chocolate,” Wes points out.

“I brought vibes,” Aimee counters.

“You brought chaos ,” Wes says.

She grins and tosses a peanut at him. “Same thing.”

He catches it, eats it, shrugs. “Fair.”

Jace’s arm tightens around her shoulders, and her head tips to rest on his.

She’s soft tonight in a way that makes my chest ache, and she laughs.

God, she laughs. Loud and messy and full-bellied.

At Jace misidentifying a constellation, at Wes getting genuinely mad that his marshmallow collapsed into the fire after twenty minutes of precision, and at me tripping over a log while trying to act nonchalant when I was really watching her.

She shifts to look up at me, hair lit by the firelight, eyes soft and impossibly wide.

“Thanks for bringing us out here,” she murmurs.

“Anytime,” I nod, squeezing her hand. “But next time, you’re bringing a real pillow.”

“I brought vibes ,” she says.

“You brought a feral energy and a stick you called your emotional support branch,” Wes deadpans.

“And yet,” she says, stretching like a cat, “I’m the coziest one here.”

“Because you’re wrapped in three blankets, Jace’s hoodie, and enough smugness to power a small town,” I mutter, watching as she tucks her cold toes under Wes’s thigh.

We fall quiet after that. Not in a heavy way, but in that way that only happens when everyone’s warm and fed and home .

The fire crackles. Jace hums something tuneless under his breath, and Aimee picks at the edge of the blanket and leans into every touch we offer.

My head drops back against the log behind us, and I look up at the stars.

I don’t know how we got here. I don’t know how we didn’t ruin it for good. But somehow, after the arguments and the heartbreak and the god-awful scent-matching disaster that kicked this whole thing off…

We’re still here.

Still stupid, still soft, and most of all, still hers .

And for the first time… it feels like we might just make it.